Do me a favor. It’s a big favor, so I understand that most of you won’t. But if you’ll indulge me:
Go make something. Anything. Spend a week, a month, three months, or God forbid, a year, making something. Don’t deviate. Remove distraction.
Write a short story. Write a long story. Write a novel. Paint a picture. Draw 24 pages of a comic. Build a birdhouse. Build a house-house.
I don’t care what it is. Make something. ANYTHING.
When you’re done, take a minute and look over it. Find all the flaws. Look at the places where you took shortcuts because you didn’t know how to do a thing, but somehow made it work anyway.
Look at the beautiful parts. Look at the parts, then look at the whole. Take a moment to appreciate this fact: you made it.
Now, take a picture of it, copy-and-paste it, or otherwise post the work for public consumption.
Publish it. Put it out there. Then, watch the clock and wait to see how long it takes for someone to pass by, take a look, and glibly say “It’s shit.”
Now you know. Now you get it. Now you understand why your glib assessments of even the worst movies, games, books and tv shows are bullshit.
Even Batman v Superman (which I didn’t like) or Suicide Squad (which I didn’t like) or most if not all modern comics from the big publishers (which I don’t like) took work. They exist because someone made them. Sure, they could be summed up as “product” or “cash grabs” or whatever else. But they took work.
Shawn Murphy, who designed No Man’s Sky, is the latest person in a line of people getting whipped to shit because a thing he came up with didn’t live up to what CONSUMERS believed they wanted, based on what game “journalists” unfairly hyped (which by the way, they profited from each and every time, from preview to hype piece to release bulletin to review to the ultimate “Here’s why No Man’s Sky sucks” bullshit thinkpieces).
But you can fly around space. You can visit planets created on the fly. You can collect resources.
You can do all the shit he set out to let you do.
Is it shit because it’s coded poorly, or designed poorly, or one huge lie… Or is it “shit” because it’s not what you want?
How about Suicide Squad? Superman v. Batman? Avengers 2? Literally anything ever made?
Understand: if you’ve not made a thing — even a small thing — all you’re doing is consuming product and shitting out opinions. I’m sorry if you’re a frustrated writer or artist or game dev or filmmaker whose idea of what they would one day make “if only someone took a chance on me” overshadows shit actually being made by actual people. I know how it feels. I was that guy for years. Then, I fucking made something, and suddenly shit changed. I started to see what it means to pour effort into something that doesn’t live up to my standards, or someone else’s standards, or is commercially terrible, or is successful.
I started realizing — I can dislike something without flexing on it. I don’t have to piss all over it to punish it for taking my money. I can just, you know… Not consume it. It’s like going to Golden Corral and eating your weight in terrible stuff, and then complaining that the steak was chewy.
Stop eating at Golden Corral, for one. Second, MAKE YOUR OWN STEAK.
You have the right to say whatever you want. Just understand, until you make something, you’re simply expressing taste. Tastes change and are fickle. But making something lasts forever — regardless of public praise or derision.
Fucking make something.
