Even though I sometimes don't believe it myself.
I’ve been noticing a trend over the last few months in terms of how I feel about myself and my efforts in trying to convince people to take a closer look at GB Rober. It tended to go like this:
- Worry about how the game’s doing and if it’s “good enough”
- Find something to occupy yourself with, because you think this is going to be the thing that alleviates your worries.
- Decide that now the game and everything else is good enough and really you shouldn’t have worried all that much to begin with.
- Start worrying again.
As I’ve gotten closer to release and frankly ran out of time to keep fiddling around with the game, I instead started to experience a distinct feeling of hopelessness towards the game. No one’s paying attention, whatever it is that I’m doing is not enough, yet I can’t think of something else and what if the game’s terrible and I’m terrible as well?
Why even try to convince people that GB Rober is worth their time, when it’s going to fail anyway?
Why even try anything at all, really?
These thoughts of hopelessness are not only limited to GB Rober as well. I’ve been also thinking about what comes afterwards and frankly I’m afraid that I’m just not good enough to keep this thing going. What if the ideas that I have for future games are just impossible, or trash?
Right now, GB Rober has not been released yet and any concepts for future games are just that. But what if both of these things turn out to be failures? What does this say about me?
In the end, I’m still scared about failure, no matter how nebulous the term “failure” itself is defined.
From a certain point of view, this perspective might make sense. After all, getting people to pay attention to a pixel art platformer is hard under the best circumstances and I’m not in those. However the question remains, how useful of a perspective it is.
Giving into despair is very convenient, because it means you don’t even have to try, since you’re already convinced of the outcome. It means you’ll never take any risks and instead remain in that very comfortable, nebulous “what if” state, where anything is possible, but nothing is real. And since you’re convinced that you and your work are worthless, it will stay that way.
Let’s try and put things into perspective:
About two years ago, I posted this on twitter:
Two years ago, I was convinced that I would never be able to make a larger, commercial videogame. The thought of being able to spend months, or even years working on one project without burning out and falling apart was completely alien to me.
And now, here I sit on my computer, with a completely finished commercial videogame on my hard drive, three weeks away from its release and the possibility that it might actually get ported onto consoles, once I have all my business bullshit in order.
GB Rober might not do that much better than Splinter Zone did back in 2017, I might still get welfare, my ideas might be terrible, or impossible and I’m still somewhat convinced that I’m unemployable because I keep running my mouth on twitter.
However none of this discounts the fact that I did finish a commercial videogame. One that’s better in every possible way than the one I made before. That I improved so much as an artist and as a person over the last four years. And that I have so much energy that even after spending this year working on one game, I can’t wait to start working on my next project, even though I still don’t know what exactly it will be.
I am proud of what I made and nothing can take this away from me.
And sure, the future might be scary and I’m still unsure if there even is a future for me in games (or at all), but giving into despair is not an option. There won’t be any hope for anything, unless you’re willing and ready to fight for it.
And that’s what I’ll do.
I’d still like it, if you could go and wishlist GB Rober on Steam though. That would be really cool!