Confidence in the Face of Adversity
Hey there all. This post is going to be slightly different from my usual blog posts. While I will be diving into some game design related topics, I’m also going to comment on several more real world ones on my mind lately, as they seem related in my head.
This past week there was an IGDA meeting at the MLK Jr. library up in DC. I’ve been to one of these before, back in August of last year. Since then I wasn’t able to attend any other events due to both having other things going on during the end of the year as well as there simply being a lower density of things to attend, also due to the end of the year, so I was happy to finally be able to get back up there and talk to people again. When I last went to this meet up, I didn’t have a whole lot to show off, so I spent most of the time checking out other peoples’ projects and chatting, only briefly showing off my project at the time that was (and still is) very early on in development. I think it was the month after that meet up that I started working on Maintenance Crew and gave myself that soft deadline of the end of the year to get a playable build working. Obviously I did not quite reach that goal, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it was more of a confidence hit that I’ve let on. This “failure” along with my spreadsheet chronicling over 100 applications I’ve sent out to various game companies in various roles, all of which have either come back with a negative response, if I received any response at all, definitely make me doubt my abilities as a game designer. Yes, I went to school for this, and yes, I don’t doubt that I’m capable or maybe even exceedingly capable for a majority of those jobs I’ve applied for, but watching that spreadsheet continue to turn red over the years still hurts.
Over the past month or two I’ve been working on Maintenance Crew sort of passively, working on a thing here or there every so often, but definitely bummed about missing that deadline. I went to this IGDA meeting with the intent of showing off my project to the other developers, hoping that showing off the project would give me a much needed boost. I’m happy to report it did just that. If I recall correctly, there was one point where I had like 6 or 7 people hanging around me checking out my project and asking me questions about it. At the very least, I think most people at the meet at some point came over to see what was going on at my table. People were not only impressed with the actual substance of the project, but also with the fact that I had done it entirely with Blueprint — Unreal Engine’s visual scripting system. This was all great, but I specifically remember one particular thing that was asked of me as we were packing up at the end of the night getting ready to leave:
“So what studio do you work for?”
I was taken aback by this question. So much so that I had to sort of fumble to say that I’m between work at the moment, let alone working for a game studio. This, I think more than anything, gave me quite the confidence boost that night. It made me realize that people see the work I put into my projects as high quality and interesting and that even though I haven’t managed to get hired by some big game company quite yet, the work I’m doing is still very good.
A picture taken from the IGDA meet up at MLK Jr. Library in DC, near the end of the night
Now, this is where I’m going to pivot a little bit into some more real topics, so beware.
For a little bit of context of my headspace over the past couple of weeks, about a week and a half ago I announced to my Facebook and Instagram friends that I would be leaving the platforms and deleting my accounts effective January 20th — tomorrow. The reason for this being several massive changes Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) has made that removes several important bans on hate speech and misinformation on their platforms. I won’t go into all the details here, but if you’d like to read into those changes and my thoughts on those specifically, you can read it on Pastebin. The short version is these changes to Meta’s policies specifically allow terrible things to be said about women, minorities, and in particular the LGBTQ+ community, and I’ve decided this was the last straw for me using their platforms. In the following weeks since me announcing that, I’m frankly happy to see that Meta’s stocks took a nose dive as doubtless others made similar decisions to not use Meta’s platforms, especially in the wake of TikTok being banned today, as the result of a bipartisan law passed and affirmed by all 3 branches of government — something practically unheard of in this day and age.
In the past few weeks and months even, it seems that the actions of the federal government have done nothing but radicalize the people against it, with people choosing to download Rednote — an app actually controlled by the Chinese Communist Party — rather than return to Meta platforms, people marching in DC and several other cities across the country yesterday, and people protesting against New York marking Luigi Mangione as a “domestic terrorist” for his actions in killing the CEO of United Healthcare, with protestors saying things along the lines of “I don’t feel terrorized by his actions, do you?”
I can’t help but see my own personal struggle over the past few months in these things, and now that that personal struggle has started to see the light, I also can’t help but see the potential light on the horizon for these other struggles. It looks bad now for a lot of people. Regarding TikTok, banning it is clearly not a case of “national security” like the federal government says. If the safety of citizens’ data was the issue, they’d be passing laws that put checks on all apps, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other American companies that collect data and sell it to the highest bidder, domestic or otherwise. To put it plainly, banning TikTok is a blatant infringement of the first amendment by the federal government in my eyes. Regarding Meta I hope to reach others through this post to encourage no longer using their platforms to boycott the policy changes made on the 7th. Finally, regarding the LGBTQ+ community, things look dire. The inauguration of President-Elect Trump is tomorrow and it’s already clear that Elon Musk is very much able to sway policy since he’s already done it. That plus states like Idaho becoming bold and passing legislature directly intended to reach the Supreme Court and challenge Obergefell v. Hodges does not inspire confidence in our government, especially since I have little doubt that if that case ever did reach the Supreme Court that legalized gay marriage would be repealed as easily as Roe v. Wade was.
I don’t want to come off like I think that these next 4 years will be as easy as me regaining confidence on my silly little game design project. It very clearly will not. What I do want to do is express the importance of community in dire times like these. Community is what gave me back my confidence when it was starting to slip and community will get us through these hard times. I know it can be hard to find the strength to organize and get out there, but that’s what they want. They want you to become apathetic and simply allow them to take your rights away. You can’t let them. I’ve considered myself to be an ally of the LGBTQ+ community for quite a few years now, but I must admit that this was mostly in name. While I’ve voted for the right people and said the right things when trying to explain the concepts to friends and family, I don’t think this will be enough anymore. I said this at the end of that Pastebin post, but I’ll reiterate it here, now is the time to get active with your communities and show people who only wish to live their lives that they’re not alone. Get involved with protests and marches. Look into LGBTQ+ friendly charities. Do whatever you can to show them they’re not alone.
For everyone reaching this post from my Facebook or Instagram, this is your final reminder that I’ll be deleting those accounts tomorrow. You can keep up with me here on my website or Bluesky.
