The ever-so-fascinating Mory Buckman recently released a game called The Perfect Color, and I highly recommend that you all check it out. [1] On the surface, it’s about mixing colours, bringing to mind my days as a curious toddler in Montessori school in the late 80′s, but it’s real message is more to do with the creative process and outside forces that influence it. So, yeah, play it, and you’ll definitely see what I mean.
In the meantime, here’s what I wrote to Mory in response:
I thought it was absolutely wonderful, and that it really spoke to me, as a relatively young newcomer to the video game industry. At my job, even though I work for a company that’s supposed to be all about innovation (and honestly, compared to most places, it definitely is), at the end of the day, we need to make money, so there’s a certain amount of pandering we need to do to the “masses”, so to speak. Plus, I’m working in teams, and many of my teammates have completely different tastes from my own, meaning that there always has to be compromises.
This is why I still try my best to work on my own stuff on the side. However, I noticed that in the game, as with in real life, it was very hard to get my colours exactly the way I wanted them, particularly as the game progressed. In real life, I get bogged down with outside pressures when I’m working on personal projects, so I often release things that aren’t perfect. So, in the endgame, my colours were certainly brighter than the “copy-protected” ones, but they didn’t stand out as much as I hoped they would. This is how I tend to feel about my own work at times. It’s saddening, but I still hold out hope that someday in the future, I’ll finish that one game that’ll really shine, and that I’ll hopefully be remembered for after I die.
So, yeah. I liked your game a lot. Thanks for making it.
