(no subject)

[fan_eunice]

Posting every day miiiiight have been too ambitious of a goal. I'm going to keep trying, though. Anyhoo, today I talk about a thing I did not expect happening. Since you've met me, you probably know that I watch a lot of documentaries. So anyway, this morning I'm browsing around Netflix and I see this one called "Indie Game. The Movie." and I'm thinking, hey, why not. So I push play expecting to see a behind the scenes sort of thing on how the indie game industry works and it's history or whatever. Figure it will be an interesting way to kill some time and learn something.

That...is not what I took away from it. I mean, there's some of that, certainly. But what it was, for me anyway, ended up being an emotionally raw exploration of the vulnerabilities that drive creation and for good and bad, how it feels to make something and share it. I wish I were better at words to describe what I mean by that. I only know that by the time the documentary hit the 'release day'/'demo day' part for the two games it was following I had literally started crying and didn't stop until after the credits rolled (complicated tears, positive and negative).

It is very possible that this was just the result of my current brain issues and there is nothing particularly compelling or revealing to anyone who is not me? I only know when I woke up this morning 'Full on crying at a documentary about indie video games' was NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING. So there you go. That's my post for today.

Comments

[klia]

I think your reaction makes total sense. You're a creator, yourself, so you know how much of an emotional roller coaster that can be!

And for many of us, we're very emotionally invested in our creations, which are almost like our children, and it's really hard to not take it personally if they're criticized (or worse) -- or if we are, for the stories we choose to tell.

*hugs*

[fan_eunice]

I just, recognized...things. I'm not a gamer really so I came into it with no knowledge of these guys. But like there's a whole section one of the dudes they are profiling who had a successful indie game release talking about how the actual release was so difficult emotionally despite incredibly good reviews and how he got into a loop of obsessively finding and responding to nearly every single review of his game because they weren't 'getting' it, even though they really liked playing it?

And I was like, oh, oh honey NO...as it went over the reputation he built as a pendantic asshole because of it, because at the same time as I would have reacted 'oh my god you pendantic asshole' had I been reading his endless comments at people...OH BOY DO I EVER understand the impulse that drove him to do it and how even a good response can sometimes be just as anxiety producing as a bad one.

And we're not even going to talk about the one dude who is so twisted up in his own process that he can't even get to a finished game because...that shit is brutal.

It's also very much about the good parts of the creative process! And that also made me cry, because that was the 'and this is why you do it anyway even though it costs so much' in equal parts because I know that feeling too, and because I have doubts I'll ever have it again.