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Just a thought.
Jun. 26th, 2020 11:09 amSpringboarding off a conversation I had yesterday with my wife and our BFF - I don't remember how this came up, but I was telling the story of how the creator of FNaF created the game out of a combination of desperation and spite after years of trying to make it as a game dev, and my wife brought up how the creator of Captain Underpants had a similar story, and I found myself wondering how much of their eventual success was a direct result of basically being at that point of desperation where you say 'fuck it' and just throw everything you think you know about what makes a successful piece of media out and get weird.
It's not even 'fuck it, I'll make the kind of game I want to make' in FNaF's case. The dev was already making the games he wanted to make and getting roundly panned for it, and subsequent games kind of reveal a sort of ambivalence about his success with the franchise and how his fans engage with the material. His success came when he said 'fuck it, I'll do something completely different' and THAT'S what hit. Like, he'd never made a horror game before. Idk how he prepared for it but it doesn't feel like he took classes or studied other horror games to see how they worked. He just made it up as he went along and the result was something strange and different and interesting. Simple execution when you pick it apart, but it ended up having more legs than a lot of AAA horror titles that ended up being disposable experiences. Like, a game like that had absolutely no right to hit as hard as it did but it's kicking the ass of a lot of more established franchises to this day. I just wonder whether "I have something to prove and nothing to lose" has more creative energy at the end of the day than "I have focus groups and marketing and A Budget on my side and all the numbers say to do it Like This."
The question, of course, is whether it's possible to tap into that energy without hitting the point of desperation first.
It's not even 'fuck it, I'll make the kind of game I want to make' in FNaF's case. The dev was already making the games he wanted to make and getting roundly panned for it, and subsequent games kind of reveal a sort of ambivalence about his success with the franchise and how his fans engage with the material. His success came when he said 'fuck it, I'll do something completely different' and THAT'S what hit. Like, he'd never made a horror game before. Idk how he prepared for it but it doesn't feel like he took classes or studied other horror games to see how they worked. He just made it up as he went along and the result was something strange and different and interesting. Simple execution when you pick it apart, but it ended up having more legs than a lot of AAA horror titles that ended up being disposable experiences. Like, a game like that had absolutely no right to hit as hard as it did but it's kicking the ass of a lot of more established franchises to this day. I just wonder whether "I have something to prove and nothing to lose" has more creative energy at the end of the day than "I have focus groups and marketing and A Budget on my side and all the numbers say to do it Like This."
The question, of course, is whether it's possible to tap into that energy without hitting the point of desperation first.
