作者：Michael Hicks

我花了一年的时间去扮演全职独立开发者的角色，并花了另外一年时间断断续续致力于这项工作。我并未真正完成游戏，所以我写本文的时机可能稍早，不过这款游戏将会在年末的时候与大家见面。总之，这真的是一次很棒的经历，但这同时也是我迄今为止的人生中最困难的一段时间。

independent developer(from develop-online)

在我开始全职致力于游戏前，我还是一名学生。在整个学校生活中我始终致力于各种项目中，并会因为想要在家制作游戏而不想去学校。我因为经常待在家里未出门与任何朋友见面而落下一些不好的名声，但这只是因为我想将大部分时间用于在家制作游戏。

想象当我投入7个月的时间完全专注于游戏制作，并开始渴求某些社交联系的感受。同样地在这时候我也意识到自己在这7个月的时间里只见过极少了的人。大多数人可能会想：“好吧，既然你想与人见面，你就应该给对方打电话并做些什么。”但这存在某些问题，即在我这周完全孤立的状态下，我觉得所有人都讨厌我并且永远不想与我一起做某事。

那时候我并未真正理解这一点，但关于我的大脑和身体却存在一种冲突，也就是Jonathan Blow所谓的，我的思维的理性部分（思维部分）和直觉部分（游戏邦注：与吃饭等动物型需求相一致的部分）。

从理性上，我完全相信自己在做什么。这款游戏对我来说非常重要，这就像是我的许多重要经历的写照。我想要完成它并将其呈现在世界面前。如果我不这么做，我将会觉得自己是个失败者。

另一方面，我的大脑的直觉部分是恐慌的；我觉得自己被困在某处，就像我所认识的所有人都在自己的生活中前进着，而我则独自致力于一款永远都不能为我带来什么的游戏，即它很有可能被许多人所无视并在财政方面迫使我放弃作为全职独立开发者的梦想。有时候我会认真考虑放弃的问题，即寻找一些我并不想要的工作，并就此结束。

我希望存在某种方式能够解决恐慌和绝望等感受，而事实上的确存在这种方法并且已经对我的生活产生了实际影响。当你自身具有强大的矛盾感时，你便会开始说些胡话并觉得所有的这些疯狂的情感都不具有任何基础。我认为这在创造性领域中是很常见的情况，但我们却一直在回避它。也许关于这种内部矛盾的最佳例子是来自《Indie Game: The Movie》，在这里你可以看到开发者说着一些与我上述所说的相似的内容。

我最近听了Jonathan Blow所做的演讲，在那里他讨论了许多这样的内容。这真的有效帮助我去理解这种所谓的情感与思维的结合。我们的身体具有核心需求：就像身体舒适感和外部检验。不管你做什么，你的身体似乎永远都不能理解为什么你站在计算机前并长久致力于某些内容。它会开始渴望被接纳，它想要人们告诉你你有多聪明，你有多棒，你想要“被爱”。

很多人让这种需求控制着自己，这么做真的很危险。如果你是一名音乐家，那么唯一可能让你感到高兴的事便是演出结束后的掌声，而不是演出本身，说实话你完全与自己的快乐捆绑在一起了。你将只是想要更多的快乐，从未感到满足，总是等待着下一次有人告诉你你有多棒。这比做某事好多了，因为你想要这么做，而不受因为你想要取悦别人。我想这边是为何我产业如此不景气的原因，设计师们完全深陷于如何取悦玩家：想办法迎合他们想要掌握技能的想法，确保所有的一切都是公平的，最重要的是确保他们能够感受到乐趣。

另一方面，当你完全沉溺于某些内容时，你的直觉思维将尝试着让你去做某些不同的事物。我不敢确定这是否是自然的意图，但我认为拥有这两种思维的结合是件很棒的事。最后，如果你所做的并不能帮助所有人过上更棒的生活，你便不值得投入时间于其中。

当我拥有过多独处时间并渴望社交互动时，我们的第一反应便是爬到人们头上并提出需求。“你需要与我见面。”“告诉我我有多棒从而让我觉得自己是有价值的。”我们当然不需要说得这么清楚，但这便是我们想要表达的意思。

我们中的很多人都在努力管理自我形象或自信心，而不是发展我们自己，将全部生活的价值都投入的关系中—-只要有人“喜欢我”，我们的生活便具有价值。这并不是爱，这么做并不能真正获得什么满足感；这只是临时解决方法，如使用药物去隐藏你自己的问题。真爱对于某些人来说是具体的，将延伸他们对于生活的理解或提供能够给予某种方式完善他们生活的工具。真爱是指接受自己是谁以及想要什么，而不受尝试着改变它们去适应你对于完美关系的感知。我相信我们已经做了那些我们感到后悔或希望能够改变的内容。

所以你该如何基于这类型哲理去创造游戏。我认为如果你想创造一些对别人有帮助的内容的话，它首先必须是对你自己有帮助的。在创造期间，你必须明确潜在用户的反应并专注于开发游戏的声音和状态，然后在主要的创造性决策结束后转向人类模式并谨慎地进行调整以确保内容更具有易用性。

