(crossposted from birdland)
we burn youth like coal while conflating technical ambition for cultural value, fancying ourselves rock stars. and all the way up the ladder, tyranny from radioactive men compulsively bound to inner children.
video games are the most multidisciplinary and technical of the media arts, which means creative immediacy is tempered heavily by a long, long climb up a huge summit towards ability to execute. this knowledge can be made inaccessible by location, demographic, means.
in the current state of things, video games simply cannot compete w how the sparkling brashness of youth can manifest almost immediately in music, acting, etc. one cannot sing out one's youth in the same way. it is an art still several degrees estranged from living in the world.
this hurts, and compels creative people to stretch themselves to the breaking point to achieve what they have in their hearts. the industry is waiting with open arms to exploit this, be it indie (the funding situation) or AAA (the pecking order).
this means that youth is burned as fuel, its fruits deferred, perhaps at a higher rate than the other media arts. and especially when, in the vast majority of what's produced today, play and leisure is at the center of what gets created, we form a toxic relationship w/ our youth.
this is reflected in who often rises to the top. the uniform of blazer+tshirt amongst our executives symbolizes that unhealthy partnership between men in charge and their inner children. play is sacred, youthful wonder is the compass, and it often is pursued with recklessness.
so many stories of senior designers driven by mad passion expecting the same out of the dev teams they exploit, berate, belittle. so many images of video game bigshots living out elaborate imitations of hollywood lifestyles. it's a sickness. how we connect w/ youth is at its core.
as video games achieved gargantuan scale while remaining culturally undernourished, we came to rely on awards and accolades that are mostly pageantry to reward achievement in this cyclical worship of idealized youth and play, all while our real youth suffers and comes out twisted.
what's to be done?
i said before that video games are several degrees estranged from living in the world. that's where we gotta change it - how games reach people, and how game devs reach people. no amount of technical achievement or ceremony is gonna fix that from the top down.
so many pages there are yet unwritten. i got ideas. so do other people. i'm gonna use what i have left of my youth to try em out.