I have a math post under construction that explains some statistical stuff that we were doing, but when I went to write it I lost interest, then discovered that WordPress’s LaTeX system wasn’t working (Derek assures me it now is), and then wrote about half of it and then got distracted by, you know, trying to ship a video game. Mea culpa. I was going to finish writing that post today, but instead I was struck by the applicability of the following quote by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (“Broken Flowers”, “Coffee and Cigarettes”, etc.) to the craft of game development. Jarmusch, of course, is talking about creative endeavours in general. He advises:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existant. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.'”

Nowhere is this more applicable than in game development. We steal on a regular basis. Every first person shooter references back to the roots of the genre – Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Half-Life. Any role playing game released on a console today digs back through the collective unconsciousness until it eventually turns into either Ultima or Dragon Quest. In our case, Dungeons of Dredmor borrows liberally from Nethack, Linley’s Dungeon Crawl, and Dwarf Fortress. More recently, there has been an alarming infusion of Diablo; we also have some ideas that originated with a lesser-known Roguelike called Lost Labyrinth, which particularily influenced how we assign character skills. Our magical skill set – earth, fire, water, air, white and black magic – comes from, like, every computer game ever. Our musical score contains licks lifted cheerfully by Matthew that pay homage to everything from an episode of Doctor Who that I particularily liked to Pink Floyd’s “Money.” Our art… well, I’ll let David talk about our art.

Sometimes this is a fight in the office. As indie developers, surely we should be doing things that are original.  To heck with that – let’s be authentic!