The Angst Affairs #13

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from: Pippin

date: November 14, 2014

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Hiya Teddy,

Wow, I like the colors for Kyoto Wild – interesting what a big difference something like that can make to the whole thing. (It just looks really nice in general, too, of course.) And I’m with you on just keeping your name for the company. I think it makes sense. The rest of it, whoa, sounds scary. The whole thing of daring to make money directly from producing games is foreign and intimidating to me, so even the language of business and so on seems pretty intense. Given the kinds of lovely things you’re making, and the amount of time you’re spending, you definitely need to be getting paid though. There comes a time etc.

Also, I love quotation marks. I would probably put them around almost every word I use if I could get away with it – it nicely conveys my existential uncertainty. Jostling is going slowly still and I’m constantly distracting myself with other stuff that seems more important at the time. Teaching, well that’s my job so that’s fairly important. But I also decided to start writing essays in the morning, which takes time. And now it’s IGF judging too, so…yeah, not much spare time.

Nonetheless, I’m sketching out some of the exterior scenes at the moment to try to get a feel for the overall scope. I’ve got three basic scenes at this point. There’s an exterior for the house in which you’ll need to get the kids on a bus (and thus deal with crossing a road):

There’s a scene at a park where the kids will want to play on the playground equipment, some of which will be dangerous (perhaps only the slide?):

And a scene at the beach where the kids want to swim (and obviously you need to not let them drown):

That’s all I have though, after that they would all head home and I’m a bit worried that’s it’s not “enough”.

How do you decide what’s “enough,” Teddy?

Help!

Pippin

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from: Teddy

date: July 14, 2014

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Hi Pippin,

You’re the best and I owe you so much angst.  I’m just so overloaded these days, and (ironically) incredibly angst-ridden about what to do with Kyoto Wild. I can’t seem to tear my mind away to write you something well-spoken…so I’m not going to consider this email an official angst. Or maybe I should because it’s so mind-numbed and angsty.

I’m not sure what’s enough, honestly.  Either there is, in fact, an invisible point at which I’ll feel fulfilled by the quality and/or quantity of my work, or I’ll eventually give in and agree with others that I should stop chasing an imaginary carrot.

I don’t want to talk about my games anymore.  Why do you make games, Pippin?  Why do you devote your life to the pursuit, professionally?

Teddy