It’s astonishing to wake up one day and realize you’re surrounded by people who don’t understand—perhaps not yet—what passion truly is. Passion isn’t just a casual interest but something much deeper and more powerful. An interest is simply something we enjoy, something that engages our senses. It’s a source of pleasure from which, given the right circumstances, we can eventually detach. Passion, however, is entirely different. Some psychologists suggest that, in one way or another—perhaps in a deeply rooted form that’s hard to identify at first glance—something representing your passion was already present when you were a young child, around six years old or so. Or perhaps it came to you later, the moment you first encountered it. It’s something you can’t live without. It’s what makes you set your alarm an hour or two earlier, just to dedicate time to it. Even if it were somehow ripped away from you, it would inevitably find its way back to you at the first opportunity.
I don’t know how many people reading this, when truly honest with themselves, will recognize video games and game development as their passion. By now, it should be clear that publishing video games isn’t easy and is full of challenges that will likely see you bouncing from one failure to another. In this sense, know that you have much in common with geniuses like Einstein, Beethoven, Newton, and Laplace. These people are often remembered for their so-called “flashes of genius,” yet the truth is that behind each significant success lay many failures. “Genius” is a word too often misused to console ourselves. Saying that Beethoven was a genius in classical music is something everyone can agree on, yet it also serves as an excuse, justifying our own inability to accomplish something similar. The notion that someone is a genius fuels a kind of magical thinking, as if one day these individuals were struck by a divine light, granting them an extraordinary “gift”—an impossible-to-replicate superpower. The reality is that they were all people who struggled, who fought their entire lives, relentlessly pursuing their passion.
I’m convinced that in a unique, though hardly one-of-a-kind world like that of video games—a world where I’ve tried to shed light on the pitfalls that many often ignore, perhaps as a way to build courage—the only true certainty lies in one’s passion. Try, in other words, and never give up. If success in publishing is meant to come, it will, but it will be more a matter of luck than something achievable through well-defined formulas—unless you choose the path of major investments, which would turn it into pure commerce. There is, of course, room for skill; if you can’t put together a quality product, you can’t hope to publish it. Yet showing your work to an audience and finding success means you’ve somehow managed to charm a capricious and unpredictable creature: people, always fickle and hard to understand. Someone once said that an individual may be intelligent, but people are a beast.
It’s only natural, and human, to be hurt by failure; it has to be that way, as indifference would signal a lack of interest. But it’s equally true that if you’re passionate about this field, even after coming to terms with the nearly impossible task of standing out, you’ll shrug it off and continue down your own path…
Top image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay