Seeing as how we’re nearing the end of the spring semester, thus bringing an end to yet another stage of my academic development, I figured it would be appropriate to do a bit of reflecting amidst all of the deadlines, projects and assignments that have started to exhibit some notable volume – in that, I’m beginning to drown.
But everything is fine.
Now that we’re all fine, I just want to take a moment to stroll down memory lane to appreciate the crooked line we stumble upon. And I say “us” because as a collective, I would imagine that if one were to compress all of the human experiences every human experienced into a little ball it would probably look quite different on the surface, but the deeper you dug, you’re likely to find some uniformity. Before I get too heady, what I’m really getting at is that I have yet to meet someone who has walked a seemingly linear path with no hiccups, curveballs or twists. I’ll stop speaking for the entirety of the human race for a moment and just say that – at the very least – my experience has not been without a tad bit of uncertainty. And to zoom out just before I started my stay at OSU working towards a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, I was pretty unsure of what to do with my life (I’m only a bit closer to knowing that now, just FYI).
The year was 2017, I was likely getting off of work as a personal trainer working for a high-health-risk population in a small studio in Greensboro, North Carolina and I’m sure all I wanted to do was checkout and play a video game. That video game was about a little bug fighting his way through a dark, twisted and mysterious fantasy world filled with sick bugs. This game is Hollow Knight, developed by Team Cherry – a small team of 3 located in Australia. This game was a hit – an indie gem, if you will. And just for a qualifier, I’ve been playing video games ever since I was kid, hooked on the stuff since 1994 when I got my first Nintendo 64. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been inspired by a number of video games in a myriad of ways for as long as I can remember. Super Mario 64: get out there and explore – jump on mushrooms. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: pay attention to stories and the people who tell them and do your best to stop the baddie. Halo: Combat Evolved: be the best there is and save the damn world from aliens. Minecraft: relax, explore and build something and stay away from green things. I could go on and on, but something about Hollow Knight did something to me. And it had much less to do with the game itself: the story, the art, the music, the mechanics, the world design – all of which are fantastic, by the way. It inspired that creative part of me that wanted to build something unique. This began my journey into game development.
And let me to tell you, just in case you don’t know, making games is hard. Really, really hard. And I don’t even mean the programming or the art or the world design or story or the audio or any of the stuff we commonly associate with video games – and all of that stuff is really hard. I mean the part that makes a game “a game”. And I’m sure we could call up a game designer and ask them what this “thing” is, but in my opinion, the essence of a game comes down to it being “fun”. And that’s what makes making games so damn hard. What’s fun to me might be horrible for you. And what’s fun for you might be boring to me. So how can we possibly invest time, and often money, into developing a product that might not be considered fun? Well, as a hobbyist, the answer is probably a lot more wholesome than the answer you might get from a AAA game company marketing team. We do it for the same reason we tell each other stories, build things out of stuff, like wood, or whatever, paint stuff and turn sand into stuff at the beach. Because it’s another medium to uniquely express creativity. Now that being said, it’s really hard to put that awesome, kickass, “procedurally generated universe-scale simulation with dynamic environments that look beautiful and house intelligent life-forms that interface with the player in interesting ways” idea, that ultimately comes from that creative place, into reality.
But that’s how I got started. I was inspired by a piece of art from a small team of folks across the world to try to create my own little piece of art. Now, I have yet to create my own version of Hollow Knight, but I’ve been gifted with some strange, and sometimes masochistic, passion to create things that are meaningful to me and to the people I care about. I don’t fully attribute Hollow Knight to this sense of purpose, or whatever you might call it, but I think what Hollow Knight represents is the stuff that gives all of us a bit of direction. Even as a kid, playing Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, I was taught that your ideas can be materialized, played with and met with a great deal of joy. Some people get that from a book, others from an oil painting, many from music and oftentimes from a good movie. Regardless, there’s something pretty wonderful about coming back to my roots and exploring the stuff that brought me to this place; I imagine what brought others all this journey isn’t too different. Today I love making 3D worlds, simulations and virtual environments that may bring people joy in some capacity or another and I hope to continue learning so that potential to deliver something good increases. Despite all of the homework, projects, assignments and “life stuff” that just keeps coming, I’m glad to be reminded that there’s always a source of inspiration laying around somewhere.
