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An excerpt from Bruce Sterling's 1991 Computer Games Development Conference speech:
And on the other side of this, the Westboro Baptist Church would like you to know that "god hates nerds". Lovely people. I concur with the Buddy Christ idea. Let's have two of them making out, just to be sure.
...*goes back to working on increasingly stupidly complicated project*
Follow your weird, ladies and gentlemen. Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace your nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, "Woo the muse of the odd." A good science fiction story is not a "good story" with a polite whiff of rocket fuel in it. A good science fiction story is something that knows it's science fiction and plunges through that and comes roaring out of the other side. Computer entertainment should not be more like movies, it shouldn't be more like books, it should be more like computer entertainment. SO MUCH MORE LIKE COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT THAT IT RIPS THROUGH THE LIMITS AND IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE!I'd go so far as to say it explains a bit about the games that came soon after. *snort* The words seem a little forgotten now, though. I guess it can't be helped with so many studios being unable to afford to keep their doors open, let alone making innovations... but I have to believe that's a temporary thing. The economy is still attempting to recover. There are still brilliant storytellers in the world of gaming, things are just slow right now.
I don't think you can last by meeting the contemporary public taste, the taste from the last quarterly report. I don't think you can last by following demographics and carefully meeting expectations. I don't know many works of art that last that are condescending. I don't know many works of art that last that are deliberately stupid. You may be a geek, you may have geek written all over you; you should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope straight people will keep you on as some kind of pet. To hell with them; they put you here. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird and don't do it halfway, put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Have the artistic courage to recognize your own significance in culture!
[...]You don't get there by acculturating. Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.
And on the other side of this, the Westboro Baptist Church would like you to know that "god hates nerds". Lovely people. I concur with the Buddy Christ idea. Let's have two of them making out, just to be sure.
...*goes back to working on increasingly stupidly complicated project*
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