It's official, I am in love. Yes, I said it, love. Now hold your gag reflex, this is not a love story although it is a story about love.
This weekend I had the honor of attending the IndieCade Festival in Culver City, CA as a finalist. I found myself lost amongst some of the brightest, most creative people wondering how I managed to wander in and how long it would take for someone to reveal me as an impostor, a thief. I could later go on to describe my IndieCade experience as a game in which the player wanders around aimlessly and confused with no clear objective but everyone is really nice and tells the player how smart she is despite her confusion.
I think what sticks with me is the quality of how extremely nice and friendly everyone was, albeit a bit shy at first-- com'on, they are game developers after all! And how excited they were to talk to you about your game, about their game, about any game really. Then later about comics or art or movies or books or theory or what it's like to have your parents calling you asking you to get a real job or to move home. We were kindred spirits.
And, for the most part, that niceness wasn't just a plastic, “I need to be nice to you because I may want to use you in the future.” It was a genuine niceness that stood without pretense to welcome you in, to tell you, yes, you are one of us and you are loved. Honestly, I had forgotten how it felt like to be amongst a group of creatives who weren't coming at you from an angle. It caught me off guard.
Then there was a shining point in the conference where I realized that these people were very much like me, more so than I thought possible. Eureka! I found it! Or perhaps it's more accurate to say, they were very much like a former version of myself. A version that was excited about the world and passionate a
bout creating things, anything, anything that had a purpose and made you feel closer to someone else. A version who was first and foremost an artist and wanted to expand and create and grow and, above all, love love love. A version that I thought had died years ago under the pretense of the art world and the demands of the business world.
These people made me remember that version of my former self. And over those four days I felt a small ember, a smoldering ash begin to light. It awoke something inside me that I thought had long been crushed out by the “real world.” And for the first time, in a long time, I felt free.
One of the pivotal moments that lit my little lonely ash, I think, was attending the breakfast salon artist talk given by the magical team who are the brain children and brawn children of Papermint.*
Now let me side track this tale of love to describe the Papermint team because it's important. They are a rag-tag group of totally bodacious Austrians who could very well sprinkle star dust and flowers with every step; they are that magical! Electric and eclectic, I don't know if anyone at the conference was able to allude the alluring grasp of these fine Austrians.
Ok, back to the salon. In their artist discussion the team spoke with energy and sparkle of how the world of Papermint came to be. They spoke of how they wanted it to be a world free of trivial things like race or gender or heritage; where the only thing that matters is interacting with each other. It's a world about people not objects, love not possessions, and aggression but not weapons. There were many jokes, mostly about sausage-- they are from Vienna afterall-- and many laughs to had around the table. I could feel my face start to tingle with pain from smiling too much, that's how good it was.
Little by little they revealed how each member of the team came or went or came back again. How the Chief Technology Officer, Claudia didn't believe that the Art Director, Babara “Babsi” was a real person because Babsi was locked away working on her thesis for her doctorate. Claudia spoke about how her attitude changed along the way, from “I don't program strawberry houses” to being very much in love with the idea of strawberry houses. Strawberry houses! How can you not love this type of whimsy?
Their story ended with tales of rushed romances with various publishers who left them standing, sadly, at the alter. One such story was their potential deal with big wig who they call the Big Em. They told of the Big Em, that big bad wolf with a slick designer suit and sexy black business cards, locking them in these glass towers of litigation or shuffling them around to talk to this important person or that important person. It was almost a joke, the way they recounted it. Babsi said, “we felt like rockstars.”
But, of course, I'm sure you know how this fairy tale ends. After a year of being tied up in big business paperwork and not being in their little studio working on the game, the love affair ended. And then, Babsi, this little pixie of a girl turns dark and solemn and says, in the most serious and honest tone I've ever heard, “it almost killed us. That's when we went from a team of eight down to one. We almost died.” Around the table you could hear the sound of little hearts breaking. As I looked at the faces of the Papermint team, I could see their pain as they relived that dark moment in their lives. I wanted to die too.
It was this. This pure emotion. This honesty. It took me back to that one moment in my life, where litigation and perception and pretense had just killed me. It reminded me that I too was once alive but then I died. I wanted to cry with this realization. I still want to cry reliving it.
But then there is a silver lining! Because, like I said, this is a story about love and one thing we know about love is that it triumphs over all.
Slowly, the Papermint team picked out the shattered glass and pieced their broken hearts back together. They kept going, as they should.
Now, I could go on and talk about every keynote or panel or round table that reminded me of all the things I used to care about, but that would just drag on. I could mention how I got to meet Bill Viola, an artist I used to write papers on and take tests about in art school. I could talk about how funny Erin Robinson, mastermind behind the love bots that are Nanobots, was when she recounted the real life of an indie designer. Or when Eddy Boxerman of Osmos talked about the perils of game design. Or when, alcohol starved, a determined group of developers went running around Culver City just looking for a liquor store so we could stay up late and talk about games and comic books and awesome little video shorts. But I won't.
I will, however, end with a Springer moment:
Sometimes in our struggle to become real live functional adults, we forget the magic and the mayhem that made us feel like real live human beings. In our seriousness, we become lost in email and to do lists and the general drudgery of life.
IndieCade helped me remember what it was that I loved about myself, about the world. It made me remember that even though I hate my job and I hate being broke and I hate being in debt, there is something else out there. It's not tangible or marketable, but knowing that it's there makes the world a little less lonely and a little bit better.
Thank you.
* And as a side note, if you haven't yet, check out Papermint! It is so kawaiii!!!
** Images courtesy of the internet
