Never Give Up. Trust Your Instincts!

So.

Here we are again.

Shibe Warz is coming along. There isn’t much to say on that front other than business as usual. Simply put, we have a schedule against which we churn out assets, and there is a set level of progress expected, a quantifiable amount of work needing doing, and we are doing it. It’s mind-boggling, but after such a short time, the pieces are falling into place and something resembling a game is emerging.

The team has done a great job so far, they’ve put in a ton of effort, blood, sweat, and tears. Well, ok, perhaps a little less on the blood I hope, and, having not heard of any mental breakdowns, I assume we are good on the tears. It isn’t easy to produce a product that is worth your time, so my hat goes off to the rest of the Verus team.

In fact, it might not be readily obvious how much work even goes into making a game, so in case you don’t know (and if you do feel free to skip the following statements), it’s a lot. For instance, you never know how many models and textures you need until you build your world and realize how empty it is. There are so many things which will come up that were not planned for. To try and capture a scene, setting the lighting, the ambiance is no easy task. As Andrew Hussie (author of Homestuck) said, “Creating entertainment is not really a lifestyle of madcap shenanigans. It is a very sober, often dull process that requires a huge amount of time and concentration. “ A short game you chew through in an hour could have taken a month to create from start to finish. That is a month of effort distilled and crystallized into a single experience. Now imagine creating a game that take days to finish.

So that’s why I am thankful for these guys. Their effort really is phenomenal.

But let me say this: everyone one of us will agree that it is worth it. I didn’t just lay all that out to start a pity party; you’ll find that greedy emotion is misplaced here. Ours is truly is a labor of love. We know that if you want something in life, you have to work towards it and never give up. We definitely won’t give up either, but it is important to keep an open, flexible mind when it comes to creation. The origin of creation usually comes from one idea, the “spark”, but in order to construct your creation, a bit of brainstorming usually has to be done.

Well, the thing about brainstorming is, usually just a few ideas come to fruition and the rest are discarded into the black and twisted depths of oblivion. This makes sense - after all, not every idea is possible, let alone good. This is what I call “brainstorming for the short game.” This is a very valuable skill and entirely necessary to reduce the scope of any project to the realm of feasible.

Yet, I urge you not to forget the short game’s counterpart, “brainstorming for the long game.” Brainstorming for the long game means that you keep ideas that are valuable even if you can’t enact them now. This includes ideas that had to be abandoned along the way. We’re just a young company, but already we have had to shelve some ideas even as they were being developed. It is important to maintain the ideas kicking around your head. Nourish them, entertain them, think about them. You never know when the day will come when you find that suddenly they are within reach and you have to act immediately.

The key to remember about the long game ideas is that they require a certain level of refinement. In many cases it is not even possible to refine the subject until you have more life experiences. Verus would not be what it is today if we all tried this 5 years ago, for instance. One of my favorite things to do is read early script versions for iconic movies. Back to the Future’s first draft script resembled nothing like the final product (for instance, the time machine was not a DeLorean, it was a refrigerator box). The first version of the script wasn’t even written until two years after Zemeckis has the idea. That is a long time to wait on your dream, but I think everyone agrees that it paid off.

And that’s what good, refined ideas do - they pay off. I’m not talking financially, either (though that certainly can be the case), I mean they pay off with the satisfaction of having made your dream a reality. A strong sense of pride and accomplishment, but especially satisfaction, accompanies attaining your dreams. Even if you don’t do it all at once, as long as you work towards it, you are doing something that matters. When you rest your head on your pillow at the end of the day and recognize the work you did, the steps you walked to get closer to your goal, then you will sleep soundly.

So the next time you have a million dollar idea, never doubt it or yourself. Acknowledge the steps you can take to reach your goal, chart your path to success, put your head down and go for it. After all, YOU had that idea for a reason, and only YOU are the one with the vision, and YOU are the only one capable of showing it to the world.

Well?

What are you waiting for?

~Michael