PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

An interesting thing happened at work today. I work at a company that does a website / portal for games, and we have contractors and freelancers doing games for us. (while I make some in house games) Now these contracters are an interesting bunch. Most prefer to work from home, or their own office, and are generally... undependable. When thes contractors "drop out", they don't get paid, so we don't really loose any money in that sense, but we do loose a lot of time since these games take about a month and half each to build. So, a half way drop out will cost us close to 4 weeks of time. Generally, we have about a 50% success rate.

It's probably half our fault too, because we don't really baby sit the process. But them not being in the office also makes enforcing that quite hard..

Anyway, we had one guy come in a few weeks ago, saying he wants to build a game. We weren't very impressed with the demo.. (boss gave him the third degree and all) but either way we gave him the documentation, just to see how far he'd get. In 2 weeks time, the guy comes back.. Frankly, we envisioned him showing up with a broken game with a bunch of technical issues.. But to our surprise, he came back with an almost finished game. It's not the prettiest or most awesomest game in the world, but in 2 weeks, this dude got to where a bunch of contractors couldn't, without an actual contract.

So the moral of the story is, credentials, a beefy portfolio, shiny resume, super high technical chops isn't the only ticket.. sometimes it's just good ol' fashioned diligence and perseverence (hey, the guy came back after he got the third degree), and just the passion in what you do, is that gets you there. I was just so surprised and refreshed to see someone work like this, after we'd been let down by so many rock star developers. I ought to put this in practice in my music career.. which is at a down point currently. (though my technique is better than ever)

Even within music.. do what you have passion for, and keep doing it. And let people know your'e doing it!

thanks ken.
that's a good story...

Unfortunately success is judged mainly by financial success. There is no purpose in life for most people other than to make money, have sex and breed.

it's hard not to like sex, money and bread.

this guy just put some effort into finishing his job when most don't even bother anymore. also, this guy didn't look as impressive as the "professional" jerks who only sometimes keep their word and so he had to fight extra hard for the work, but he is succeeding(well enough, at least he did what he said he would) and he exists which is a hope for any little guy such as myself.

An interesting read Ken. All I can really add is that I'm absolutely positive that if you have a real passion for something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will or even should pursue it. Some people inevitably have several passions & ultimately the one which they choose to pursue isn't always the right one. There's many ways of looking at this subject as with many others, but it does really come down to the individual in most cases as to whether they follow their heart or not.

Mark

passion=suffering in latin

avoid passion.

garyb wrote:passion=suffering in latin

If it wasn't for passion we most certainly wouldn't have ever had Scope, because this platform must have required a lot of it.

yeah, but we don't do it for the suffering. we do it for the love, which is bliss.

stardust wrote:passion creates pain and joy.

dude, i get the pain part, but if suffering gives you joy......

well, I think in this case, passion actually became a motivator for diligence, and ultimately, a result = dependability. Which is very meaningful for being successful in a professional career. (and financially successful too) I think in many professional situtions, being predictable, consistent, and dependable outweighs a perfect result that is unpredictable, undependable, or in the worst case, doesn't materialize at all.

Of course, conceptually it's a different story. In that case, you'd be better off choosing the challenging, unattainble goal and just "learn from your mistake". Ultimately, there is always something to gain from experience (depends on the person's will to learn), so the result doesn't matter as much as the attempt itself.. but that's in an ideal world. In my world, and many others, you'd get the "let's go get some coffee", and be never heard of again.

But hey, the industry is big. The person just goes elsewhere, and gets another contractor job. I hate how the industry is too big to allow for stuff like this. Of course, if they screw big names in the industry, word gets around, and they won't be able to get high profile jobs. But still, there's plenty of mid range jobs so they still survive. It's just brewing ground for well paid incompetence with virtually unlimited chances. It's no surprise there's so many of these guys roaming around. (I know it's indirect, but a start of a chain reaction towards a failing economy perhaps?)

Of course, as been pointed out, passion can also cause mass destruction, and ultimately causing irreversible damage to the person's character and surrounding people. Double edged sword is a very accurate description. At the end of the day, any passion must be harnessed, and redirected to a positive direction. And that's a learned task no matter how much talent or genious you got. You study your passion, your talent, your situation, and make the best out of it.

You need perspective. The depth of your joy directly corresponds to the the depth of your previous depression. There can be no valuable music made from someone who has not experienced a deep depression. Music made by such a person would be pure pablum.

"every man thinks his burden is heaviest.

heaviest.

but i say "he who feels it knows it Lord!"...."

Uncle Bob says it best

I'll play that song on Tuesday garyb, got a reggae gig

I think braincell's observation can also be taken as, "you just gotta travel all the paths". Be it happy, sad, depressed, whatever. It always sucks to be locked into one specific thing. It's common sense that you need to know the lows to understand your highs... but I think the opposite is actually true too. Some people are stuck in the lows, and they somehow train themselves to think that that is the norm... and eventually stop trying to exit the low, because it causes too much stress or requires too much brain power to come up with a solution. I think the point is, you always need both, as braincell says... to keep things in perspective.

yes, all of life is important.