Sunday, September 25, 2011

Finding your Aroo!

Here's a link to How to find your Howl by Johnathan Flaum.

In this presentation Johnathan Flaum discusses the path to finding one's creative voice, and describes this process parallel to a telling of Robert Frost's How the Red Wolf Found his Howl. This story follows Mumon, an endangered Red Wolf who was taken into captivity to save his species, but then released into the wild at a later time as an experiment. Everything seems to be going okay, except that neither Mumon nor the others in his pack can howl. Through what can only be described as a rather interesting vision quest, Mumon and his pack find their howls. Johnathan Flaum uses this as a way to describe how an average person is trapped in a box, who's walls are defined by their monotonous life style, and in order to escape this a person has to find a way out of the box, and only then will they find their unique voice.


For my favorite quote, we turn our heads back to 1999, with a little movie called "The Matrix:"


Morpheous: I've seen an agent punch through a concrete wall. Men have emptied entire clips at them and hit nothing but air. Yet their strength and their speed are still based in a world that is built on rules. Because of that, they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.
Neo: What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
Morpheous: No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.


This is one of the movies I nearly know like the back of my hand, though I've always been a fan of media that sort of attempts to break down the walls of reality; I suppose one would call them psychological thrillers? This quote is one that I actually use quite often even in my everyday life, misquoted more often than I'd care to mention. This quote says so much about my goal as a game designer; to break the world from its string of monotonous first person shooters and herald in a new age of gaming. I often feel as many other designers do when we have a creative idea that those we pitch the idea to tend to reject on the grounds that it's not the next Call of Duty or Halo, and would much rather have this as an alternative. But, being able to think outside of the box and see forth into the future of gaming as it progresses at the moment and adapting to it's demands without sacrificing personal creativity for profit. Too often have I been told to "Look at Black Ops and do your gameplay like that" or "Gears of War has the best campaign ever, that's how you have to do yours!" And while these games do have their pros and cons, they aren't the game I wish to design. I feel like this quote defines a world of rules and low bar expectations and the Mentor's sage advice to rise above this and make the thing that you know will shake foundations and resonate through history, though being reprimanded by your target demographic. As Morpheous said; "I'm saying that when you're ready, you won't have to." However I don't think that this quote simply tells the story of the Little Game Designer That Could. But this quote, in my opinion, is sort of indicative of a sort of creative Nirvana, in which finding thoughts and ideas comes much more naturally and without quite as much trouble as  someone who is new to the craft. A person who's learned what does and does not work when it applies to their job and their target demographic, and can easily draw from that knowledge to make something absolutely astounding. It's by this model that I'd like to take my place as one of the great game designers who are remembered through history. I feel like this also defines just how much more work I need to go through to become who it is I seek to be. Defeating Agents is no task one simply sneezes at, and the same can be said for game design, or Media production in general honestly. But even then, it goes beyond that. It's difficult to draw from the imagination onto a medium that people will like, and as it is my desire to tell the most magnificent story ever told, the pressure seems doubly on. But, as Morpheous said; "When the time comes, you won't have to." Truly inspirational words for one in a predicament as one looking to find their place in the industry of media.

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