The Unexpected Joy of Giving up on Your Dreams

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2023-06-03 14:00:05

I am Captain Kirk on the bridge of the starship Enterprise and my friend Avery is my second in command in a Rey Mysterio mask. We’re engaged in an absurd pretend scenario in his backyard, fusing Star Trek and professional wrestling, and, through the magic of childhood, it makes perfect sense. I’m explaining the details and environment of each planet we arrive at and providing phaser support while Rey wrestles the imagined alien bad guys. Somehow in the flurry of activity we make contact. One of Avery’s wild kicks lands on my arm and I drop my phaser, which is really just a stick.

As the years went by, my imagination moved from backyard play sessions to the fantastical world of “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion”. Instead of my friend Avery, it was a team of game developers at Bethesda Softworks guiding my imagination. I spent hours every evening immersed in the world of Cyrodill, finding new swords, joining guilds, and saving the world from chaos. At each step, I imagined where the story would go next and what feats I’d be able to accomplish. In a way, I found this to be even more fun than the game. I’d spend hours explaining my ideas for how to expand the world to my friends.

One day while discussing my ideas for an expanded “Oblivion” universe, my cousin informed me that games are made by teams of people using a tool called code. I knew right away that I needed to learn to code myself. I wanted a way to express the entirety of my creative ambitions. I wanted to make my own “Oblivion”. At the age of 12 I picked up a book on writing C++ code, and spent months teaching myself to make basic programs in my room on a humble hand-me-down computer with a big bulky CRT monitor.