Puzzle Pieces

On a similar note to last post, I've always had a difficult time marrying my opposing interests in gaming and art.

(And by gaming I don't mean gambling. I'm not talking slot machines here.)

I enjoy all forms of games, including but not limited to, tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons and Storyteller, video games of all sorts, ranging back all the way to the 8 bit systems of my youth such as the NES, all the way to the games of today like Team Fortress 2 and Torchlight. I made a roleplaying game, I've tweaked even more rules than I can list, and I've made a couple card games.

I also have a Creative Arts degree, which means I've acted, made movies, written reams of bad fiction and poetry, studied music and art, what have you.

These two fields, though they have many things in common, like perspective and narrative, flow and feel, are almost impossible for me to combine in my everyday life. I'm not an artist in the sense that I don't paint, I don't draw (at least, very well), and I don't play an instrument. Likewise, I don't program computers. I'm in the middle ground of mediocrity, where I can see the specialists at both ends of the spectrum, and I'm floundering while trying to glue together disparate parts of a huge puzzle.

What do I do with my writing ability? How do I apply that to games? Or art? Or games and art? There has never been a clear path for what I want to do, and so many times I end up back where I began: with nothing.

I've been looking into things like game design, and I realize that these things are difficult. People don't do this because they are easy. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, if anything in my head is going to come to fruition, and that is a sobering thought. It makes me want to give up, which is the worst possible place to be.

Of course, even my son knows that Elmo says you should always keep trying. Elmo is a pretty smart...er...guy?