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Cliff Bleszinski, the public face of the Gears of War series, addressed this in an interview with the Escapists' Russ Pitts. One of the odder things is that he seems to imply that the less gaming he does, the better he becomes at his job. "
I'm at the point now where I want to make sure I have a good work/life balance. I'll play Call of Duty 4,but I might not necessarily get all the achievements; I might not getto the next level as far as leveling up in the online experience," he said. "Imight not beat Army of Two. I'll give it a good five or sixhours and be like, 'OK, I get the experience. Now I want to check outthe latest movie.' Or I want to be outside taking my dog out or justexperiencing life in general and meeting new people.
"
He goes on. "One thing I've learned throughout my life...being tasked with creating new characters and new IP is, you have tohave that pool in your head of experience in life to draw from. Gears 1, for example—a trip to London helped me inspire so much of what the architecture was in Gears.... Andeverything that you experience in life is grist for the mill of yourcreativity. So I think it's good to have a good balance there."
This isn't a new insight, and the possibility that a limited pool ofinfluences can damage your work was also brought up by Ken Levine whilehe was working on Bioshock. "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is Lord of the Rings and Aliens or variations of that," Levine told MTV News, adding, "There's great things in that, but you need some variety."
A GamaSutra article points outthat quality of life is still a major problem in the gaming industry,and the long hours, extensive technical knowledge needed to creategames, and inevitable crunch-time near the end of projects cause manyin the industry to become monk-like in their personal lives. Althoughthrough many details are different, the path to game design is oftenpretty linear: a childhood spent playing game after game, adolescenceand teen years spent learning your way around a computer, college yearsspent honing that experience, and then long hours at work actuallycreating games.
I've talked personally to enough people in the industry to know thatmany designers can sum up much of their lives as caffeinated years infront of a computer screen. That is, until everyone in the industrytakes a day off to see the same movie, which is often an event filmlike Iron Man. Which, of course, already looked like a video game.Leisure time at many companies is spent playing, you guessed it, moregames. While it may be an even larger tangent, the possibility is alsothere to mine literature for gaming content, something Bioshock did with great success.
There can be a joke made here about why women are often treated as sexobjects in games, and Bleszinski goes for it when he said that GeorgeBroussard from 3D Realms claimed that life experience doesn't matterwhen it comes to making games. "
I guess there's a reason why there's strip clubs in Duke Nukem,"he said. An even sadder thought is how children are treated in games;how many times do you see kids as demons, monsters, or ghosts? There isa reason for the rarity of strong parent-child relationships in games:there is a rarity of the real thing among those in the business thatcreates them.
"To be a good creative, you need to be awell-rounded person. You need to have life experience. You need to haveyour heart broken. You need to experience loss. You need to raisepuppies and have a family eventually and know what it's like to put thetop down and drive 120 mph on a beautiful day with the leaves kickingup behind you, with the music playing. Because if you don't know whatthat's like, how are you going to have a real-life frame of referenceto compare it to when you try to bring that level of excitement intoyour games?" Bleszinski summed up. When you can tear apart almost everygame and see the lineage of the design, character, and story in termsof other games, something needs to give. The only question is whetheror not the industry will ever allow the people fueling it to put downthe controller.