New Rule

As you regular readers (or feedburner checkers) may have noticed, I’m a bit behind. I missed posting my regular Sunday game design last Sunday, and I seem to have missed it yesterday as well. The reason for this is that I am currently engaged in northern New England in a summer job that, while not monopolizing all my time, does demand so much of my attention that thinking and writing about games has become extremely difficult.

The poetic irony is that I took this job and came up here for many reasons including a break from the computer lab. Now, it has worked so well that this mental vacation is growing to include more game-design-related activities, specifically blogging. It illustrates remarkably just how strongly one’s attitudes and preferences are controlled by their situation. They say falling in love is more a question of fortunate timing and mitigating circumstances than compatibility and genuine attraction. Certainly the same must be true for other endeavors?

Note that the effect is incomplete — game design is an avocation for me, and I’ll never truly abandon it. No doubt all game designers would agree, regardless of what they’re doing right now and whether or not it involves actually designing a game. It’s something you do anyway, independent of external pressure or influence. But what is true is that it is easier and more natural when you are surrounded by like interest. At SCAD, I spent much of each day with other designers or design professors; much of each day designing or criticizing or researching games. Up here in the North, that “environment of design” does not exist, and so the process is much more arduous. I’m not in the head space anymore.

Naturally, this is a problem. And naturally, the answer to this problem is obvious: try harder. And so I will. But it remains a curious affliction everyone can recognize but few, perhaps, care to name directly. The next time you have designer’s block, consider: is it because you have no environment of design to absorb? Perhaps finding or establishing that kind of structure is the key.

Tags: General //