THE DAILY TRAVESTY | Work or Play?
The Daily Travesty
 
30 June 2000            email
Vol. 1, Issue 111       on the web
 
 
I was directed to the following discussion on Slashdot regarding whether or not computer games can (and should) be made "open source."  Issues like this are becoming more and more controversial as the world is still tries to decide: what exactly is the internet??  Will we hand it over to the Corporate Emperors (and the government, perhaps one and the same) or keep it in the hands of the Free Man?  Or is there a safe middle ground?

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/06/29/1247225.shtml
 
 
Work or Play
    by Kylnara
 
Isn't life grand sometimes?  Well, I think so anyway.  It's also freaky and scary though.  Sometimes things happen, and you get dragged along.  I always get dragged along, I can't help myself, I'm a sucker like that.  Best example is how I got to be "the Boss."

I'm just an average computer loving kid.  Not a nerd, thank god, nerds have glasses and braces, I have lenzes and a set of natural good teeth. Anyway I'm average (at first glance), so what do average kids do?  Right, they play computer games.  And I don't just want to play them, I want to make them.

So, I started programming, and I started a lame project.  I thought it was fun, so I needed some more people to help me out.  Suddenly, I had "staff members". These people called me the Boss.  They had big plans, and expected me to carry them out -- they weren't my plans.

But as I said before, you get dragged along.  I assumed the role of the Boss, and somehow they all actually believed I knew exactly what I was doing, and knew exactly where it'd end up.  Well, I didn't, I still don't.  At first I just got totally fucking lost, really.  I took a month long break, and still these people looked up to me.

Eventually I noticed I screwed up so badly, I had to start all over again.  I didn't tell anybody and worked my ass off to get back where I was before, even turned away some friends at times saying "I gotta catch up on my >work<".  The staff didn't notice, they didn't know, they didn't need to know.  All they needed to know was that the Boss would fix things.  I even believed it myself.

It still scares me sometimes though.  When staff members tell me I'm gonna make it big.  I don't know anything they couldn't learn, and still I'm in charge.  I actually get fanmail, I get interviews.  I'm worrying about what "the players" will think, and all of that because I made a couple hundred lines of code to start a little shitty game.

And still I hate being the Boss. I'd rather be a programmer, or an artist, or a map editor.  It's not about pleasure anymore, it's not a creative experience (those I adore), it's WORK.  I feel guilty when too much time goes by without working on the project.

It's over a year later now.  Still don't have a clue what I'm doing, but it's working.  It'll all fall together soon, or so I hope.  And yet I still hate my role in this, even though I wouldn't have it any other way.  The Boss isn't a person.  The Boss is... The Boss.

Kylnara kylnara@kabelfoon.nl