Hi internet! I’m currently at GDC 2010. This is my first time attending. I attend a lot of events but I do not usually have a laptop, so I’m still getting used to the idea of being connected on the road. I’m going to do my best to write a bit about my experiences here at GDC. I am a first timer to this particular conference and the amount of information to be had is just amazing.
This morning I attended talks hosted by Peter Molyneux and Josh Atkins of Lionhead Studios and Microsoft, and Yoshio Sakamoto of Nintendo. I do not think it’s necessary to say, for anyone who has read other entries in this blog, that I’m unabashed fans of these people and their work and it was an honor and privilege to attend both talks. I’m going to try to write more information about each talk later on, but I’m still used to taking notes the “old fashioned” way and will take a little time to convert them in to proper articles.
There is one takeaway I’m already getting from the convention at large, and it can be illustrated this way… Sakamoto said during his talk that there was a “click” moment for him when he was working at Nintendo, when a woman sent his team a box of Valentine’s chocolates because the game they had made had made her so happy. Until that moment, he said, he did not realize that the things that he made affected the lives and hearts of others so profoundly.
I suppose then that I did not need to walk up to Sakamoto and tell him that his game, Super Metroid, changed my life. When I think about how happy I am just to have been in his presence it almost brings me to tears, because Metroid means that much to me. Now, he doesn’t speak my language very well, so, it’s just as well that I didn’t try to walk up and gush my enthusiasm all over, but it’s shocking to realize that there was ever a moment when he didn’t understand that he was touching others and making something profound.
Last night I spoke to people who worked on games like Warhammer Online, and Legend of the Five Rings. If you are doing these things…. they are your job. These creators all have a great sense of humility. It takes a wake-up call to realize that what was just your job one day became something of great passion to someone else. I watched people gush enthusiastically over the Lo5R creatures, and, given that one of the best campaigns I was ever in was also Lo5R I was also among them. But they are humble about creating such a thing that had a strong impact on so many people… and they are just people, like you and me.
Maybe you are reading this as a creator, an artist or designer, and don’t realize this, but this was a wake up call for me. If you create something, and people experience it, it touches them. What you do changes the world. It may be small, it may be large, but if you make something, it changes things for someone else. You are a ripple in time no matter how little you may think of your own work. What seems small to you, because you just did it, may touch the heart of someone thousands of miles away, or a lifetime from now. Physically, Sakamoto could probably not have been much further away from me on the planet when I finished Super Metroid for the first time, but it is a moment I will remember forever.
So create something. Touch someone.
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