Comment by PaulRobinson
12 hours ago
As the old quip goes: people don’t want to be writers, they want to have published a book.
You can turn this around as well: people don’t want to read, they want to be well read.
The difference is “effort and process” versus a status. People want the label, but don’t want to do the work to get there.
Nicely put. When I read, "I always knew I wanted to be a writer", I always think to myself, "Oh yeah? But did you know what you wanted to write?" Anecdotally, it feels like I've seen that line in a whole bunch of early-20th-century biographies and journalism - back at height of the profession's prestige, perhaps not coincidentally.
It's perfectly normal to be drawn to a field without knowing exactly what you want to do in it.
"I always knew I wanted to be a doctor" ... "Oh yeah? But did you know what medical discipline you wanted to practice?"
I love reading, do it a lot of and per my Goodreads I’m “well read”. I’m less convinced how much I’ve learned from all the reading that would make me a better writer though. I definitely fell into the trap of wanting to have written a book myself. I grew out of that but still felt/feel like I want to write. The issue that remains is that I’m just not sure I have anything to say!
Yeah. I've seen the same puzzling thing in game development. People don't seem to want to make good games! They want a hat that says "I made a game". That done, they want a hat that says "my game is successful", so they go on subreddits asking for promotion advice. Honest comparison with existing state of the art is seen as annoying; advancing the state of the art isn't seen as a goal at all.
I'm a bit of a victim to this mindset. I don't particularly play many video games, except the occasional one that clicks, but love making small game experiences and similar. I find that gamedev programming is very fun and engaging. Nonetheless, I don't think that I have the combination of skills and creativity (nor game knowledge) to make a game as great as those that have clicked for me in the past ;)