Pretty scatterbrained right now. Not sure if I should speak to the guilt riddling my brain for not being able to get to work, I could whine about health for the 50th time, I could speak to any number of frustrating elements in the world that's bringing us down.

Just having wone of those nights... :/

Wasn't even expecting to do a blog but as usually happens I find myself wishing more and more that i'd done at least something as sleep starts creeping in and my mind keeps compounding with various thoughts and I figure, eh, let's throw up a blather.

So the notion that's been haunting me tonight is the notion of "good".

What is good? I like to think we're above "marketing" in these parts, but the older I get, the more I understand psychology, the more I understand how marketing plays into the overall enjoyment of something. And it's actually really nuanced and complex so it's hard to even properly frame, but i'll at least try to a small degree.

The way we enjoy something is compounding, we LIKE to think that we're our own person, that we will enjoy what we enjoy because it tickles our fancy and we have our own taste. But most all of us are subject to various psychological factors that compound or reduce how much we enjoy (or don't enjoy) something.

People like a winner. People like that thing that everyone else likes, and each of these factors has multiple factors themselves. For one... if everyone else likes it... it must be PRETTY GOOD at the very least right? Like if coke tasted like dog testes, no one would drink them. So you know that by consuming something popular that that product will have the capital to do research and hopefully hire people that know what they're doing and also produce things in enough volume that it's not going to have defects, and it will cater to the largest majority of people so you're gonna get something pretty good. And most of us don't even comprehend these factors, but we just know pattern recognition, we know when we get the #1 combo meal, or the #1 soda on the list, or the popular beer, it's not going to offend us with the flavor, it's not going to be too spicy, it's going to be  pretty darned good, maybe even our favorite.

Add to this we're pack animals, we want to fit in, many of us are just doing are damnedest simply to not stick out like a total weirdo goofball and we obsess about not ending out in the outside group. And this has become MANY FACTORS more important in recent years where being in the "wrong faction" will get you ostricized from friend groups, targeted in the world place, shunned by family, if you look like you're in the wrong group, you are doomed, a pariah, a sacrifice, an enemy meant to be targeted and done away with in a multitude of ways.

And this perception of "good"  for gamedevs like yours truly is incredibly pervasive in every aspect of the project. I am constantly aware of how every aspect of my game will either connect or repel specific groups any more. The line between good and evil has never been so arbitrary, so insane. The dialogue, the music, the character back stories, the verbiage, the color pallets, the story, the "representation", the themes, EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of this game is going to be picked apart every step of the way by audiences, to people running store fronts, the publishers checking out potential games to endorse, those massaging the algorithms. The throng of systems with their ability to make or break you in a multitude of ways will be running damage control, and filtering everything out there to see what is deemed safe, what is ok for their tribe to give a lifeline to.

Can I tell you how very much I wish I could just focus on making a good game? How much it guts me to know that I am living in a world of ravenous sharks, where old friends and collegues I would have once considered friends now view me as some kind of evil monster that must be kept at arms distance, if not for spite, than simply to cover their own ass?

This world is such a bag of balls.

And what the fuck did we do? What horrific crime did we commit?

We read the writing on the wall. We judged others for their actions. We refused to kiss the ring. We stood by the art of gamedev and didn't bend to the roving mobs... we're just an awkward, angry fuck that doesn't fit into the hip circles of kumbaya who gives way too much of a shit about video games.

And now that the power is shifting, I find myself on the outside of the emerging factions of haters and back scratchers. I'm so sick of this shit. Gamedev is some kind of sick joke any more.

And speaking to the title, I could write this blog in such a more universal way, in a way that didn't offend everyone, in a way that wasn't so self incriminating. I COULD write this such that we were on the up and up, such that we were safe, and marketable, and something the vast majority of people could rally behind. But I just can't bring myself to do, I can't fucking sell out. We are on literally everyone's shit list. Left, Right, Up, Down, we don't really bend to any of the back scratchers or the back stabbers. And it's really tough, because we really need a win.

We've got horrible medical coverage, can't get any sort of doctor to give half a damn to try to diagnose what continues to be wrong with us. We're just some middle age fuck up with no insurance, I keep hoping maybe if the game can break through one way or another we can get a proper check up done and maybe they can figure out what the fuck is wrong with us. It's a catch 22. Gotta feel good to finish the game, won't have any chance of feeling good unless the game becomes a success. Is this part of the blog emotional blackmail? I mean I don't fucking know. It's the truth.

