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游戏开发对于沮丧情绪的缓解作用

发布时间:2017-01-16 14:16:47 Tags:,,,

作者:Byron AtkinsonJones

大多数时候,我创造游戏是因为我可以通过出售游戏去养活自己,但有时候创造游戏这一做法对我来说具有很大的意义。

对于2016年12月20日,我似乎没办法理解自己为什么会陷入那样深深的沮丧中。这种情况不止一次出现在我身上。通常情况下我总是能较早便意识到它并避免自己越陷越深,但这次的状况却让我始料不及。我仍然不知道这一症状出现的原因,但去年的确不是友善的一年,所以这可能只是一切问题的累积,而我的大脑刚好在那时决定是时候脱离现实去度个假了。

这种沮丧让我失去了想去做任何事的动力。有时候连起床都很困难,更别说鼓起动力去做任何其它事了。对我来说所有的一切都变得毫无意义。我变得好争论并且是带着愤怒与受挫的情绪在与任何人进行争辩。所以当这种情绪袭来时我的生活也会受牵连。

就像我之前说的,这种情况是出现在去年12月20日,即在欢乐的圣诞前几天。我臣服于这种状态好几天,因为我别无选择,但随后我的大脑中出现了一个声音不断高喊着。这个声音一直挣扎着,想要在圣诞到来前爬出那个无底的黑洞。因为圣诞对于我们家来说具有象征性意义,所以我希望在那一天能够陪伴在妻子身旁而不是需要她来照顾我。

caretaker(from steampowered)

caretaker(from steampowered)

所以我需要完全走出这种沮丧情绪中并进入一个更加安全且能够分散我注意力的地方。而我唯一能够想到的方法便是创造游戏。如果你有关注我的Twitter,你便会知道我一直致力于名为《Caretaker》的系列游戏中,其中一款游戏发行于去年12月初,其它的则仍处于Early Access阶段。内心那个理智的我觉得应该继续致力于那些处于Early Access阶段的内容,但是另一个我却认为需要去做一些其它事。所以我便决定去创造一些全新的内容。

其实想法很简单,我将全身心投入于这款游戏中,让我的大脑丝毫没有时间去想沮丧的事。但是问题便在于,当你觉得沮丧的时候你往往不会因为任何小事感到兴奋,自然也不包含创造游戏。但幸好我心底的声音太过顽强吸引到我的注意力让它有机会能够穿破沮丧所树立的高墙。这也足以让我振作起来并最终在12月24日那天开始创造全新游戏。

我并不想说谎说它很简单,第一天我便不得不要求自己去工作,去坐在电脑前敲打键盘,不过幸好心里的那个声音还在那对抗着沮丧感。很快地,那个声音战胜了沮丧情绪,并且在我意识到之前沮丧情绪便被逐渐抑制住了。在24日晚上,即在我上床睡觉前,我发现自己开始期待隔天早上起床继续创造游戏了。不过我也必须提醒自己那天是圣诞节。

但因为我已经在Twitter上公布了这一消息,所以我需要为自己找到一个继续创造游戏的理由,于是我便决定在游戏开发的每个里程碑时发布视频。我没跟任何人提到这款游戏的诞生理由。而现在我仍致力于游戏中,不仅因为它有需要被完成的理由,同时也因为我在创造游戏时获得了巨大的乐趣。

这并不是一款初创游戏,这也不是我这么做的目的。实际上,这款游戏是以我最喜欢的两款游戏《Uridium》和《Nemesis》为基础。一旦完成了游戏创造我便会发行它。

我并不想尝试并声称自己的沮丧情绪已经完全消失了,如果你也曾拥有这种情绪的话你便会感同身受,它终会有再回来的一天。而创造游戏能帮助我走出长久陷入的深渊。当然了这一方法不一定适合所有人。

不过从某种程度上来看我所做的便是通过有效忽视负面情绪去避开沮丧感。也许未来当有人问我为什么创造游戏时,我便会有勇气承认我是必须这么做,因为这是一种让我解脱的方式。

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

Therapy by game development

by Byron AtkinsonJones

I make games. Most of the time it’s so that I can earn a living by selling those games but very occasionally the act of making a game can have a very significant meaning to me.

