When it comes to developing games, most people have a preference to where they work. I prefer to sit in a slightly less than comfortable chair, with tons of potential distractions around me, because it helps me figure out problems by being unable to focus on it for more than five minutes. However, there are less than favorable conditions.
For example, let’s talk Konami and kill any chance I have at being a creative lead on the next iteration of Silent Hill.
Circa the 1990s, Konami was a bit of a cut-throat developer to work under mostly due to their treatment of workers (the same treatment of which supposedly carries on to today, according to some). Ultimately, their mistreatment of workers (primarily the pushing of less talented or less “successful” developers to the bottom of the totem pole, which really just meant them being reassigned to other teams considered less important by the big wigs at Konami), ended up working in the favor of Konami and spawned the incredibly successful Silent Hill series from a team of “rejects” at the company known as “Team Silent”. This team would go on to develop more Silent Hill games for Konami under more favorable conditions due to success, but eventually would be dissolved by the developer due to lacking sales. This is one side of the coin in terms of Konami from where we stand as non-members of it’s development team(s).
The other side is owned entirely by a single man, a legend in his own right: Hideo Kojima. Kojima joined Konami relatively early on in his youth and, once he was allowed to work on projects beyond being just a planner, Kojima shot to being a key player in Konami’s arsenal of developers. He developed Snatcher, Metal Gear / Metal Gear Solid series, among others— with his career there ultimately being unceremoniously ended in 2015, after the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Kojima, prior to this event, was seemingly well respected at Konami and as a generally well-known game developer. He was in charge of a large portion of Konami developers, who went under the title “Kojima Productions” and made entries in the Metal Gear Solid series.
But that’s enough of the history lessons. Lets get back to the topic of discussion:
The idyllic meadow. The place of places, the one you would rather be at than all else. Well, at least in regards to developing video games, as this blog post is specifically for a game design class.
There are an overabundance of psychological advantages to being somewhere you prefer when it comes to developing games. Typically, this leads to a significant increase in productivity— an A+ method to ensuring work gets done— and overall happiness. Increased creative flow, desire to work, and a bunch of other things that, ultimately, work in favor of getting things done. But that’s basic knowledge. Lets rope everything together now.
In the idyllic meadow there’s no crunch, nobody breathing down you neck and telling you what to do at all times and specifically how they want it done, and nothing keeping you from living a life outside of developing your project. Unfortunately, these conditions don’t exist outside of this non-existent meadow and working for most developers leads to conditions such as these. Crunch, being a member of a larger team and being assigned specific things to work on even if you don’t like that particular thing, and not quite being able to maintain a perfect home & social life. For Team Silent, it went from the dark disrespect to golden pillars right back to the cold shoulder all over the course of a few years— basically in a single console generation (1999-2004, the end of the PS1 to the PS2’s earlier years). Kojima was fortunate enough to enjoy a long stretch of large success and, even after his (dismissal? leaving from? it’s rather ambiguous when trying to research what exactly went on there.) departure from Konami, he went on to form the full development company of Kojima Productions, which went on to develop the 2019 experimental hit Death Stranding.
The point of these two examples, two radically different stories,and the example of the “idyllic meadow”, is that success can come from anywhere— from a team of rejected developers who found their sweet spot and did something wonderful, to someone who apparently is fairly capable of making pure gold in his eccentricities— and what matters in that is not finding that idyllic meadow where you thrive but, in some instances, creating the thing your damn self. All people are different— in method, in ideology, in practice, in total— but there is always a way to make things work.
“When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am! I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!” – Cave Johnson, Portal 2, Valve
C. B. Irby 