invertigo hayfever

So, I said that I'll respond to this later, as the author of this game, and I never forgot about it. Feel free to disregard this comment completely if you'd rather not know what I have to say - after all, it's been a long while. Still, I want to answer, especially since I keep coming back to this review quite often.

When I first read it, I couldn't help but be a bit confused, and it was because it presented me with an interpretation I haven't considered before. For me and most other people I talked about it with, it was an exploration of suicidal thoughts and the impact that particularly mishandled portrayals of suicide can have. I didn't write it with a game dev world as a whole commentary in mind, but that's the thing about art and its creation: sometimes, you don't realize that something unconscious stirs inside of your head and spills all over your keyboard. Some things are obvious to you because you wrote them, but the moment you send it into the world, it will be processed through many different lenses.

This review made me reconsider my own creation. The entire story is a mix of my own experiences with suicidality and an alternative, fictional version of myself, based on how I used to be at the time, all kickstarted by the Game Which We Won't Be Mentioning By Name. My primary motivation was to bring attention to the experience of wanting to take your own life and the way it's often watered down for shock value. I didn't think about the game dev lens a lot when I was writing it, but after reading this review a couple of times, I realized that the game dev perspective cannot be divorced from the "intended" reading of the story. The Game Which We Won't Name probably wouldn't be made in such a careless way if we didn't treat games as products to be sold, commodities that are meant to make the numbers go up. While my own experiences with the community were rather good and I met many kind people, it's undeniable that the capitalistic mindset of having to compromise your art, slide yourself into current trends and capitalize on everything is slithering around. I don't blame anyone for wanting popularity and money - it would be extremely hypocritical of me to do so - but it makes me feel strange to think that some people aren't here because they have something to tell, but because they want to be a conduit for someone else's needs and wants. The race to reach the "top" makes some people callous and uncaring, tearing empathy out of them, and this is why we get shock value tactics, each worse than the last as the audiences get more and more desensitized and search for more violent experiences.

I tried to make this game as unmarketable as possible by not including any visuals outside of the logo, keeping the default GUI and not including anything that's not text. I didn't include any screenshots and I didn't write a plot summary to not sensationalize the subject matter. Despite all of this, i won't finish this game is still my second most popular game I ever made, and it was first in the ranking for a long time. Regrettably, I started having thoughts that I criticized: I wanted to milk this popularity, I wanted to ride the wave and capitalize on it all. I wanted to capitalize on my own suffering. It made me horrified and, frankly, disgusted with myself. The unfortunate truth is that thoughts like these can enter one's head very easily and even I, someone who prefers telling stories to watching numbers, can be swayed.

But if it taught me anything, it was that I can reject those thoughts. I can still make my art and consciously choose telling stories I want to tell, contrary to what would bring me more popularity. I released another game the same week I released i won't finish this game and it didn't get even a fraction of the same attention, but I felt relief instead of anger or pain. It'll reach those it needs to reach.

i won't finish this game was, for me, a liberating experience. I didn't think it would be received this well and I didn't think it'll resonate with so many people, in fact, I thought nobody will care due to the measures I took to make it somewhat unappealing and the rather depressing subject matter. I also have some trauma around opening up about my suicidal past, therefore, it's been a big step in getting over it. I acknowledge that the game probably wouldn't be half as big if it wasn't tied to a controversy, but even if it had half of the attention it received, it still opened up my eyes. I can make flawed things, I can make controversial things, I can make things I want to make. There will always be someone who wants to read it all. Perhaps it's a naive approach, but I can't care less. The narrator tells others to finish their games, and it's my stance too, although by "finish", I don't mean polished, unflawed, marketable things. "Finish" is where you think you want to stop, be it with all the bells and whistles necessary or with a barebones prototype, or something strange and experimental. I'm now giving myself time to experiment with things I enjoy and write things I want to write, and I've never felt better with what I do.

Either way, I wrote an entire essay. Thank you for this review - I will probably keep coming back to it many times in the future - and I hope you can continue making games you want to make.