What doesn’t kill you…

It’s tempting to think that being forced to work so hard for acceptance, will make our work better. But is this really true? It might be if the audience we were trying to win over was the audience for literature, or film. But they don’t give a damn about what we are trying to do.

The audience we are working for is the games audience. And the only luck we will have is with people who like both games and what we do. Given the nature of these games, such people must be incredibly generous and open minded.

But who knows on what grounds our works are rejected by gamers? Or accepted for that matter. Will finding a way to please the gamer audience lead to the highest possible quality that this medium can achieve?

I worry about this. Because I care about this medium. Or what it could be. And maybe we should be more stoic in our dedication and not hold success with the gamer audience in such high regard. At this point it seems like a necessary step towards anything else. Which is a distracting pity. But we owe it to this medium, and humankind, to remain critical, both of our failings and our successes.