当你严格地测试一款游戏并尝试着回应玩家想要你执行的每一条反馈时，你的游戏便不再具有自己的“声音”并开始变成一种害怕伤害某人感情的商业产品。这不管在主流游戏还是独立游戏中都是一大问题。对于那些在某些人看来是具体的内容，它必须具有强大的同一性，并且作为创造者的你必须相信你的游戏以及它能为别人所做的。重要的是我们开始听取我们项目的同一性而不受听取我们对于用户可能反应的猜想。

也许我们难以创造这样的游戏是源于较长的开发循环，以及从中延伸出的内部冲突。我的意思是我已经全身心致力于这款游戏一年时间；有些游戏甚至拥有3至5年的开发循环。所以在开发过程中我们该如何管理这些感觉？

我发现发布某种较小的项目，如集锦盒带或YouTube视频会更有帮助。同样地，尝试着从外部视角去考虑你的情境（游戏邦注：进行批判性思考，沉思或向你所亲近的人解释这些内容）已经帮助我看清楚自己所面对的问题并不如它们所呈现出的感觉那么糟糕。实际上，我想说许多的这些问题甚至未根植于任何具体的内容中；它们只是你的身体所告诉你的一些幻觉。即使游戏遭到拒绝或遭遇了财政上的失败，我也已经创造了自己在往后的生活中会不断回忆起来的重要内容。生活将继续前进，我敢保证只要我们能够采取适当的行动，我们便能够经历一些更棒的体验。

尽管我觉得自己已经克服了这些感觉，但我认为这种矛盾有可能在未来再次复苏，即当我在此开始长时间致力于某些内容时。这并不是一个拥有永久性解决方法的问题，就像我之前所说的，我认为这是偶尔有益的方法—-拥有这种感觉能够激励完成游戏。然而，我们必须小心不要让这些感觉压制住自己。我们必须足够小心避免让任何的这些感觉将自己压倒。保持生活的平衡很重要：与你所在乎的人聊天并见面，同时也致力于你所相信的工作中。

我能理解讨论这些主题有点奇怪，但我真的认为它们与我们在这一产业中所听到的许多问题是相联系的。一位美术师在致力于某些内容时总是会借鉴自己的生活经历，但如果所有的开发者所了解的只有工作室和关键事件，那么我们又该如何期待这些人在电子游戏中探索新内容呢？因为他们所知道的至少自己所经历的。

多样性是生活的调味品。不管你是独立致力于一个长期项目的创造者，还是一个普通游戏玩家或者只是普通人，完全让自己深陷于某一内容是不合理的做法。你应该尝试一些新事物，敢于冒险并去欣赏生活中各种事物，从失败中获得学习，最重要的是能够感受到乐趣。在现实世界中你的生命只有一次，所以你应该巧妙地使用它。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

‘Independent development has been the most difficult time of my life’

By Michael Hicks

Indie dev Michael Hicks reflects on his project’s impact on his social life and emotional well-being

I’ve spent a solid year of my life working on a game as a full time independent developer, and another year working on it on and off. The game isn’t quite done, so maybe I’m shooting off the fireworks a little early with this article, but it should be out by the end of the year. Overall, this has been a really amazing experience… but it’s also probably been the most difficult time of my life so far.

Right before I started working full time on this game, I was a student. All throughout school I worked on various projects, and was usually frustrated at having to go to school when I could be home working on a game. I was pretty notorious for rarely leaving home to hang out with anyone because most of the time I would just want to leave and go work on something at home.

Imagine my shock, about seven months into working full-time, that my view on this completely flipped – I started to feel desperate for some type of social connection. Also, at this time I realised I’d only seen a small handful of people in seven months. Most people are probably thinking: ‘Okay, you want to see people, you should call someone up and go do something.’ The problem with that is for some reason, in my completely isolated state, I felt that everyone hated me and would never want to do anything with me.

I didn’t really understand this at the time, but there was a conflict going on between my brain and body – or as Jonathan Blow says, the rational part of my mind (the thinking part) and the intuitive part of my mind (the part that’s in tune with animal-type needs like eating).

I realised I’d only seen a small handful of people in seven months.

Rationally, I totally believe in what I’m doing. This game is very important to me, and feels like a reflection of many important experiences I’ve had. It’s very important to me that I finish it and get it out to the world. If I don’t do this, I will feel like a failure.

On the other hand, the intuitive part of my brain was panicking; I felt stuck, like everyone I knew was moving on and progressing in their lives, and here I am working on this game that’s never going to do anything for me, that could quite possibly be rejected by a lot of people and financially force me to give up on my dream of being a full-time independent developer. Sometimes I’ve seriously considered giving up, going to work some crappy job I don’t want to work, and calling it a day.

I wish there was some way to just kill off the panic and despair, but the truth is it’s there, and has had a very real impact on my life. When you have such a strong conflict within you, you start to say stupid things and feel all these crazy emotions that have no basis in reality. I think this is a common thing in any creative field, but we shy away from talking about it. Maybe the best example of seeing people in the midst of this internal conflict is in Indie Game: The Movie, where you see developers saying similar things to what I said above.

