Of Games and Creativity

Sorry for the delayed blog entries! I've been adjusting to my new life, and new schedule.

More than that, my husband has brought home quite the time consumer... In the form of VIDYA GAEMS.


I grew up around video games. It has been a huge part of my life, with my dad originally working for SingleTrac back in the day, and then moving on to be parts of other game studios and now owning his own game business as an Independent Game Developer: http://rampantgames.com/

I know that nowadays, there's a lot of people who would call video games a "bane", a "distraction" or say that "Kids nowadays have no imagination- they don't go outside, all they do is sit around and play video games." I'd like to say that that's not true.

Sure, too much of a good thing can be bad in ANY situation. Just like too much exercise can give you adrenaline disorders and too much writing can give you a heart attack... Apparently.

Regardless, I actually would say that video games has helped me become who I am today. It was a "gateway drug" to creativity.

Growing up, I would watch my father play video games. I was inspired by these games, and they led me to doing some of my first art, and costumes.

At age 6, I saw my father play Final Fantasy X. At that time, I drew my first fanart. I also started playing the Animorphs video game, and would draw the stages of that game as well. (I attempted to look for these old drawings, but couldn't seem to locate them. But take my word on it-- They weren't very good, and I could hardly spell the names of the characters right. But it was the first step in a very long path of art and video gaming)
I also would pretend to be Yuna from Final Fantasy, playing in the garden barefoot with a stick that I cut a circle of cardboard and taped it on, swinging the stick around and dancing, pretending to do the Sending.

Eventually my father handed me the controls, and I started playing my very first game- Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Of course, I was so small that I was absolutely TERRIFIED of the crudely rendered monsters, nor was I the most experienced reader, so instead of going on the quests, I would use Link to play pretend. I would run around the village and make up my own stories about what was happening.





I began my first roleplays when I was about 9, using the characters from Legend of Zelda and other games in a new, unique setting. Thus started my affinity for World Building. This led to me and my friends creating crossovers, and trying our best to characterize the characters properly. Where there were blanks in the plot, we would make our own characters-- which led to our first OCs.

Despite my love of the worlds and arts of these games, I admit that I never BEAT any of the games. I just had an approximate knowledge of their plots, their characters, and their world. The first game I ever actually beat was Kingdom Hearts II, in sixth grade.

It was thanksgiving weekend, and my dad went to Blockbuster where they had a game rental area. He picked out Kingdom Hearts II to play over the weekend. I was IMMEDIATELY enchanted by it, and amazed. I did not put the game down the entire weekend.

Alas, we had to return it, but not until I got one of my best friends hooked on it too. Because I loved the game so much, my father bought the game for me. It only took me about a month to go through the entire thing, and actually beat it. It wasn't too challenging or scary that I put the game down, and the plot was so compelling that I was on the edge of my seat. (Of course, looking back now I find the plot rather cheesy, but it still holds a fondness in my heart). Then started a descent into fandom. I drew and drew and drew and drew the characters. I designed different outfits for them. I drew during school. I made up my own stories about Kingdom Hearts in my head. I began to roleplay Kingdom Hearts with my friends. And... I had started looking at fanart online, and had a HUGE desire to join the community. So this was the time where I first scanned my artwork on my own, and edited it with the GIMP. I couldn't figure out file type as GIMP automatically saved things as an XCF, so I had to learn quickly how to change file types, and how to work the digital program. (Note, before this I was posting art of dragons on a little forum called Dragnix, but it was things my parents scanned for me)




It also got me to get a Deviantart account.

Games led to anime, which led to my WEABOO phase, which drove me to want to draw and create more. I became obsessed with Okami and I beat that game two or three times within the year. I went to my first convention-- Anime Banzai in its second year as Yu Kanda from D. Gray-man and was enchanted by the culture and all the SWAG! It led me to make new friends. I learned more about storytelling. My roleplays got more complex, my art improved. Manga and anime then led to American cartoons and webcomics, and my desire to create my OWN stories. The stories of so many games, anime, and comics diversified my story ideas and character archetypes, expanding my creativity and knowledge base.

As James C. Christensen, famous fantasy painter said in an interview in 1989- "...Creativity is not making something from nothing. Creativity is taking information that we already have and putting it together in a new way. Our brain can be compared to a card catalog in a library. When we’re born we’ve got millions of blank cards. In mortality we fill in the cards. And every card is a single perception. Creativity is simply taking the cards and putting them together in a new order or new combination. In order to be creative we need to associate ideas freely and be willing to try unlikely combinations in the hope that something might come of it."




The more gameplays I watch, the more games I play and experience, the more "cards" are added to my deck. The more "cards" I get, the more creative I become, and the more art I make.

To go full circle, do I feel bad for games consuming more of my time? Not at all. In fact, I feel more refreshed, and more geared up to create than when I was drawing 24/7 and giving myself very little breaks. More than that, I do not think video games is taking away from children's creativity, it's adding to it in a different way.