It's Happening again.... a psychotic diatribe about the breakdowns that happened after finishing the first game.
TW: Psychosis, chronic illness, Religious OCD, me being a flagrant homosexual, general mentall illness, gay slurs; Ladies, Gentlemen, and those that lieth betwixt, this is about to get EMBARRASSINGLY PERSONAL
(If i make a spelling/grammar error it was on purpose go to hell)
"so... What DID happen to Ruth MacArthur?
For a couple years now I've been trying to find the perfect way to satisfy that question, and honestly no answer would satiate that hunger I planted in my thirsty, THIRSTY, little miscreant children.
"what-ever Happened to Ruth MacArthur" was made for the capstone project of my game Design degree. It was a team of two when it was supposed to be 4 minimum, made in 7-10 weeks when it was supposed to be made over a year. I'm proud of my beautiful, incomplete, ghastly little child. It's an impressive feat considering I can be a NIGHTMARE to deal with (yes, show self-awareness, that's WAY better than an apology).
My process is an ephemeral thing, it never happens the same way, it resists any formal organisation, it often defies any demand for logic or order. This is a bit of a drawback considering the mainstream pipelines for creating video games.
I have to say I was, for the most part, thrilled with the reception of W.H.R.M; but something just wasn't sitting right with me.
I just couldn't BELIEVE that people liked the writing,
I always cringed at how the first thing people saw when they opened the game was a typo (I feel mostly responsible, I kind of let my studio partner down by not reviewing the text before the final submission was compiled, but to be fair I was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, then again I am ALWAYS in the midst of a nervous breakdown).
I just couldn't BELIEVE that I satisfied the majority of critics
(Despite the game finding its audience, just a few commenters saying "waaa waaa where's the big scary monster I have to run from, eeeee I'm a manchild who thinks the only good kind of horror game has 16 jump scares per square metre" was enough to make me believe I should quit games forever because I was bad, my game was bad, and I made the world a worse place just by trying)
I just couldn't BELIEVE that I was an artist worth my salt
(You see, I had simply tricked everyone into thinking I was good at 3D modelling and texturing by creating things that looked exactly like good examples of 3D modelling and texturing)
Of course we've all read about imposter syndrome, but that's boring. Besides, I find most of the articles by various writers (often people who should honestly feel a little bit like imposters given how media outlets are cesspools of moneyed nepotism). But yeah, these voices in my head were imposter syndrome. After all, how could a upper-lower-middle-class mentally ill homosexual like ME create anything of value? How could a scared little boy who never tasted the glorious preferential treatment of private schooling ever amount to anything?
I don't say this to bite any hand that has generously fed me, but to remind people that you can GRIND as much as you like, but at the end of the day, no-one will fund your dream project as long as this sick system of capitalism exists.
Which is why I need YOUR hard earned money to create another degenerate game that profanes every holy text in the western canon! Yeah that's right babes! I'm CUTTING OFF the hand that feeds me, and eating THAT.
A voice from above, "forgive the little fool, he knows not what he says!"
I've been walking around a lot of parks recently
The voice continues "He's just a young man, he's confused, he knows not the holy ground he treads on!"
I think strange things then to happen in parks
"He's just trying to do what's right, he's really sorry I swear!"
A strange thing happened to me in a park, I met a stranger there, the good kind
"I can smell his guilt from here, it's all just guilt, he just needs a hug, or maybe a good smack upside the head"
They told me of the four winds that blow about my head and tell me secret things
"nononononono he keeps talking, he just won't stop talking"
It's probably just all in my head.
Where was I?
Anyways.
My least favorite thing about the reception was the absolute REFUSAL to judge the game from a holistic standpoint, people's disappointment at not "finding out" what happened to Ruth. Maybe I was a little satisfied at their confusion; "Ah yes" I said to myself "I have become as esoteric and obscure as the grimoire itself, beyond understanding, beyond help, just what I wanted".
But in truth it made me really fuckin sad.
No one cared about Ruth or Mary, no one thought about what drives someone to neglect personal relationships and isolate themselves, no one considered they resembled either woman- as I watched youtubers bathed in the sickly white glow of their monitors and tolerate the poorly mastered audio so that MAYBE just MAYBE they could get a slice of that adsense pie. Doctors bills piling up, rent draining the money they managed to scrape together, computers struggling against the high resolution Art Nouveau wallpaper of Ruth's apartment.
I wanted to scream.
"touch grass" I thought, because I am SO ENLIGHTENED of other people's flaws, because I am simply BeYoNd it all as a GrEaT ArTisT who's just so intellectually apt that my life is free of all expectations. I simply want for nothing. I simply give my whole body and mind to the artistic process.
My heart likes to skip beats a lot, my back is never not in pain, my eyes struggle to focus as well as they used to, every time I see the word "Cancer" I have to talk myself out of a panic attack. Every time I see something that has a hint of God I have to remind myself "it's just scary stories to keep people in line" but I act like god is still watching me. blah blah blah, we've all heard the oversharing spiel we do when we ask for permission to exist.
