As I said in the previous post, creatively speaking 2012 was a good year. Despite the difficulty of getting attention for games that don’t fit into familiar categories, my games reached people. They found new fans, they were written about by critics, they affected other game developers. There were defeats but there were also many victories. (Still being here is a victory of a kind, too.)
So what do I intend to do in 2013?
Accelerate.
My friends often tell me that I have too many projects, but I’ve started to realize that the problem is I don’t have enough. Attempting to be creative in the age of crisis can be disheartening – self-publishing may be easy, but it’s rarely rewarding, and most of the creative industries have become harder to break into as publishers embrace the short-term logic of looking only for the next best-seller. I get depressed just thinking about it, and depression makes it incredibly hard to do creative work. Not being creative makes me even more depressed, however, and you can see how this goes. I need output. I need to make things. Different things. With other people, too – I can’t do everything on my own. I need to fill those empty, soul-crushing hours when I’m done with my regular work but can’t relax. I need to do more.
All the websites Verena and I have created will start being updated more regularly. The Starving Artists’ Kitchen has so much more to offer. Commentarium will return and blossom, free from my attempts to impose a definite shape on it. And there are other projects of a similar nature that are finally going to come to fruition. An explosion of words and ideas, mine and other people’s. Enthusiasm. Life. Even if it kills me.
And games, of course. Various games, but above all a project called The Kingdom of the Wolf. I’ve hinted at it before on Twitter and elsewhere, but it’s grown bigger and more ambitious than I’d ever imagined. Screw the Citizen Kane of gaming, I’m making the Paradise Lost of gaming! An interactive novel that will deserve the overused title of “epic” – a grand, complex mythopoetic work with a deep philosophical basis. Sounds arrogant? Fuck yeah. Why not think big? Why limit ambition in game development to technical matters? I’m going for it.
There will be a crowdfunding thing for this. If it goes well, it could change everything for me and how I make games. I’ll be counting on your support.
Will the Lands of Dream be forgotten in all this? Of course not. Don’t worry. Neither will other types of games. I think that in a few years I may be done with making games, but until then my output will increase. I intend to go out with a bang.
I will make a film this year. Any film. Complete that old project, start a new one, I don’t care. I need to do this.
I will write more screenplays. Melinoe is one of the best things I’ve written. I’m good at screenwriting, and I need to stop neglecting this ability.
I need an agent, I think.
Our children’s book will finally be published. Will it do well in poverty-stricken Greece? I don’t know. I hope so. Its story is relevant to what is going on. I hope the right kind of people hear about it.
2012 reminded me that hope is possible. 2013 will be the year in which my future is decided. I’m either going to fly or I’m going to crash. I don’t believe that good work is always rewarded, but I do believe it is worth trying. And I have been trying really hard since 2003. I’ve found my wife, my cat, my voice. It’s been a struggle, but here’s hoping that after ten long years, the road to Oneiropolis is within reach.
