The Less Interesting TimesThis is My World and You Can Pry it from My Cold Dead Fingers

2014/06/08 Bushido Mentality

I didn’t go into game development lightly. I thought about it, we thought about it, we know the risks and we know the sacrifices needed. I still do it because this is the best job in the world and I’m willing to do this for a year, knowing it will only be a year, than look for a more stable, higher paying job.

I know the competition is hard, saturation is high and it’s difficult to make it big, or even make it something, in this day and age. I came in, at first, because I thought I was so lucky to get this wonderful job. But that’s not why I put in the long hours. I come in early and leave late because I believe. I believe we can make it, I believe what we’re doing is worth doing. I believe this will find and audience and people will enjoy it.

But I’m not delusional. I know what’s out there. But I heard a story about Samurais once, probably from Sensei Nico or someone in his vicinity. I looked it up just to be sure and I found this:

Uesugi Kenshin, Lord of Echigo in the sixteenth century, explained the samurai’s fatalistic approach to combat:

Fate is in Heaven, the armor is on the breast, success is with the legs. Go to the battlefield firmly confident of victory, and you will come home with no wounds whatever. Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death. When you leave the house determined not to see it again you will come home safely; when you have any thought of returning you will not return. You may not be in the wrong to think that the world is always subject to change, but the warrior must not entertain this way of thinking, for his fate is always determined.

– Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959) p. 188