Sunday, December 9, 2012

Recognizing Passion part 1

There are so many things in this world to be passionate about and so many ways to express it. Our connections with all these passions in our lives help shape us and can be critical to our actions under pressure. Today I'm not talking about romantic passion rather self dedication to the extent that it becomes integral to your life. It pervades your every thought and bleeds through in everything you do. For some of us it's a song in our heart that guides us and calms us, helps us focus. Some of us think about our favorite character form a movie or a book, even still some of use  use games. I for one am inseparable from my love of games. When I'm under pressure it's my go to option for some kind of solution. That doesn't mean I break one out and start playing. It means I think about a character or story, or perhaps something greater like the underlying mechanics, textures, models, and how they were made. Sometimes I consider the motivations of their design and that helps. The point is most people have some kind of passion, at least one if not more and those passions are more important to us than many realize.

Some would suggest that passion at it's core is suffering and pain, an anguish solidified through an unsatisfied or unrequited love, something which I believe has quite a bit of merit. Ultimately I realize one of the reasons I love games so much is the infinite potential constantly squandered or even crushed by the need for monetary profit. Knowing what can be done and how it's barely out of reach kills me a little every time and yet I get to spend time with what I love filling that particular void in my life. Though I also understand it's really impossible to ever completely finish developing a game, there's always more as I've learned the hard way, and the hardest part really is just knowing when to let go and share it with the world. Coupled with the anxiety of release and the hope for acceptance it's just to a point where you have to detach yourself because there's no preparing for the inevitable hate mail regardless of success. There will always be someone somewhere that simply dedicates themselves to making sure you know just how much they hate everything about you and what you've made.

Back on target though passion really shares more with love than pain. There's just no other kind of satisfaction as strong as seeing what you've accomplished either as a player or a dev. Being able to immerse yourself and exist in ways that simply aren't possible in standard reality. That sense of community through shared experiences or actively playing with someone else in your fantasy that only others like you could ever understand. It feels like family almost, and it's such a large family at that. Not to mention all the times that's it's really there for you when you really need it the most, to just relax or find relief, even if only for a little while or for a whole vacation. While some individual games may disappoint you gaming as a whole will never let you down. It won't tell you no or give you some excuse why you can't play right now. For that matter as one site would have you believe it actually misses you while you're away even if only to sleep and it is more excited than you are when you make great accomplishments. In the end a great game can share at least one perfect experience with you completely and you'll have experienced that moment where the whole world slips away and you are a part of that world completely. The precious moments you have in that time will stick with you forever.

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