Most of the time, I spend my weekend with a combination of watching dvds, going out and sleeping. But today I realized something odd. There is at least one tv-series or soap opera which adresses a certain job or profession.
There is the IT-crowd (IT/programming/system administration a.s.o.), Scrubs (medicine), several shows about cooking, building or tuning, Jag (military), Shark (justice/law), and many more.
So for several reasons, these jobs seem to inspire people, showing them how interesting their lives would/could be, if they had chosen a different path.
Now, honestly, I find myself in a similar situation. First, I think that as a game designer I have to awaken the same feeling in people as a tv show would do. The “The Sims” – series is a very good example for such an approch on design, because it follows several mechanics utilized by tv-shows (especially the drama between relationships and people).
Second, I find myself in just the situation in which I have to ask… “What else could I be?”.
Don’t get me wrong. I really like my job. But then again, there is no tv-show about game designers. No drama, no relationsips, no “we need to do this for the people”, nothing. Are we nobody’s idols?
If you’d walk up to adults on the street and asked them: “who is the lead game designer of World of Warcraft?”… do you think they’d know? And WoW has around 10 million players around the world. So how is it possible that there are not close as many people knowing our names, but every women of a special target audience knows, who Sarah Jessica Parker(Sex and the City) is? I just don’t get it. I mean… we amuse as many people as they do, right?
So would it be too much to ask for a tv-series about game developers? Make it unrealistic, make it world-changing make it funny, personal, whatever, but …. make it. So I can at least say, “I do that thing Matt Damon does in this tv-show…”
Now that would be cool, right?
Or do we like beeing these secret entertainers… now… maybe our job is cool the way it is:
“The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.” – (excerpt, Sir Walter Scott)