I said I was going to update this site, but haven’t quite managed to – sorry, the last few months have been very busy, in ways both good and bad. I’m still on it.
I’m in a strange place right now. I get to work on games like The Eternal Cylinder (coming to Steam later this year) and The Talos Principle 2, doing things that you pretty rarely get to in games. And the people at Croteam and ACE Team are lovely to work with.
Simulaneously, I am bursting with untold stories to the degree that it’s physically hurting me. Gospels of the Flood was just the tip of the iceberg! I’m increasingly consumed by the need to tell these stories, but they’re not game stories. (I’m already telling my game stories.) And there it gets a lot trickier, because while I know loads of people in my field, I do somewhat lack connections outside.
I did get Gospels made, mind you, so it’s not impossible. But it’s certainly very hard. And the stories are all bouncing around in my head, demanding to be let out, and it’s taking a toll.
I’m very grateful for the stories I do get to tell. Making games is hard and frustrating, and frequently you get your ass kicked at the last second by something unexpected, but I do understand that not everyone gets to make games about philosophical robots and giant rolling pins and actually reach an audience with that.
But I am built to tell stories, and I need to find ways of letting more of them out or I will explode. Think of it less as a career and more as an exorcism. They’re like living entities trapped inside me, and they need to get out and live lives of their own.
The next audio drama I want to do with Chris, for example. I’ve already written it. It’s Lovecraftian (but think ontology instead of tentacles), it’s a dirty 80s New York cop thriller, it’s strange murders and cults and corporations and drugs and everything being broken, it’s a living thing full of passion and horror and hope and it wants the fuck out.
It seems silly to care or worry about telling stories in these absurdly horrific times we live in, but like I said, it’s what I’m built to do, and you have to keep pursuing these things, even if all you end up doing is scratching stories onto cave walls.
That said, I think I need more friends and allies who care about the same things that I do, or at least who are tortured by similar visions. I’ve always kept myself somewhat isolated from the social parts of the game scene, and that was a wise choice, but complete isolation from other artists is also deeply unhealthy.
There’s no conclusion. You hold on, you keep going. After all, who knows what’s around the corner?
