Public Update: End of 2017, Welcome 2018!

Anyone would probably agree that 2017 as a collection of months and days was a lot. I stand by my determination for decoupling the concepts of years and major sentiments of change, but it can be useful to collectively analyse what happened during a year and see the direction it took. The gradient of change across months, and how that trajectory is leading into the next series of months. 

For me, it was a year of understanding what I need as a person. It was attempting to take care of myself. In employment, in life, in the pursuit of what matters to me.

I’ve worked in games for the entirety of my career. I’ve wanted to work in games even longer. Since I was a kid, it was a dream of mine to create levels and enemy designs and put them in challenging locations. I wanted to emulate my favourite games, make challenging bosses, deliver a meaningful narrative in a world of my creation. 

A common trend in games I enjoyed this year was revealing: games as a medium are changing, and a lot of creators are tired of the ways in which they are either developing or have been stagnant. In games like NieR: Automata, Doki Doki Literature Club, and Danganronpa V3, the authors & directors almost reach through the screen to deliver their thoughts on the medium of games. It’s all a bit tedious, isn’t it? 

In 2007, I became a game tester at Nintendo of America. In 2011 I became a game designer at ArenaNet. In 2016 I became a level designer at Ubisoft. I was living my dream. But it was all a bit tedious.

In 2017, after my 10th full year in the industry, I closed that chapter of full time employment.

Reflecting on this year’s favourites, these games that look to the medium of games and use their structure, their tropes, to communicate a greater message about the nature of that evolving art form, I’m left with my thoughts and struggles about how to rationalise my dream of creating games in a world where my ever-increasing inclinations are to leave games behind.

In 2018, I don’t think I’m going to focus on games as much. Ultimately, I have a personal vision for how I want to create art and present it to the people that would care to experience it. Games are a powerful medium. But they are one enabled primarily by a huge investment of time, money and talent. As I near my 34th year, I’m fully aware that I’m not a “young creator” anymore. I don’t have the benefit of taking the world by storm fresh out of college with my wild ideas and fresh interpretations of what my education has prepared me for. All I have is what I’ve got. And what I’ve got is a strong desire to explore the obsessive thoughts that mull about in my noggin all day through the best mediums for me to express myself & push out to the public. 

For me, that’s music and writing. 

I’m working on finishing up ESC, which is an odd hybrid of those two means of expression. It’s honestly not really a game in the grand scheme of things. I’m not sure how it will end up being, but it’ll at least be an experiment to see if people respond well to me as a creator rather than just a collaborator.

But as a long-term aspiration for creating games, I don’t think I have it in me to set that as a self-driven goal.

In the new year, I’m going to be revising the structure of my Patreon to match these new goals. I don’t think it’s right of me to call myself a writer of “interactive fiction” or games exclusively. My aspirations, beyond music, are to be a writer, period. Whether it’s interactive or on a printed page, the goal is still the same.

I’m also going to be revising the tiers so that it makes more sense as to what you, the patron, are getting access to across the board regardless of medium. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to separate access to two different mediums across two reward tiers. The primary early-access tier will remain $5, however, so those of you in this tier don’t need to worry. In fact, you’ll probably be gaining access to much more than just music.

For everyone else, I hope that I’m able to make 2018 worth your contributions. I’m fully aware that I haven’t put out anything exclusively for $10 or $20 tiers in my first few months. Much of that comes from working full-time on finishing Celeste rather than putting my efforts into anything else. I’ll do my best to have something very specifically for $20 tier patrons very soon in 2018, so I hope you’ll look forward to that.

2017 has been an exhausting year. Both my personal and professional life have gone through tremendous change and reconfiguration. But I’m hoping that with the new year, symbolic gesture or not, I can start off on the right foot and make it the year I really dive into expressing myself as genuinely as I can in the ways I know how. I hope you all are able to do the same in your respective fields.

Happy new year & best of luck in 2018.

💛 Lena