I’ve been thinking about this Ursula K. Le Guin quote:
“The trouble is we have a bad habit, encouraged by pendants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to omit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
I do feel a bit of shame around making art about people who are, ultimately, good. There is a cultural idea that true artistry only exists in darkness. That hope is naïve, and that humans are inherently cruel.
In games this is exacerbated further. Game designers are in a constant scramble to prove the legitimacy of the medium as “Art”. We don’t want to be toymakers. We don’t want to produce fun. To make real art you have to show “the true face of humanity”, as depraved animals scrabbling in the mud.
And I love works that live in the darkness. Hollow Knight, Inside, What Remains of Edith Finch, Papers Please, there is a value in unapologetically “Dark” art.
But I need there to be space for us to see the artistry in sunlight. Cynicism isn’t a reflection of “True” reality, its a lens through which you can see only fragments of human experience. Suffering is real, horror is real, but we do survive the winter, and we do it together. There is a value in representing that.
Note: Kill the part of you that cringes
Tex Barnes 