Creativity

Something I have always admired about small games companies, or individuals is how creative they are. Big games like Final Fantasy literally have hundreds of people working on them over their life time and they tend to just focus on one thing. There's a team to develop the story, one for character creation, one for the environment. Smaller companies and individuals, do most if not all of it. Of course, on a comparison of scale, the games are vastly different but not less enjoyable than one another. One of my favourite games is The Binding of Isaac which encompasses you traversing randomly generated floors collecting different things making the game pretty much unique every time you play it. Whereas a game like Dead Space for example, you play it once and you know the story, you can play it different ways but you are prepared for whats ahead - still doesn't make it less scary though.

Why do I admire that? I've always wanted to see something out there in the world with my name on it, whether that be a book or game, something I can be proud to say - "I did that." I think my problem is a mix between creative block, and being too ambitious. I have on occasion created an idea in my head and pieced it together and wrote ideas down.. But when it comes to doing it, I find it hard to flesh out. To make this idea for a story have believable character relationships and logical development, to make the characters I have designed move on a screen. Honestly, it's my fault. I have a habit of thinking too big and when I can't see a logical path to get to the end result, it puts me off. I find my break through moments are when I can shrug off this aura of following logic and things making sense, and I just do something. Add something random. Change something you think doesn't need changing. I'll come back to it with my logical hat and see connections I didn't before.

Source: http://www.cfau-pd.net/wallpapers/creative-pictures.html

I've always liked how creativity is expressed with a light bulb. The concept of an idea, coming to light. I think people will often look at this as the idea suddenly appearing in your mind. I like to think of it as.. A switch, illuminating a thought that was already there.


Inspiration is a great tool to push you forward. The thing that made me think - I want to develop a game is a YouTuber called EpicNameBro, you can find his channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EpicNameBro
I started watching him a while back, when I was trying to debate whether or not I wanted to buy a game called Dark Souls. Someone I worked with said "Don't do it, it's far too hard and not enjoyable." Of course, I looked to the internet and found this channel and now it is one of my favourite game series ever. About six months age he started uploading videos of his game development, which I found really interesting. I enjoyed watching and learning and being part of his learning experience. I went as far as downloading the free software on the Windows partition to try it myself, and buying a piece of software called PyxelEdit which is a pixel art tool. Something else I want to learn to do - and surprisingly, a pixel art tool is so helpful despite it seeming so simple on the surface. I found my problem was.. Looking at what I was making and never feeling like it was good enough - when in hindsight - I should have just run with it and learn before expecting to even start work on a finished product. I still have the tools here - I should give it another shot.

Another inspiration I found was hearing something I used to be a scout with is having his book published and printed - I mean that's just awesome in itself:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31427412-the-siren-wakes
And it took me an unfortunate amount of time to find this page because there is another pre-existing author with the same name. I always said when I was younger I wanted to be an author - or a snooker player. The idea of walking into a Waterstones in town, and finding a book with my name on it, maybe seeing someone pick it up and reading the blurb; painstakingly chosen to try and get them to buy my work. It really bit at my heels but if you can't tell - never happened. Not to say it won't, it could. Just got to try and get my head in the right place to keep pushing. My understanding is that books can take years, of drafts and starting again and scrapping ideas because it doesn't work with that cool thing you just wrote down.. I miss writing. I spend far too much time typing these days, I guess you can't help it when you work in IT. Then again, I guess it would suck a bit to write everything down to just have to type it all up to be sent off. Assuming thats how it works anyway.

The most creative thing I feel like I have ever done is this blog, but at the same time this blog - in a sense isn't conventionally creative. To me at least. I have always thought being creative would encompass making something new, something that hasn't been seen before. My blog is in a sense being created by me right now, each time I press a key on the keyboard, but it is generally talking about life experiences so things that have happened before. Or what other people are doing.

I was/am creating a campaign in Dungeons and Dragons 5e and running it with two close friends,  which I really enjoyed. I was using the creatures piecing them into this world I had created. That was all me. I guess I can give myself a pat on the back for that.

It's oddly therapeutic to type something like this, I compare it to thinking out loud. I could look at this from a negative angle thinking about all the things I have 'failed' to finish or 'failed' to commit to. If I do, and that's an if, they'll all have been stepping stones I needed to land on to get there.

Thanks for reading, blog you later.