Cellar Dreams
I was coding this blog one night, slowly losing my mind to the dark hours, so I drank these weird grapefruit-lemon beers and kept some video playing to break up the desolation. Adventure Time. Some GameOne clips. Then Indie Game: The Movie. It had been out a couple months already, which is ancient by internet time, but whatever.
The movie’s about nerds who lock themselves away programming games for years and then release them. Super Meat Boy. Braid. FEZ. You probably know about it if you follow the right blogs. But it’s not really about game development. It’s about what passion looks like when someone actually means it. How much they give up. Time. Friendships. Love. Money they could’ve made doing literally anything else.
Tommy Refenes sits there visibly depressed. Jonathan Blow is basically losing it because nobody gets what he made. Phil Fish tells the camera he’ll kill himself if his game fails. And I’m watching this thinking, yeah, I understand that. I get why someone would end up there.
The speakers on stages inspire me when they’re saying the right motivational shit, telling all of us believers to hold on. But what actually gets me is someone who won’t leave their tiny room for months because they’re under some kind of spell, convinced that what they’re making will matter.
I can’t stand anyone who just clocks in and clocks out. Nine hours of nothing. Nine hours of being a tool. Nine hours with everything turned off inside. Wake up. Work. Brain off. Come home. TV. Sleep. Repeat for fifty years. How does that not drive you mad? You get one life and you’re spending it dead and serving someone else’s bottom line.
Of course civilization would collapse if everyone just made indie games or weird design blogs or whatever personal obsession drives them. I know that. Civilization needs the regular work done. But the filmmakers in that movie—they couldn’t do anything else. The dream was the only thing that made sense to them.
If you’re one of those basement-dwelling weirdos who’ll never be happy doing anything but the thing that’s eating at you, then watch this. It’s your tribe. It’s what actually giving a shit looks like. Not the pretty version, not the TED talk version. Just the drive to create what you need to create, and not giving a fuck if the world gets it.