To begin with, this subject overall went (relatively) quite a bit better than education did, despite its somewhat misleading title. For recap, the subject was about when young people want to become game makers.
Rando Post No. 4: You Can Ce Whatever You Want to Be*
I forgot to mention how there are reasons other than parents implying otherwise that this isn’t true. For instance, I used to want to be a fighter pilot, thanks to Ace Combat 5. But, then I found out from my eye doctor that I was (and still am) nearsighted. Fighter pilots aren’t nearsighted. Also, it’s been brought to my attention that my writing has a tendency to have a long build up, with a tiny climax. This is especially obvious in this article.
Rando Post No. 5: …Except For a Game Designer.
It just occurred to me that the title of this article isn’t exactly what I meant, in light of the next article (I meant game maker, not game designer). Anyway, this is one I’ve been wanting to make for a while. I’ve had trouble convincing people that game making was a viable career for me in the past, up to the beginning of this summer, though things have changed a bit since then. I actually think that as games grow and mature as an artistic medium, this problem will actually get worse. It will become like saying that you want to become an author or movie producer. But then again, you don’t have to be in a prestigious position or have some kind of expensive training to make a killing on your art; there are YouTubers who are raking in the dough with little movie-making experience, on just interesting content alone. But, those are few and far between, compared to YouTube’s entire population. As with anything related to game making’s future, however, it really lies in the Indie movement, which is well known for developers making games on $0.00 budgets, and not getting paid until you sell. So perhaps it’s just to early to tell.
Rando Post No. 6: Seriously Though; Game Making Isn’t For Everybody
Despite the fact that this article had the least meat, and was mostly just defining terms, it was actually my favorite one of the bunch because it began by stating an argument, followed by defending it (though without much defense). I also cut out a lot of the introduction that all the previous articles had. Though this article in itself wasn’t really ideal, but the general formula presented in this one is what I plan on most future articles being like. Other than that, there isn’t much to say about this one.
On a related note, here are some videos by Extra Credits (one of my favorite YouTube channels) that serve to give brief descriptions of what a few game making jobs are and what skills they tend to draw on most:
Also, it’s totally worth checking out their other stuff too. They’ve been doing this kind of thing for a lot longer than I have, and are actually pretty good at it.
Now, on to the news. I have two items: the new series name, and the next subject. After talking with my brother, he suggested that, rather than have one whole series name, I rename the distinct segments, since there are the three posts followed by the wrap-up. As most of the posts up to this point, and probably most of them in the future too, have at least partly been drawn from my own experience, he suggested “Experience Point” for those articles. Then, for the wrap-up, we finish the analogy with “Level Up.” Given how well this works, and how much better it is than “Rando Post” and “Rando Wrap-Up,” these will be the new titles.
The next subject is difficulty – good difficulty, bad difficulty, and the difference between them. Stay tuned for next week’s exciting argument about why difficulty does not imply fun.