No World Is Worthless
I was going to begin this by saying close your eyes and imagine, but this isn’t a podcast so that doesn’t quite work. So, instead keep those peepers open and just indulge me for a moment. I want you to visualize someone carefully crafting a world in front of you. It’s small, different and maybe a little imperfect, but it exists. I also want you to picture there are other people with other worlds.
Some are bigger than others.
Some have more people working on it than others.
But all of them are creating impossible things.
Now that you have that visual. I want you to imagine someone picking up one of these worlds and declaring that it is the only world that is worth your attention.
Every other world is a knock-off, or trash.
They may exist, but they will quickly burn out in the end.
Unless you can make something like this world, your world will be forgotten.
There is something beautiful about video games that I want to express that people who don’t make them probably don’t think about too often. A video game is a living breathing thing made by one or more people that can go on to change the world or just one person. They don’t have to change the world and they don’t have to make thousands of dollars. All they have to do is exist.
Video games are kind of a record of how other people view the world.
They can be a lot of things.
Scary. Sad. Terrible. Heartbreaking.
Simply something to waste time during a quarantine.
They can spark conversation about ideological differences that can bring people together or tear them apart.
The one thing they are not however is trash. Even the most base level game that has it’s bugs and unity asset art is still a world crafted with intention. Trash has a lot of meanings but its most accepted definition is worthless or something to be discarded.
Every world has its worth, even if it’s only meant to entertain someone for a few moments while they wait for their bus to come.
I think in a world full of fast consumed media we sometimes forget just how HARD the people behind art actually work. How much time and effort is spent just to tell a story, something humans have been doing for centuries and something we’ll do forever until the heat death of the sun. We are hardwired to tell spin tales and weave.
A little bit of someone’s soul always finds its way into the things that they make. It’s why death of the author is talked about so frequently.
So in some ways.
When something is deemed worthless. Some people might think that means they’re worthless. That what they’ve made doesn’t mean anything and that is criminal.
I’ve always wanted to craft worlds since I was a kid. It often feels like I’m possessed by some greater power demanding that I craft a new world, to pour my soul into some sort of horcrux so that I can continue living well after I’ve vanished. I sort of reckon a lot of people feel this way and we all share some hivemind of understanding as we look at each other through sleep deprived eyes. We’re all just spinning away on this planet trying to create our own better one.
Sometimes it’s broken.
Sometimes it’s sad.
Sometimes it’s a story that’s been told a thousand times in a thousand different ways.
But it is never not worth creating.
We all want people to take video games seriously as though they are this thing to be held up on a pedestal of greatness, but why?
They are ours.
They are whatever we want them to be. No one should be able to hold the worth of a world over anyone’s head. I understand that some people desire to sit among the ‘greats’ in the video game industry.
Validation is nice.
But just creating a world with your own hands is incredible. There will always be someone who loves what you make. Whether it’s one person or millions. Someone wants to share your world with you.
Because some people are broken.
Because some people are sad.
They want a world that they can escape to and that understands them when the real world doesn’t. So please, make your world, because there is someone who needs it.
You’ll get your money and your fame.
Or you might not.
But all that sounds kind of worthless.
Money burns and fame subsides.
But the world you made will be talked about. People will make worlds because of your worlds! Stories will be written about your characters! On and on we go filling the world we live in with places not yet traveled.
Now, I want you to imagine your world.
Is it sad?
Is it terrible?
Is it broken?
Is it joyful?
Whatever it is.
It isn’t trash. Nothing is worthless.
