It is funny how you sometimes find yourself staring at a blank sheet of paper and wondering where to begin.

 

I have been doing this for a while now this evening as has happened throughout my working life from time to time. It takes a while of living with yourself to have faith that your creative spirit is always there somewhere inside you, lurking behind the cups of tea and distracted conversations that so often clutter one’s life when you know it is time to perform but somehow your heart and your brain really don’t give a toss just now.

 

Sometimes I wonder just how much the sabotaging of our freedom as games creators has taken it out of my creative drive, these days I am more likely to respond to a conversation about doing the next off the wall thing with a cynical and patronising look of resignation rather than an enthusiastic and eager desire to push further and further in the pursuit of creative gold. That pioneering spirit that carried us all the way through the 80s and early 90s was the same force that drove alchemists, prospectors and artists to the discovery and creation of new and great things.

 

And all of the games that we created back on the C64 started with a clear screen, a blank sheet of paper, and a pair of open and eager minds. However back in those days we were also given a clear road down which to drive our ideas, a road uncluttered by diversions and no entry signs. It was like striding across the virgin soil of a newly discovered continent and planting our banner in the sand whenever we got to a particularly interesting place that we wanted to claim for ourselves.

 

Nowadays we are only allowed to go on creative package tours, neatly put together for us to ensure that we all behave ourselves and nothing gets too out of hand. The only exploration allowed is perhaps to a theme park or maybe if you are really lucky an afternoon strolling along the beach, as long as you are back on the coach by 5.30pm. Given that most people who have worked in the games industry since 1995 have only experienced the package tour style of game creation, so popular now amongst the games retailing and buying community, it is no surprise at all that when confronted with a blank sheet of paper they quickly start to draw up the lines of a package tour style game, just so that they can get their bearings.

 

The difference between most of the post genesis generation and most of us whinging old timers is that they have never experienced the joy of turning silicon into gold, most have never been given the luxury of this freedom and therefore have not experienced the exhilaration that it can bring, so when they are faced with a blank sheet of paper they do not have enough faith in themselves that they can come up with something both truly original worthy of filling that space. Instead they take the safe option of getting something down quick by drawing from the best games of the previous 3 years and hope that no-one notices or cares about their dull plagiarism. In fact many people who work like this are so devoid of truly original thought that they probably have no concept of what else might be done from a creative stand point.