Well, that's simply unacceptable to me. A stable six-figure job is failure. If I'm fated to try and fail for the rest of my life to break into the 1 in 10,000, then so be it.
I think the idea is that the 1-in-10,000 in this context is that it's not something you can "break into"; you're either born gifted or you're not.
It's really hard for our generation to accept that some people really are born "better" -- which is exactly why the article mentions the education system now focuses on bringing up lower performers rather than identifying and accelerating gifted students.
I'm a strong believer in the idea that some people are born better, you don't have to convince me.
The extent of my abilities is still unknown to me. I know what I want to achieve and I will continue trying to achieve it until I succeed or I am dead. To accept anything less is equivalent to death.
My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. I may not be considered the absolute greatest (rankings like that are very fickle anyway, and never universally agreed upon, even in the sciences). But I do want my works to be considered necessary for any future survey of the major works of this period.
> My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century.
Shouldn't your goal be to make great games? Otherwise, aren't you striving for a goal defined by other people? For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself.
If you are enjoying the journey you are on, then go for it (and I hope you are spending as much time on your social network as you are on games). Otherwise, I'd urge you to consider the opportunity costs of a narrow, intense focus.
That was an implied sub-goal. The verification criteria I gave was merely to illustrate what the concrete results of my endeavors might look like. If I said flatly "I want to make great games," then someone might reasonably respond "how do you know you're succeeding?"
>For goals like yours, politics and personality can matter as much as the work itself.
This is quite true. But Paul Graham has a great quote which I think might be applicable here: "Everyone in the sciences secretly believes that mathematicians are smarter than they are... And so there is a great temptation to work on problems you can treat formally, rather than problems that are, say, important."
Being influential and making something great aren't necessarily linked. In music, for example, lots of musicians I adore list Captain Beefheart as an influence. Captain Beefheart never really achieved much commercial success. I don't like his stuff at all.
Anyway, I sincerely hope that your work towards making something great is enjoyable or at least doesn't consume all of your time. Life is short and there's more things worth experiencing than we have time for.
Sorry to break it to you, but the most influential video game designers were born in the 70s.
They've made Doom, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1-2, Everquest, Master of Orion and all the other classics in the 90s and very early 2000s.
Most games released today are either donationware (WoT) or completely derivative works (think long running series like CoD or sports games), or survival-game clones like No Man's Sky (and about 500 others)
Your best bet would probably be to join Valve and get them to release Episode 3 if you ever want to get any renown and not just endlessly try to push your games on Greenlight.
You have a very limited conception of what video games are capable of.
This is like going up to an aspiring writer in ancient Greece and saying "The Odyssey has already been written, there is nothing more to be done." Not realizing that 2,000 years later, authors like Joyce and Nabokov would still be breaking new ground.
Assuming the human race endures long enough, video games are at the very beginning of what is going to be a very long and interesting history.
Star Citizen isn't even revolutionary though; it's more or less a modern re-imagining of EVE Online. It'll likely devolve into spreadsheet hell just like EVE -- reality is boring, and most of the real world is tracked in spreadsheets.
I do think there is some possibility for innovation in gaming with AR/VR, but I also agree we've probably reached the point of diminishing returns with what we can do with current control schemes (monitor + mouse/keyboard/gamepad).
It's funny you should mention EVE Online, because it's the only MMORPG I've ever played seriously and the only game I've played for longer than a year that kept my interest. It was also pretty revolutionary for 2003 when it came out.
The highest level of gameplay involved very little spreadsheet hell and a lot more skill, leadership and coordination that one might think originally if they did not have a strong corporation to align with. It's true that there a LOT of numbers behind the gameplay that you had to consider, but spreadsheet hell was a result of poor UI/UX choices and not necessarily of game design.
If Star Citizen can replicate that, but with better graphics, and personal ship control (instead of EVE's point and click) - they will already be a success in my book.
Please forgive my blunt opinion, but I think you're incorrectly equating your potential with your legacy. Legacy is greatly influenced by achieving your potential, but ultimately outside of your control. It depends on timing, politics, other people, etc. You cannot control whether you will be recognized or not. You can only wake up each day and do your best. It sounds corny but imo its the only sane way to go about achieving your potential.
One of my further goals is to disabuse people of notions such as this.
As it happens, though, I'm already too late to be the initiator of this sort of cultural shift. Universities like NYU and CMU already offer MFAs in game design. There are conferences and journals dedicated to game studies. So the wheels are already in motion.
Reminds of this experiment in a subway station where they put a world class violinist with a stradivarius to play some of the most highly regarded violin music. The only person that stopped for this high art performance was one that recognized the musician.
The point being that high art can be right in front of us and we may miss it.
I'm not sure if I want to go into details, since I haven't decided if I want to link any of my internet accounts to my professional identity yet... perhaps when it's released I will come back and make an announcement. :)
To get to 95% income percentile, you need to earn at least $190k a year. I'd be very interested in seeing how many gifted students don't reach, say, 75% percentile, which is around $90k a year, and why.
