Sometimes people tell me things like “you are very lucky to have a job that you love”, and they are right, it is such a priviledge, but I cannot answer that with my biggest smile because every time they tell me, I remember how hard it has been for me to get to our current point with our studio and how hard it still is. When I say “hard” I am not talking about number of working hours, crunch weeks or months, or the huge variety of responsibilities every team member has, or how brutally competitive the game industry is; but this means to some of us that we can work in a indie game studio, in many cases, making the games we really want to make in a way, let’s say, honest and passionate.
During the development of The Last Door, my responsibilities were design and art, creative stuff, scripts, dialogues, etc; and maybe because these new responsibilities I had I thought that the stress I was suffering from was because of these, and I believed so for a long time. Almost immediately, I started to feel that my personal life blended in with the professional one. If I watched a movie it was because I was doing research, if I played a game, it was to analyze it and not to enjoy it, etc. At first, I didn’t see this as a problem, in fact, I saw myself as a passionate, creative professional, involved in projects with all my heart and soul. The stress increased and I became anxious, like the main character of the great Silicon Valley, but without the humour part.
I am not a psychologist and I haven’t experienced those symptoms before, but when trying to analyze them I realized that part of those fears, if not all of them, came from the same source: the development of the game we were making. The game became the center of my life and was also the center of my fears.
Every project’s development is always a big uncertainty, no matter how well planned it is, problems will arise all the time, some of them will really put the project or the team itself to test, and in extreme cases, they will theaten the survival of the studio.
It’s been a long time since we published The Last Door, every team member has lived the development in his own way and learned many things, so this article is actually about a very valuable lesson I particularly learned, and, although I still am dealing with my emotional implication as a creative member of The Game Kitchen, I can say that I progressively achieved the separation of my personal life from my professional one. But it wasn’t easy.
Being developers and making the games we really want to make, we can tend to involve ourselves emotionally in this job that define us and that we want to protect to all costs. So one of the many skills we have to learn is the one that helps us to tell our job apart from what it is not, because if we don’t really do that our personal problems are going to have an impact on the project, on the studio and back to our lives.
And yes, we are lucky working in what we love.
9 comments on “Emotional implication in game development”
Javier Lebrija
Hi 🙂
I’m not a professional yet, only a last year student but that’s the videogames magic and curse I think.
The good professional works like an artisan, leaves a part of him in every sprite, dialogue, mechanic or script.
Because He loves what He is doing, He believe on the message that this game transmit and He care about protecting it. The much He loves, the much He cares, and that’s our curse.
We need to learn to enjoy the life apart the job, because as you said with bad emotions, If we are happy, that hapiness will be in our sprites, dialogues, mechanics, scripts and through them will reach the players, that’s our magic.
Of course, all of this is the personal opinion of an aprentice.
I wish you good luck learning to separate job from personal life. I also have to learn it yet.
Danielle
Thanks for this. It’s important to remember that life supports art, not the other way around (to paraphrase Stephen King). I’m glad to hear you guys are achieving more balance!
IndieGamer4ever
I remember having depression and Celeste https://rawg.io/games/celeste got me through it. Games really can heal. We shouldn’t listen to stupid reporters on the TV telling us otherwise.
Gavan K.
Guys, my game save for Blasphemous has just hit a MASSIVE and I mean MASSIVE snag, the screen has gone completely blue, upon loading my save in true torment I’m presented with a blue screen, this is also true for a new save, my game is bugged and I can’t get it to fix, please tell me I can recover my stuff, otherwise I’ll have lost everything and I’ll have to beat the game again ;~;
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Hi, please reach us over email so we can provide a better support. Regards.
Ahmet
Do you plan on making another game (or extension to a game) anytime in the near future?
Joe
Hello the game kitchen! I just want to say I downloaded blasphemous just a few days ago, and I love it! The art style, story, sound design, combat mechanics, it’s all very immersive, and the soundtrack is amazing! As a huge fan of sotn, metroid, and souls/bourne franchise this is a real treat for gamers. Also the crt video settings brought a profound nostalgic feeling to me that put a huge smile on my face. I just want to say thank you team the game kitchen for this masterpiece. You got a new supporter here. I wish you the best of luck on all your future endeavors!
Gonzalo Pereyra
hola. en el municipio o comuna de Rosario de argentina estan dando cursos Creacion de Videojuegos en Construct 3 y otros motores para niños 10 a 13 gratuitos, y se maneja con la version gratuita del programa y orientado a los plataformeros. son chicos muy curiosos y creativos (con las herramientas que tienen) ya que no les da para comprar la licencia. La cuestion es esta, ¿te gustaria dar una charla sobre Cuando, y como se combirtieron en desarrolladores de Videojuegos? ¿que tener en cuenta al encarar un Videojuego? mas que nada mostrar lo que han logrado, dar algun Consejo y alguna pregunta que les surge a los chicos. si es asi, te pondria en contacto con el profesor asi cordinan . Sin compromisos. gracias.
Ana
My husband is also designing his own game(in this case, a strategy game). He is currently planning out the storyline, balancing, level design, and abilities for it. This is a good anecdote for me to cheer him up with! He doesn’t struggle with the creativity aspect as he comes up with ideas on the spot, but the fact he’s taking unto a pretty large sum of it it’s sure to have a weight on him too.
With That said, Muchas gracias for making such an amazing game like blasphemous ☺️ i was captivated by the trailer and couldn’t wait to play the game, explore the lore and just know what it was all about! And also ty for not making it be cheap difficulty where you gotta die to know what you’re supposed to do! 😅👍 Your effort, love and time definitely showed in your game 💕
Estate lista para el siguiente juego para cuando sea!