Rudy Says: Booties Be Blogging

Everywhere must have a start, so ours may as well be here and now. It's currently four in the morning and I had the bright idea of trying to develop our shared creative collective website so we can start showing off our stuff and talk about all the cool stuff we do!

Hopefully it catches on and the others are self-motivated enough to make blog posts of their own here. I for one think it'd be cool to post writing content here and do post-mortems on projects I've worked on or share my twitter thoughts that I've had to bury in the depths of my broken soul since I swore off the Nazi loving site and lost my Blue-Sky password. Who knows, this could turn into a really dope outlet or literally nothing at all.

Truth be told, I was going to spend the night updating my own personal website but realized we'd been sitting on this website for over six months and done nothing. New year has me thinking it's time for some change. Yesterday I turned 29. I've been making media in some form or another since I was 15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgbAmJyIDl8

Dear god... Has it really been 14 years? If I said some cancellable stuff in this video, I apologize. Ain't no way you can make me watch this shit to check. Just figured it was right to share that I've been making God awful stuff for longer than many famous creators have been alive. I'm looking at you, Rizzler. You'll always be my black panther.

Anyways....

In all my time and various different attempts to relatively "blow up" and take online video making for seriously, I've never found online success. I've put in hundreds of hours making stuff I loved only to never find an audience. Time and time again I'd feel discouraged, take a hiatus and have to serendipitously find my way back into a charged camera and a new premiere pro project to start the cycle anew.

Many people will say all sorts of things about content creating, with the biggest being "Don't be discouraged!" or "Don't worry about the views! Just keep creating" Well that's bullshit. Creators innately get a small hit every time that stupid engagement metric goes up even if just an extremely faint feeling. Well, maybe not everyone. There's a pacific Islander dude on TikTok or Twitch that just carves things and livestreams his craft while getting uncomfortable when people try sending him money.

However, what everyone is right about is the number of engagements. The number doesn't matter. It's all about the quality of the engagement. Hell, I learned this prior to the popularity of AI, botting, and view farming and the YouTube algorithm changes. Being known for a single viral video wen the way of the one-time-purchase. Getting one person that genuinely connects with what you make matters more than 100,000 people watching you and not saying a word.

Trigger Warning: Self-Harm (Just skip the next couple of paragraphs past the Are You Good stuff if you want to avoid it)

In 2019, Four months after graduating college my then undiagnosed chronic severe depression nearly took the better of me. I came off my graduation with an award-winning capstone game I sunk my soul into. It was a prototype of my family memoir converting VHS footage into interactive in-game assets for a platformer. I was proud of the reception from my professors, classmates, and industry folks there.

While I wanted to continue developing Habla Con Migo, I felt the obligation to shelve it for a more compelling game that would prove to myself and others I was the capable game designer I always dreamed of being since my 8 year old dumb ass emailed Adam Sessler asking him how to make games (btw, remember to patch the graphics on level 3).

Enter Ningún Sombra, a top-down stealth action game based on the Southern Underground Railroad through which I felt a personal connection to. My family came from one of the major Mexican border towns cited for being a refuge for many escaped slaves. I went to Piedras Negras, spoke with my family still living there as well as other knowledgeable locals that shared insights to their town's history. I spent 2 months following that trip extensively researching everything I could on the topic and taking advantage of my employer's university access to a massive library of academic journal and sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-YFzHuLn7E

It painted an incredibly compelling, brutal, and heartbreaking picture of human struggle in the face of impossible adversity. I was inspired by the research to create a fictional story set against unbelievably real historical moments. However, in the process I learned things that shook my faith and damaged my psyche

That summer of 2019, while in the middle of Ningun Sombra research I learned of the migrant caravans with thousands of Central Americans trying to reach the United States to escape dangerous conditions only to find themselves facing American Immigration Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol eagerly looking to capture and place any migrant they could find and separate in detainment camps at an exponential rate.

While I was in Eagle Pass (the American side of the border with Piedras Negras) I visited a history museum to see what information they had on many of the events that had transpired during the height of the southern underground railroad. The Mexican-American curator noted that the man I had entered the museum beside was Honduran as he'd made a comment about being from Honduras shortly after entering. He asked me if I knew the man to which I said yes. Then he asked in an off-putting serious tone, how well I knew the man because there are bounties out on central American immigrants. I laughed off his question and proceeded to ask him questions about the various exhibits to escape that conversation direction.

The man the curator had been referring to was my dad.

Ningún Sombra needed to prove that asshole museum curator and his propaganda museum wrong. It needed to shed light on what I was going on with the people that looked and sounded like me and my family. It needed to tell the stories of the countless lives that fought and struggled tooth and nail against unimaginable injustice only to be subjugated to literal footnotes in history buried behind academic journal pay walls.

My dumbass snapped under the responsibility of solo developing what I believed to be a critical piece of relevant art while juggling a 50+ hour day job and the social emotional intelligence of a baby bird that had yet to leave the nest.

I was burning inside, and the world seemed to be burning around me. I nearly took my life. In the aftermath of hesitating at the final moment, an idea for a small game came into my head, not for anyone else, but for me. A week of sleepless nights and truly desperate development later, Are You Good? was completed.

It was a simple game that asked the question, "Are you good?" I guess you could call it the precursor of my personal AI, Project Rudaloid. The interactive narrative plays out a very real conversation I have with myself in the midst of being overwhelmed with depression. The game takes on the responsibility of committing self-harm in my stead should all other options fail and the game can't change my feelings as a final act to trigger a change of heart. The game literally kills itself. I'm standing here today confirming that Are You Good? worked and continues to work for me. Thankfully, I have a therapist and take medications now, so I don't need to rely on a jury rigged digital anti-depressant to save my life. Though, I'll always have a copy of it just in case.

(We are passed the Trigger Warning Stuff)

The day after I posted the game on my itch.io page I received the following comment:

This was the first time I'd ever felt someone truly care and understand what I made. The countless videos and games I'd made before this never gave me this feeling nor did the hundreds of people I presented Habla Con Migo to. What I was searching in all those projects was someone to sincerely connect to if even for a brief moment on something I was deeply invested in.

What I'm getting at is that creating is a form of expression and connection begging to form community and share the human condition with others. Loneliness is death and community is life. Simple as that.

I'm putting faith in my friends now. The community I helped forged is what is giving me strength and purpose to not give up. I'm going to keep making, keep failing, and keep making again right beside every other Booty until we can't make no more. I know when I make something there is a community of people dear to me willing to check out and appreciate what I've got to share, and you'll be sure as Hell I'll be right there for them as well, even if its in my own special way.

TLDR: Views don't matter. People matter. Let's be each other's people and take on this new year together making art out the wahzoo!

Good job, creator. We love you.

-Rudy (rudog97|ThatGuyRudy)

Dear god, it's 6:30am.