A handbag?

It’s been a funny old couple of months. Sometimes stressful, sometimes joyous and as always with my life, rather silly at the best of times. With having little time to put into writing games, I think I’ve spent far too much time thinking about games.

Okay, not just thinking about games… it’s that wonderful time of the year when for some strange reason I start sitting there weighing up the where to next. As you’d expect from someone who spends his time either writing games or writing about games, this generally tends to involve large amounts of gamethink. Normally, this translates as wondering around the house thinking out loud and coming across like a mumbling hairy beast. For the record, I’m not entirely sure how that differs from me normally, but Mrs Bob assures me it’s a noticeable difference all the same.

Before the good lady wife went into her operation I started playing about with a remake of Jetpac. Naturally, being me – I couldn’t just go ahead and start making Jetpac, there’s little to no fun to be found when there’s already a fair old amount of games that do the whole Jetpac thing perfectly well, even the Xbox 360 version somehow didn’t make it through the mincing machine that many a re-imagining goes through. What I didn’t factor in when starting it was just how little time I’d find myself having to sit down in the comfy chair, grab a cup of tea and pour anything like some serious hours into it. And so, I’ve been forced to put in on hold despite having a brain burning with ideas that I want to throw into the mix.

I had planned to get something ready for Indiecade this year, but with somewhere in the region of a month to get things ready, it’d take a momentous effort to do so – with only an hour and a half a day usually spent on the mainbox and using that time to catch up with some serious Left4Dead sessions with friends, that also is looking unlikely. More than anything, I just don’t have the thoughtspace remaining to dedicate to thinking through the ins and outs of how a game will work.

And for me, that’s odd. Usually I spend my spare time either tinkering around with some graphics which may never get used in a game (they may be shit, I may get bored or I may have a complete change of mind and decide that I don’t want something to look that way right now), throwing a few game ideas together to see if anything sticks or y’know, just doing something game related. At the moment, everything is far more passive.

Which is, I believe, a good thing. It’s given me the opportunity to weigh up where I want to go to next in the grand scheme of things. As always, I never manage anything that one could call “a plan”, it’s more working out the parts of my life I’m generally happy with and the parts I’m not and working to improve the latter to make me a happier bunny in general. Which sort of implies that I’m currently not happy, which really, couldn’t be further from the truth – but all these things ultimately effect the sort of games I make because it comes down to the question of “what sort of games do I want to make” and “why do I want to make them?”.

And there’s never been a better moment in a blog post to link to the wonderful AuntiePixelante – if only to mention the strap line. “We must make the games we wish to play in the world”. Just think about that for a moment. There isn’t a better reason is there?

I’ve discussed at length on RR and with other developers why I tend to make the games that I do. I make them because I want to play them. If somebody else wants to play them too, then great, but really – that’s a secondary concern for me. It’s not that I don’t get a big grin on my face when people play my games and enjoy them, of course I do, I’m still the proud parent of the game after all, it’s just that’s not nor ever has been the primary focus for me.

I don’t write games out of dissatisfaction with the mainstream. I don’t write games because I want to be a part of the mainstream. I don’t write games to become a minor celebrity and I certainly don’t write them to make a living off the things. I write them because they’re in my head. I don’t want them in my head, I want them to be something tangible that I can touch and play. I don’t really care if they fall on their arses from a critical perspective, become beloved of millions or drift somewhere in the never space of the internets ignored. None of that really matters as long as the darn things aren’t eating away at me inside, begging to be birthed.

I don’t have a grand statement I want to make (but if I were to be making a grand statement, I can tell you now that it would be “Games are fucking brilliant”), I’m not out to change the face of gaming forever, I’m just making games that I want to make.

For all my musing of late, contemplating what I’d like to be doing, where I’d like to be in 12 months time etc… I’ve come to the simple and plain conclusion that I’m already there. I’m precisely where I want to be in life.

When I create, I create what I choose. If I want to send a love letter to the people that helped shape my gaming tastes, I’m free to do so. If I want to create a game that involves a square being attacked by double decker busses whilst the player is haunted by Bruce Forsyth, I can do. If I want to call a game War Twat for no other reason than it makes me laugh stupendously hard for 10 minutes then I’m free to do so and I will do so.

I may not always have the time to create, but I always have the freedom to create.

I couldn’t, hand on heart, ask for much more than that.