I watch the dying fly transverse the kitchen counter in buzzing spirals. The smell of insecticide and cleaning fluid. Summer is almost over now. I suck a cavity clear of detritus. I stare with animal indifference at the fly. I twitch, shiver slightly, and move to the next activity with no motivation.
Wow I must be so much fun at parties, a real ray of sunshine this one, this is exactly how you get dates, I must have so many men lining up to ask for my pale shaking hand in marriage.
The wheel is cold and still now, I find myself calling a name I can’t remember. Faint memories of signs and symbols, meaning that came so easily to me. Now time is a blur of Centrelink mutual obligations and reruns of Doctor phil. This episode is about a man with bipolar type one. Everyone hates him.
Best game developer in the world, so employable, I'm sure the talent managers will absolutely love reading this. I'm sure they find my rambling disorganised speech charming.
Now I’m smoking my second last cigarette, what was that damn name? I think I’ve lost a lot of time recently. People keep telling me I look familiar. People I don’t know keep recognising me.
It's not unsettling at all watching a young man's body waste away into oversized op-shop clothes that only a freak like me would buy, it's not embarrassing at all to lose your mind extremely publicly every second month, surely no-one thinks I'm a burden on society, a degenerate that makes other gays "look bad".
I’ve been wandering around the gardens a lot. I think I’m waiting for someone. I look at my hands, my fingers are turning black. I feel like I’ve been living in sleep, dreaming in blue, of wandering the night.
Not wanky at all that I'm using this first Dev-log to rant about whatever the hell this is.
Let's try again shall we?
Another thing that the Bourgeoisie philosopher kings that run various publications love to talk about but hardly understand is "burnout"
Nevermind that WE ARE ALL APART OF THE PROBLEM.
Nevermind that this isn't just about "being sad :(" or "being stressed :(" OUR BODIES ARE IN DANGER
And it won't be fixed until we
RISE UP AGAINST OUR CAPITALIST OVERLORDS, BRING OUT THE GUILLOTINES, BURN DOWN EVERY STARBUCKS
but that sounds scary to the rich, and they've shown their not beyond sending paramilitary gangs into the global south the squash dissent, hell they do it out in the open in America. In Australia it's a much more passive process; but the philosophy is similar.
Through allowing your body and mind to be ravished, you will be rewarded with better computers, so you can work EVEN MORE!
damn it, I'm ranting again, lets try again...
What I'm trying to say is, I'm fuelled by spite, but my body is tired, and I'm weak.... for now.
I wish I could be on the front-lines of the war against profit motives and bottom lines, organising with unions, building solidarity in my community. But I made the mistake of practicing art; which I've been told by larping stalinist weirdos on twitter has absolutely no impact; case and point art is dead, long live the immortal words of lenin or whatever.
What I MEAN to say is that I didn't see the point in making my weird little Art games, not when the world feels like it's ending.
I had the worst psychotic episode of my life, not even a month ago. I saw the sun get closer and closer, I saw an unending fire on the horizon, I felt my body betray me, I held Ruth's Grimoire in my mind and it almost burned me up, it almost killed me. How did this happen? I never thought I was spiritual, didn't think I was a god-fearing f*g but here I am; still watching for secret numbers that are a kind of timer until the devil comes to collect my soul. I still shudder when I see birds (I thought they were sent to collect my soul, or peck out my liver).
I can't help but think that if I was properly medicated; if treatment came easily, if our disability pension was easy to access for people like me who struggle in this way; maybe I would have started this project years ago. But few people believe that I'm disabled because "It's all in my head, have you tried simply NOT being severely mentally ill? have you tried mindfulness? have you tried BREATHING, it's all those drugs you've taken so actually you don't deserve help because you did this to yourself <3"
another rant.. one more time...
I will stop at nothing until what I went through is documented; I will move mountains and stand on them and yell and scream until SOMETHING GOD-DAMN CHANGES. Because if a little white boy from the suburbs found it this difficult just to make a silly little horror game; Imagine what everyone who's less lucky goes through.
I am not your capitalist hero.
I am not you heartwarming story of overcoming adversity.
I should not have to suffer this much just to do my JOB that I've spent my whole life learning how to do;
Because I almost died, and someone probably would have said "OOO what a waste! He would have made such a lovely drone for my multi-million dollar company" while putting their whole staff through the EXACT SAME PAIN.
Because I don't care that I make it look easy: making art is LABOUR.
Making games is LABOUR.
I don't want success for ME, I want it for US.
I'm not a creative genius, WE are ALL artisans of our respective trades; and LIFE itself is valuable. You should not have to prove your worth or starve to death; because that, my friends, is just fascism with a kind face.
I have chosen a new name because I'm annoying
This indulgent blog was authorised by Hermes Randall, mad hermit ranting at a crossroads in Brisbane.
