Why make games?

Welcome to Tomorrow//Today, your source for monthly updates, news, and design musings from Foresight Studio. To kick things off, I want to tell you a bit about me, and why I’m making games. So, hi! I’m Ben.

When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to be an archaeologist. I was enthralled by the magic built into the foundation of ancient societies—impossible creatures, myths and legends, gods and rituals. The world was huge and unknowable, and it felt entirely possible that somewhere, carefully tucked into hidden places, all these stories were true. I wanted to find those places.

To be honest, I never outgrew that feeling. As I got older, though, I realized that no matter the phenomena they sought to explain, all these stories came from somewhere, and that somewhere was people. People passed them from generation to generation. People took bits and pieces of the world around them, the tides, the seasons, the phases of the moon, and stitched them together into beautiful, messy, constantly-evolving stories.

So I set out to understand how and why people built these stories. I went to college and tried out psychology, but found it pretty unsatisfying. I shifted gears and graduated with a degree in neuroscience and architectural studies, then went for my doctorate in neuroscience.

The more I’ve learned about the brain, the more convinced I’ve become that the fact we’re alive and conscious is a kind of magic. Each person’s perception of the world is a dimension of its own, filtered through language and sensation and experience, somehow emerging from this evolutionary accident rattling around in our skulls, this immense network of cells that buzzes with electricity, courses with chemicals. Through this lens, even the most mundane aspects of life are incredible and strange.

And that’s why I make games. Because we’re still making myths of our reality, every minute of our lives. Because the way a human mind can transmute a handful of rules into meaning is bizarre and beautiful. Because existence is a weird place.

I make games because magic is real.

Looking to the future,

Ben // Foresight Studio

PS: On a practical note, you can find more about what I’m working on over on Itch, Twitter (for as long as it lasts), and the Foresight Studio Discord server. My first major TTRPG project, The Cross Stitch, has been printed and packaged, and is coming to several online retailers within the month. It will also be available as part of the upcoming Wicked Wanderers Winter Bundle from The Lost Bay Studio. Pre-orders open tomorrow.