From: ragabash@lords.com
Subject: A Valediction concerning creation
Date: 03 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT
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I know that I would be remiss if I did not send out words of wisdom and
warning to those aspiring writers/creators who are as yet unpublished but
who are just now starting to sail out from safe harbors and into wider,
deeper waters.

You need to be aware of the Mill.  It is a concept, not an actual place.
The Mill is where all good, creative game industry writers go to be ground
up and spit out again.  The Mill is a vicious addictive cycle of greed,
stress, and ultimately, silence.

I'm not sure about other creative professions, but writing for the gaming
industry is a little like selling your soul to the Dark. At first you love
it - it's some of the most rewarding, challenging, and satisfying work
that an artist can do.  Eventually, it will destroy you.

When you get your first creative breakthrough, life is absolutely
wonderful.  Everything works well for you.  You put your all into a
project, finish it on time, and thus, you have proven yourself.

Once you prove yourself, then you are on your way to the Mill.  You see,
in the industry, the Mill has created a number of nearly-burned-out husks
of writers who have been used so often and in such raw succession that
they couldn't possibly create a fresh, new idea (and even if they did,
once you are treading the courses of the Mill, the industry does not
listen to your ideas. You are a convenient work horse, not a resource).

Here's how it works: You get assigned Project #1. You do it well, on time,
in good shape, and get assigned Project #2. You do that well, too. Then
word at the Mill gets around, and suddenly you are offered many projects.
People are fighting over you, struggling to schedule you in to a time slot
in their production schedule.

This is where the Mill really goes into action.  You see, a writer doesn't
make a lot of money in this industry, compared to others - there is just
no way that the game companies can afford a truly decent payment for
services rendered.  So, what happens is that, in order to make any kind of
real money, a writer must basically accept most, if not all, of the
projects that get offered to her. If you turn down a project, you run the
risk of upsetting the source of your work, and never working with them
again. The Mill feels betrayed when you do not run to its schedule.

So, as a writer, you begin to dance to the Mill's tune the moment you
accept a number of different projects.  Inevitably, you start to suffer
creative burnout.  Pretty soon, you're missing deadlines and, one-by-one,
a domino effect of failure begins.

At the Mill, your name is stricken from the list of the Holy. You become a
begging sycophant, trying to gain extra time to do your work, while making
promises you know you can never keep.

Finally, your own creative power leaves you. Silence ensues. Words no
longer spring from your fingertips. The downward spiral of
greed-stress-silence has made you a new victim of the Mill. Without
fanfare, another body is tossed on the heap out back.

Because of the dearth of reliable, non-burnt-out writers, the Mill becomes
 shark-like in its requirement of fresh bodies to keep its internal fires
burning. New writers must be recruited in order to keep the Mill fires
burning.

Fresh meat: that's you.

What causes the Mill?  The Mill does not feel it owes anything to its
artists except a check and three copies of the finished product. The Mill
does not regulate its creative human resources. It's amazing that
companies which probably spend a great deal of time and effort making the
right decision about office space, capital investment, and hiring of their
own personnel do not pay more than a passing glance at the destructive
cycle that their lack of creative resource management brings.

Not all companies in the industry are part of the Mill - but you need to
be aware of it in order to proceed safely along your path.  I don't wish
to slander any company by this writing - it is not my intention.

I am not trying to say that the companies I've worked with are part of
the Mill.  I am trying to identify the *process* - not point fingers at
any specific company.

My prescription for the Mill?  It's time for the companies participating
in the Mill to come to the understanding that they are destroying the very
thing which makes them their money. It's time for people who assign work
at the Mill to be given a supervisor who holds to a work-assignment
standard that takes into account writers' creative needs as well as the
needs of the company schedule. It's time for writers to come together to
show each other support and to help each other get over the Mill's cycle
and resist it.

To be clear, the Mill is a consensual entity - writers must agree to
participate just as much as companies agree to perpetuate the cycle.

The creative process is not one that can be canned and forced into an
industrial sweatshop without it burning out the ones who work there.  It
must be given room to play, room to run, time to research, meditate, and
ruminate.

Only when there is time given for creativity and good relations between
employee and employer will there be a new wave of fresh ideas in the
industry.