I recently watched this lecture by Jonathan Blow, where he talks about a lot of this stuff. It’s really helped me make sense of this mess of emotions and thoughts. Our body has core needs: like physical comfort and external validation. No matter what you do, your body never seems to understand why you’re sitting in front of a computer and working on something for so long. It starts yearning for acceptance, it wants people to tell you how smart you are, how amazing you are; you want to be ‘loved’.

Sometimes I’ve seriously considered giving up, going to work some crappy job I don’t want to work, and calling it a day.

A lot of people let these needs control them, and it’s pretty dangerous to do that. If you’re a musician and the only thing that makes you happy is the applause after the performance, and not the performance itself, quite frankly you’re totally screwed on ever being happy with yourself. You will just want more and more of that, never feeling fulfilled, always waiting for the next moment someone can tell you how great you are. It’s much better to do something because you want to do it, not because you want to please other people. I’d argue that this is why things are so stagnant in our industry; designers are totally obsessed with pleasing players: pandering to their desire for mastery of skill, making sure everything feels fair, and most importantly making sure they are having fun.

On the other hand, when you completely self-indulge into something, your intuitive mind kicks in and tries to get you to do something different. I’m not sure if this was the intention of nature, but I think it’s good we have these two things colliding. At the end of the day, if what you’re doing doesn’t have the potential to make life better for everyone, it’s probably not worth investing time into. At least, that’s my view on things: too much of one thing is never good.

Naturally, when we get too much alone time and get desperate for social interaction, our first reaction is to climb on top of people and make demands. “You need to meet up with me.” “Tell me how great I am so I have some sense of self worth.” We don’t literally say that of course, but that’s what we mean by it.

A lot of us struggle with our self-image or self-confidence, and instead of developing this ourselves we tend to put our entire life’s worth into a relationship – our life has value as long as someone “loves us”. This isn’t love, there’s nothing truly fulfilling by doing this; it’s a temporary fix, like using drugs to hide from your problems. Real love is being extensional to someone, extending their understanding of life or providing tools that improve their life in some way. Real love is accepting people for who they are and what they want, not trying to change them to fit what your perception of a perfect relationship is. I believe we’ve all done things we regret or wish we could change.

Even if the game is rejected or a financial failure, I’ve made something important that I will look back at for the rest of my life.

So how do you make games with this type of philosophy? I believe to make something that has use to others it must first be useful to yourself. During creation, you must channel out potential audience reactions and focus on developing the game’s voice and statement, then after the main creative decisions are over, switch to people mode and carefully make small tweaks to make things more accessible.

When you rigorously test a game and try to respond to every bit of feedback players want you to implement, your game stops having a voice and starts being a commercial product that’s afraid to step on someone’s toes. This is a major problem in both mainstream and indie games. For something to be extensional to others, it must have a strong identity, and as a creator you should have a strong belief in what your game is and what it can do for others. It’s vital that we start listening to our project’s identity instead of listening to what we think our audience reactions will be.

Maybe a reason we have a hard time making games like this is because of the long development cycles, and the internal conflicts that start to arise from it. I mean, I’ve only worked on this game full-time for a year; some games have three to five-year development cycles. So what are some ways we can manage these feelings during development?

I’ve found that releasing some type of smaller project, like a mixtape or YouTube video helps. Also, thinking about your situation from an outside perspective (thinking critically, meditating, or explaining these things to people you’re close to) has helped me see that my problems really aren’t as bad as they feel. In fact, I’d say a lot of these problems aren’t even rooted in anything concrete; they are just illusionary things your body is telling you. Even if the game is rejected or a financial failure, I’ve made something important that I will look back at for the rest of my life. Life will keep moving on, and I’m sure there will be many great experiences ahead as long as I take action to let them happen.

We have to be careful to not let any of these feelings overwhelm us. It’s important to live a balanced life: talking to and seeing people you care about, but also working towards what you believe in.

Even though I feel like I’ve overcome these feelings (recently I’ve done some important social things and took a vacation), I suspect this conflict will come back in the future when I start to work long hours again. This isn’t a problem that has a permanent solution, like I said earlier I think it’s actually beneficial at times – having this feeling will help motivate me to the finish line of the game. However, we have to be careful to not let any of these feelings overwhelm us. It’s important to live a balanced life: talking to and seeing people you care about, but also working towards what you believe in.

I understand these topics are a little strange to talk about, but I actually think they’re linked to many problems we hear about in this industry. An artist typically pulls from life experiences when working on something, but if all developers know is the studio and the inevitable crunch time that’s coming, then how can we expect these people to explore new things in video games? All they know is what they’ve experienced.

Variety is the spice of life. Whether you’re a creator working on a long project in isolation, a regular gamer, or just a human being in general, it’s not good to burn yourself out on one thing. Try new things, take risk, appreciate the things currently in your life, learn from your failures and most importantly have fun. You only get one life in the real world, try to use it wisely.(source:develop-online)