For no real reason that I can fathom I managed to sink into a pretty deep depression around about the 20th of December 2016. This happens to me from time to time. I’m usually good at recognizing the signs early on and can prevent further slumping into the abyss but this one caught me by surprise and took hold before I knew what was happening. I still don’t know what the cause of it was but last year was not a particularly good one so maybe it was just an accumulation of lots of little things and my brain just decided it was enough and wanted to take a little holiday from reality.

The way depression takes me over is a lack of will to do anything. Sometimes getting out of bed is hard enough but summoning the energy to do anything productive is hard. It all just seems so pointless. I also get very argumentative and would literally argue with anybody about anything through anger and frustration. So, when it happens my poor wife suffers through it too. She’s very supportive though and I’m not sure what I’d do without her.

As I said, this episode struck home around about the 20th of December, just a few days before Christmas which is usually a happy time in our house. I gave into it for a few days, I didn’t have much choice but somewhere in the back of my repressed brain there was a solitary voice screaming as loud as it could to be heard. This voice was trying hard to snap me out of it, to crawl about of the deep black hole before Christmas hit. Christmas is just a day like any other but it has a symbolic meaning for family and I wanted to be there for my wife rather than needing her to look after me.

I needed something to take me completely out of the depression zone and into somewhere a lot safer, something that could distract me completely. The only thing I could think of was to make a game. If you follow me on twitter (https://twitter.com/xiotex) then you will know that I’ve been working on a series of games called ‘Caretaker’ one was released earlier in December and the other was still in Early access (http://store.steampowered.com/app/426240/). A sensible me would have said to carry on with the game that was in early access but I knew I needed to do something that didn’t matter so I decided there and then to create something completely new.

The idea was simple, throw all my efforts into this game and to not give my brain one second to even think about being depressed. The problem is of course that when you are depressed it’s hard to even get excited about tiny things let alone make a game. Thankfully that little voice that had been screaming hard to get attention seized its chance to smash through the wall that the depression had erected, grabbed the idea of creating a game and ran as fast as it could with it. This was enough to give me the energy to get up and finally do something and on the 24th of December I started a new game.

I’m not going to lie and say it was easy, on that first day I had to force myself to work, to sit at the Mac and type lines of C#, but that little voice was still there running as hard as it could against the pull of the depression. Soon momentum took over and before I knew it the depression was becoming less and less. On the night of the 24th when I finally went to bed I found myself looking forward to getting up on the 25th to continue working on the game. I had to remind myself it was Christmas day.

Because I’m quite vocal on twitter and I needed a reason to keep going I decided to video each milestone in the game’s development. I told nobody the reason the game was being made and just presented it as it was. I’m still working on the game, mainly because it deserves to be completed but also because I’m just having too much fun working on it. If you’re interested to see how it progressed, you can find all the videos so far stitched into one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISApK1B_S8

It’s by no means an original game, that wasn’t the point of the exercise. In fact it’s actually based on two of my all-time favorite games Uridium and Nemesis. Once it’s finished I’ll release it – hopefully Steam will kindly give me an AppID to do this.

I’m not going to try and claim the depression has fully gone, if you suffer from depression that’s never going to be the case and there are days when it tries to take hold again – yesterday was one of those days. Making this game managed to help me get out of the deepest I had experienced in a long time and my way of doing it worked for me. It’s not going to work for everybody and I’m in no way suggesting it will.

In some ways, all I’ve done is avoided the depression by effectively ignoring it. Sometimes that’s what it takes for me. So when somebody asks me in future why I make games maybe I’ll have the courage to admit that I need to, that they save me from myself.(source:gamasutra)

 


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