We get really whiney and emotional when we're feeling like shit, when the days are just flying by and the world continues to fall to pieces.

I  truly do resent this world in this moment. Just all the absolute wrong people doing well for all the absolute wrong reasons. Gotta be a coward, gotta scratch the backs of the crooks and the liars, gotta play the game.

The only thing that matters any more is showing up on time and smiling and nodding. That's what this world has been reduced to, just total  fucking compliance to a bunch of dip shit ass holes.

A lot of my motivation disapears just thinking about that.

We're realling getting off topic, I was really going to deep dive marketing and how little bits of audience compounds and word of mouth and how you have to be super careful to play the game and not scare anyone off, and how everything has to be sanitized and safe in this stupid fuckign world of landmines and liars and cowards where the only bet anyone knows how to make any more is the fucking safe one.

And that's why everything is so shit. That's why nothing will ever get any fucking better, because the door only opens for garbage, the door only opens for ass lickers and ring kissers.

So things will just continue to degrade and get worse and fucking fall to fucking pieces.

The sand just pours from the hourglass, all those good days gone, wasted on the bottle, wasted trying to show my worth in a system that didn't give a damn, wasted trying to hold myself to the standards of what I believed to be good, not the bottom of the barrel standards of the world at large.

It's all so fucked, it's so fuckign depressing.

And it's not just me I see suffer from this. I see so many great games and projects out there that get totally snubbed.

And the projects I see with backing offend the shit out of me. Like if you just exhuad the right politics, live in the right area, brush the right elbows, you'd have been up to your neck in venture captial funding the past 8 years.

I don't even want to say how long we've been getting kicked into the dirt by a stupid fucking world that can't judge competency, is beholden to the standards of the lowest fucking denominator.

I know it's dumb, I know i'll regret it tomorrow, but right now in this moment, feeling like death for another week on end, not knowing fuckign why, just feeling so distant from any lifeline in this dumb fucking world, tired of busting my ass, tired of being held to inhuman standards while everyone else got their cookies for fucking finger painting. And all our best days are behind us, at best we will have a tiny fuckign fraction of an ok life dwindling to nothing.

I like to think we're not fighting for ourselves, we're fighting to set things to right, for the greater "good".

But what even is that good if it cannot materialize? If these insanity of the day will not allow the greater good to manifest?

We're too cowardly, we're too beaten down, our standards are too low, our attention spans are too short, our pain tolerances are weak, our ambitions are too stunted.

We will never find success. Nothing of value will ever be given the light of day. Too many people with too much control stand to lose from strong willed principled people, so we must be taken down a peg, we have our throats slit.

How's your fantasy football leagues going? How about that political divide that you're safely on one side of depending one which area you live in.

Everyone appeasing the fucking mob. Everyone keeping their heads down and making sure not to rock the boat while every fucking aspect of society goes to dog shit. The users and the abusers reign supreme while our games go to shit, while our health goes to shit, while our eduction goes to shit, while our lineages go to shit, while our natoins go to shit, while our cities go to shit, while the whole of this fucking world goes to fucking shit.

God fucking forbid anyone bring it the fuck up.

I hope I feel better soon, partely because I really want to make my life's work not total shit, and I want to do something with my life, and I hate to admit it, but it would be nice to just not feel like I was dying all the time :/, or so fucking lonely, or just feeling so damn helpless.

I don't know any more of these things are motivating me, or if they're sucking every will I have towards anything. Will this ticking clock, the pressure, the mounting ills of this world compel us to make an even better game? Or will they simply drive us mad?

Well, this blog ended up being way more of a downer than we useually allow ourselves to be. Who wants to engage with a game made by such a fucking loser? Who wants to side with a project made by someone whose health won't even let them work on their damned project any more? Why engage with or play the game of some cranky old fucking asshole?

You shouldn't, that's the fucking answer.

Hope we're feelin' better and back to it soon. We've been through this before, it always feels like we'll never be back to it again and the project is doomed, but thus farm we've bounced back. But it's like Russian Roullette. Was the last dev session the last one? Will these factors compound and compound until this game will never have a chance?

:/

It's all so fucking depressing. This world is so fucking bullshit. But hey, you guys are all munching on your chunks of flesh as the machine puts out giant fucking mounds of dog shit. 

Lucky fucking you.