Computer Games

I greatly enjoy playing certain computer games.  I haven't spent much time doing so for the last few years, for a variety of reasons.  It is all about prioritizing one's time, and computer games haven't been making the cut for quite a while.  I usually have more important things to spent my time doing.  It is not that recreation is not important, just that I have preferred relaxing in other ways.  For example I have spent much more time playing physical board games with my family and friends.  But for a number of reasons, those opportunities have been limited recently, which may explain my renewed interest in computer games.  Ironically most of the ones I still like to play are very old.  The newest game I play was released in 2006, and my most frequent one is from back in 1999.

I feel a little conflicted about computer games, because so many people spend far too much time using them, which I consider to be a waste.  But just because certain people abuse certain things in life, doesn't make them inherently bad.  I attribute much of what I learned growing up, and my success in school, to things I learned from computer games.  Civilization taught me lots of world history, and MSFS taught me how to fly, while more education centered games taught me math and spelling.  So computer games have a legitimate role to fill in the world, although I am not sure about angry birds.

I have spent the last few days writing up an idea I have for a new computer game.  It is an idea I came up with 15 years ago, but dismissed at the time due to technological and game play limitations at the time.  My idea was too complicated to create and operate on computers of the time, requiring a massive world to be hosted on a cluster of servers.  This is now commonplace for any massive multiplayer game, none of which I have ever actually played.  My idea was also very complicated, and I figured players might find certain aspects of the game play to be too tedious.  But after an article I read last week about a massive online battle that was months in the making, and then seeing the mechanics of a game my friends at work were playing, I realized that the pieces were finally in place to make my idea a realistic possibility.

Ironically I spent four years in college learning how to develop and pitch creative ideas.  And I have never done that even once, even though that is a significant part of what my primary employer does.  I have always focused instead on engineering solutions to properly execute ideas that have already been "sold" to someone.  I am much more comfortable with my role in that stage of the process, but for some reason feel inspired to break out of the mold for this particular idea.

But I am not sure how I feel about the possibility of success.  Even if I was to successfully sell the idea, and get the game made, I don't want to spend endless amounts of my time developing the final product.  But I wouldn't want someone else to "screw it up" either.  I am quite happy with the current direction of my life in regards to career, and have no interest in changing my primary focus to computer games.  So it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out, if I manage to flesh out a fully polished proposal.  No idea were the drive for this one came from, but I didn't consciously go seek it out, so maybe there is some reason for it.