I've noticed this trend lately where nerdy guys who have some basic know-how about computers, coding, etc, will decide that their time is better spent not focusing on leisure, copes, making money or getting rejected by girls, but on embarking on some kind of massive digital creative project, like a solo video game project, to try and prove their worth and impress everyone with their skill and perseverence.
So far, so good, right? After all, men proving and challenging themselves is nothing new, it's always been done.
The problem is when it turns out that unlike painting or writing, this type of multimedia project takes very many years to complete even with great discipline and gruelling working hours if you're mostly on your own, and the men involved demonstrate how willing they are to flirt with complete burnout, aggravated mental illness and low odds of market success just to get to the finish line.
I think this is where the desperation begins to show, along with the ugly head of male inadequacy in our current society, where lesser males feel like they need to demonstrate superhuman abilities before they will be worthy of approval and a good mate.
It's a very new type of desperate flexing that's not too far away from roiding and injecting and accumulating muscle and joint injuries.
www.pcgamer.com
This article gives you a quick birds' eye view of the problem, but I believe the problem to be much worse from what I've seen. Many male developers in a solitary situation feel obligated to soldier on desperately while privately complaining about mental health issues, suicidal ideation and their new anti-depressant prescriptions.
Eventually with the project's completion, and the subsequent analysis of the results of the "hail mary", arrives the come down...
The creator of Blue Revolver, a space shoot 'em up that sold modestly and needed tons of work and support to keep sales trickling in.
The creator of Iconoclasts, a well-received game that nevertheless hardly created the splash you would expect from a project with a 7 year development time.
Indeed...who could have guessed that a bunch of these lonely, unsupported guys going for these "hail mary" projects alone would end up completely destroyed mentally, asking people to convince them not to rope or temporarily institutionalizing themselves, especially if they were incel throughout the entire process, with no support network and not so much as a shoulder rub... going and going and going because every signal they got from society told them that it's 'do or die' if you're not a top male specimen.
Don't forget, these are real people who said to themselves "Fuck this, I'm not going to just lie down and take it, I'm going to use what I know, work every day and dig myself out of this hole, I'm going to become somebody." and still ended up like this.
So far, so good, right? After all, men proving and challenging themselves is nothing new, it's always been done.
The problem is when it turns out that unlike painting or writing, this type of multimedia project takes very many years to complete even with great discipline and gruelling working hours if you're mostly on your own, and the men involved demonstrate how willing they are to flirt with complete burnout, aggravated mental illness and low odds of market success just to get to the finish line.
I think this is where the desperation begins to show, along with the ugly head of male inadequacy in our current society, where lesser males feel like they need to demonstrate superhuman abilities before they will be worthy of approval and a good mate.
It's a very new type of desperate flexing that's not too far away from roiding and injecting and accumulating muscle and joint injuries.
The daunting aftermath of releasing your dream game, as told by the devs of Stardew Valley, Owlboy, and more
For devs like Iconoclasts' Joakim Sandberg, releasing a game after working on it for eight years can be a thrill that quickly gives way to emptiness and anxiety.
This article gives you a quick birds' eye view of the problem, but I believe the problem to be much worse from what I've seen. Many male developers in a solitary situation feel obligated to soldier on desperately while privately complaining about mental health issues, suicidal ideation and their new anti-depressant prescriptions.
Eventually with the project's completion, and the subsequent analysis of the results of the "hail mary", arrives the come down...
The creator of Blue Revolver, a space shoot 'em up that sold modestly and needed tons of work and support to keep sales trickling in.
The creator of Iconoclasts, a well-received game that nevertheless hardly created the splash you would expect from a project with a 7 year development time.
Indeed...who could have guessed that a bunch of these lonely, unsupported guys going for these "hail mary" projects alone would end up completely destroyed mentally, asking people to convince them not to rope or temporarily institutionalizing themselves, especially if they were incel throughout the entire process, with no support network and not so much as a shoulder rub... going and going and going because every signal they got from society told them that it's 'do or die' if you're not a top male specimen.
Don't forget, these are real people who said to themselves "Fuck this, I'm not going to just lie down and take it, I'm going to use what I know, work every day and dig myself out of this hole, I'm going to become somebody." and still ended up like this.
