I don't know if anyone has done such a survey to compare the suicide rate of game players with the average suicide rate of the population. I personally guess that the suicide rate of players will be lower, because the game is full of failures, setbacks and death. Players are familiar with the game system through failures, and some games even require death to continue (it's you, Anonymous). Maybe players are better able to deal with the disappointments in reality. After all, we have practiced countless times in the game, no big deal, just start over.
In the film, in the face of the praise from the media before the release of "Super Meat Boy", Tommy still couldn't be happy, worried that the sales situation would not be satisfactory. Maybe this is just Tommy's paranoia, but in reality, this is a common occurrence. A certain game has been well received by the critics, but the sales are dismal, and in the end, the studio can only be closed and the building will be empty. This kind of thing doesn't just happen to indie game teams, AAA companies can't escape the same, and THQ is still waiting anxiously while writing this text. Most of the young people who have dreams of joining the independent game development industry are unable to realize their dreams, so why are there so many young people joining in one after another?
Is it the lure of money? It's true that successful indie game developers can make amazing fortunes, such as Notch, and Minecraft can be said to make a lot of money. But that's just a few of the best. For the vast majority of people, being able to earn their own three meals a day without sleeping on the street is already considered an economic success.
fame? No flesh and blood; no gossip weekly with paparazzi; Nerd can't change his Nerd temperament even if he is invited to the Oscar dinner (well, this is Linus); there will be no movies to show your entrepreneurial experience (Well, there are still, like this one) Because your life has no selling point, people want drama. Does anyone know Tarn Adams or his game Dwarf Fortress, which has 2,090,000 Google searches? Does anyone know Francisco Téllez de Meneses, who developed Unepic in his spare time for two years, which was translated into 8 languages, including Simplified Chinese? Who else can name the leading creators of independent games such as "World of Goo" and "Limbo" for the first time? We can name Spielberg's classics, and we look forward to Martin's quick completion, but we seldom remember who the author of a game that made us fall for it. No, it's definitely not fame, the era of being famous because of games has not yet come.
It's not that indie developers aren't attracted to fame and fortune, who doesn't love these things, especially in an age where being famous means everything. But if it's just for the pursuit of fame and fortune, why bother to make independent games, other fields may have a higher chance of success. I don't dare to speculate about the purpose of others entering the independent game industry. Although I can feel that their purpose is not pure fame and fortune, only they can understand the details.
As described in the film, the most painful part of indie game development is the uncertainty about the future. You don't know how long it will take to complete the development. You want to complete it quickly, but you can't allow yourself to know your shortcomings. Release it at the right time, learn new tricks and find you can do it better than ever, but at the cost of delaying the release date, which is an ordeal that only those who have done it know.
As an independent developer in China, there are still a lot of broken things that foreign developers will not encounter waiting for you to solve, but as Zen Pencils' comic "Air and light and time and space" says, nothing can stop you from creating. If you are busy at work, no problem, just cut off the CCTV and use the entertainment time to create; no money, no problem, buy less things and use the resources at hand to do it; no, no problem, learn English and search for information online That's it; the link is reset, no problem, just go over the wall; if you want to make it into a local LAN, no problem, just go to live in Southeast Asian countries, such as Thailand, the price is also cheap.
It may be many years before games have the place that movies have in today's society, and everything you're doing right now is so trivial. But so what? We do what we want and have fun, don't we?
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