I've been working very long hours for the last six weeks as we launch our new company. And I've been having a wonderful time, working with people I admire on a project I love.
I was driving to the office this morning and the bike-riders on the road gave me a new perspective on how we have to work constantly to keep our passion as game developers
Here's what I was thinking:
Our offices in Sausalito are next to Marinship Park and Shoreline Park, so streams of bike riders and dog walkers parade past our windows each day. On the weekends the town is filled with bikes.
Some ride in straight lines for speed and time, the way they do on TV in the Tour de France. Unlike the people in the photo above (taken a few minutes south of where we work) they don't stop to appreciate the views.
Many are tourists who rent bikes in San Francisco to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. Once they get here they walk around, admire the vistas, get a bite to eat, then take their bikes onto the Ferry and sail back to San Francisco.
It's the last group, the tourists, that got me thinking about keeping our passion in game development, a topic I covered in a series of talks at GDC from the 1990's all the way up to this year (mixed in with the ones about Teamwork and Console Wars).
Why do they ride bikes to Sausalito? The tour companies have open-top buses, double-decker buses, a converted fire engine, and shuttles of every shape and size.
The visitors ride worn, upright-handlebar bikes unlike anything in the Tour de France. They veer and wobble in search of the balance they had when they were kids.
Why struggle when you can take the bus?
I think they ride their bikes -- unsteady as they are -- because it lets them feel the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito instead of merely traveling through them.
After years in the games business it's easy to feel you're driven from one title through another, sometimes taking a project you don't care about because you need the job.
It can feel like riding a bus through a creative craft you love, carried along by the momentum of the people around you to a destination driven by someone else "up front."
Even the best projects sometimes feel like the Tour de France, where the need to rush towards a deadline robs us of the real experience of building a game we're proud to say we created.
Tomorrow: Questions I've asked myself in pursuit of that continued passion for my craft... and that I wish I'd asked myself more often!
Copyright (c) 2011, Don Daglow. All Rights Reserved.
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