I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that every single job ad ever published by a game company has asked for people who were "addicted to games," or "obsessed with games," or something equally unhealthy-sounding.

The thing is, while it's easy to be passionate about interactive entertainment as long as you stick to playing all the time, it's damn hard to remain so once you're actually inside the industry. Trust me: idealism quickly goes the way of the dodo when you're chasing bugs eight (sixteen) hours a day, tweaking the same couple of levels for two and a half years, or getting laid off by email three hours before the company Christmas party.

At the risk of ruining my career, let me state that I lost my passion for computer games a long time ago. Don't get me wrong: I still get pretty excited when a new Will Wright title comes out, and my wife thinks that I spend way too much of my pocket change at the local board game shop. But I won't go out of my way to try out twenty new demos every week like I'm told I should.

And you know what? It hasn't been the end of the world. In fact, I'm pretty convinced that losing the passion has made me a much, much better developer.

Why did I lose the passion? Let me count the ways, and tell you how getting rid of the passion actually solved most of my problems.

Overwork. I know, I know, I keep rambling on and on about this every month. But that's because it's true. I love sushi, but I wouldn't want to eat a sperm whale. See, I'm lazy, and I love my free time. So I went freelance to control my work hours. Worked like a charm: when I finish a tough project, I take a vacation and there's nothing that anyone can do about it. None of this "two weeks off a year, three after five years of service" nonsense. I'm a firm believer in the rule that says more free time means better work efficiency. Germans get an average of six weeks paid vacation a year, and I don't see my old bosses' BMWs falling to pieces on the highways too often.

It's hard to keep up. It seems like it was just yesterday that I learned how to control a 2D blitter in Assembly language. Now I'm supposed to calculate quaternions with my eyes closed, know 300 software patterns by name, and train neural networks by hand? (Note: I'm pretty good on 2 out of 3, and I'm not saying which.) And what about other background material that may come in handy, like historical biographies or economics? Now, I set aside an average of one day every week just for research. A work day: my weekends are my own. As a result, I design better and faster. Which is necessary, because this research time cuts my weekly billable hours by 20%.

Not much creative freedom. Sometimes, there is only so much you can do within the constraints of a license agreement - never mind a publisher's debilitating aversion to risk. And the tenth time you're asked to design effectively the same product, you can lose interest. My solution: look for shorter projects. It's easier to stay focused on a "borderline" assignment for three weeks than for eighteen months. I don't miss the big consoles one bit.

Lack of recognition. In this business, it's easy to get cheated out of a credit, or to see a great piece of work get buried by a bungled marketing campaign. My solution: I count achievement in checks. If I'm done with an assignment and the client is satisfied, that's enough for me. Whatever happens then is out of my hands; if the project is a hit, great, and if it tanks, I won't lose sleep over it.

Powerlessness. As a rank-and-file employee, you're at the mercy of many outside forces: the boss' and the publisher's whims, the company's going out of business, your neighbor's bad faith or incompetence, etc. Going freelance solved this one for me. Other people will start their own companies, work hard to get a promotion, etc. - any way to increase your level of control over your own life is a good one.

Disconnection with the subject matter. The purpose of games is to allow players to experience something they would like to do in real life but can't. For me, that means going to Mars, building an empire, or becoming a halfway decent writer. I don't know about you, but I've never felt the urge to carjack an ambulance, murder civilians for money, or (and this is a well-publicized stunt you can perform in GTA3) run a prostitute over with a sports car to steal back the money I just gave her for oral sex. Now, I'm not trying to impose my moral standards or dictate what people should be allowed to play: I'm just saying that I don't find these "shock value" games entertaining. And the deeper into shock the industry goes, the less I want to play the games. Heck, I don't think I've spent more than 30 minutes on all first-person shooters published after the original Wolfenstein 3D combined. Not that they're not well done; I just can't be bothered to care. On a similar tangent, I can only slay so many orcs and race so many cars before I feel that I'm wasting my time. I solved this problem by returning to board games in a big way. There's a tremendous amount of diversity in this field - there just isn't enough of a market to support hordes of clones.

The dirty underside of the business. Have you read the recent mainstream press article about "playola," the not-so-little gifts that publishers bestow upon reviewers in the hope of buying good press? Or the one about the publisher who wanted to pay families to advertise a game on the tombs of their recently deceased loved ones? Or have you ever had a release pushed back a couple of months because the publisher wanted to keep the Christmas slot for another game they had spent more on? I used to be outraged by that kind of thing; now, I keep my mind on my work and ignore the rest.

If you've managed to keep your passion for games, good for you; it's going to make your life much easier. But there is no reason to despair if you haven't. Now that I'm a bitter old curmudgeon, I do better work, and I often enjoy it a lot more:

[] Since I have little emotional attachment to any company, I can tell clients exactly what they need to hear, whether they want to or not.

[] By extending emotional detachment to the actual work, I don't go nuts if they don't always agree with my suggestions.

[] And since I know exactly what I want and what I'm willing to sacrifice to get it, I keep my energy for interesting assignments, on which I do a good job.

For me, at least, "like" is better than "love" as far as work is concerned. Would it also be better for game developers in general? Maybe, maybe not. But it's worth thinking about. No matter what the ads say.

BIO
François Dominic Laramée has plagued the game industry for almost a decade, finagling his way into a variety of short-lived jobs as studio head, producer, designer and programmer, until he ran out of luck and was forced to become a (mostly starving) freelancer three years ago. He is in no way responsible for the success of the more than 20 console, PC, online and board games for which he claims unwarranted credit, and should never have been allowed to edit Charles River Media's upcoming book "Game Design Methods" or to publish his insane ramblings in over 35 articles and book chapters. Visit his mediocre web site, http://pages.infinit.net/idjy, at your own risk.