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Responses:

From: Tim Byrd <tbyrd@full-moon.com>
Subject: Re: A Valediction concerning creation
Date: 11 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT
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References: <867938217.29981@dejanews.com> <33c50f6d.0@oit.umass.edu> <5q3hq5$cn9@acmex.gatech.edu> <33C54D44.3A61@ll.mit.edu>
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Newsgroups: alt.games.whitewolf,rec.games.frp.storyteller,rec.games.frp.misc


Sven said:

> (For the record, I agree with _very_ little of what Sam has written
>  below -- I feel he has been too soured by his own life experiences to
>  comment objectively or even usefully on this very individualized and
>  subjective topic, and his cracks regarding 'typical gaming companies'
>  mirror White Wolf's policies, right down to their freelance contracts,
>  sufficiently for me to doubt his 'I'm not trying to slam anyone in
>  particular' disclaimer.
>
>  But he is an _eloquent_ sonofagun, and at least worth reading. ;)
>
I think the forum he chose to post this in says it all, don't you? He
posted in the White Wolf newsgroup, not the RPG.misc newsgroups, after
all.

Unfortunately, though I don't share his stance completely, I do have to
second some of Sam's misgivings about The Mill, and I know quite a few
others who've had prior associations with it who wound up having bad
feelings about the relationship, including many of the original founding
members.

There are some people who leave trains of grudges in their wakes as they
move through their lives, even if they don't set out to do so. There are
also companies that do so.

Doesn't mean up & comers shouldn't go for the glory of writing for their
favorite game. Just make sure you have EVERYTHING down on paper (that's
called a contract, son), and hold their feet to the fire if they don't
honor that paper, especially about payment deadlines. If you need the
money now, the bills piling up on the table, go work a temp job, don't
expect The Mill to pay you anywhere near on time.

And if you have some sort of falling out with The Mill, don't be
surprised if some of the people there go out of their way to malign you
to others in the industry. The Mill, at its worst, can be quite petty
and vindictive.

At its best, well...at its best, it can be pretty cool. Just watch your
back and maybe you'll be okay. You might even go on to write for
companies that pay well and on time.

Best,

Tim
--
"Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet
subdued to man, its presence refreshes him."
                                                   -- Henry David
Thoreau
The Path of the Wolf: http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/7792

From: Paul Mason <panurge@ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: A Valediction concerning creation
Date: 13 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT
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References: <867938217.29981@dejanews.com> <33c50f6d.0@oit.umass.edu> <5q3hq5$cn9@acmex.gatech.edu> <33C54D44.3A61@ll.mit.edu>
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Sam Chupp's wrote:

> I know that I would be remiss if I did not send out words of wisdom and
> warning to those aspiring writers/creators who are as yet unpublished
> but who are just now starting to sail out from safe harbors and into
> wider, deeper waters.

[lots more similarly well put together sentences snipped]

> Only when there is time given for creativity and good relations between
> employee and employer will there be a new wave of fresh ideas in the
> industry.

By a curious coincidence 'The Mill' was the address of TSR(UK) in the
days when such a thing existed...

It did seem to me that this manifesto was very much in the World of
Darkness mould: adolescent individualist angst, in which certain mildly
unpleasant aspects of the world are blown up into a great existential
welter of agonising and resentment.

I mean, yeah, like it's any different in any other job?

The call for games companies to manage their human resources more
caringly is all very nice, but is likely to happen in the future about
as often as it has happened in the past. That's the reality we inhabit.
Just be glad you aren't making railways in Burma.

Finally, just to show that I read the whole thing through, and am
prepared to make constructive suggestions, there is one flaw in Sam's
apparently 'inevitable' sequence. It's the bit where the writer gets
successful and feels the necessity to take every job offered. This is
the point of decision at which the professionals separate themselves
from the amateurs. The professional realises that they do not have to do
every project offered them in order to keep in the Industry's good
books. They know that the secret is to ration the industry, and use
their own reputation to squeeze the best deal they can (still not likely
to compare with certain other jobs, of course, but hey, you chose to
write RPGs for a living). Doing that for a year or two not only breaks
the burnout cycle, it even _enhances_ your professional reputation,
because you don't get overexposed, and what you _do_ write tends to be
of an overall high standard.

In short, the adolescent approach is to blame it all on a faceless,
reified entity, usually referred to in code and with capital letters
('The Mill'). The adult approach is to take responsibility into your own
hands and make the smart decision.

It would be nice if companies didn't exploit those who were unable to
make the smart decision.

It would also be nice if there was no hunger in the world. Or if many
Americans didn't seem to have this pathological hatred of an
organisation which has, amongst other things, been responsible for the
eradication of the most dangerous disease in the world (smallpox).

But there is hunger. And in the modern US, the UN seems to be replacing
the USSR as bugbear number one.

This is just something we have to live with. And deal with responsibly.
And not blame the boogyman if things don't go the way we want them to.

As a final postscript: sure it would be nice to have a fresh wave of new
idea in this 'industry'. I'd rather see a fresh wave of new ideas in
this hobby. The industry, like most, is about making money. The hobby,
on the other hand, is about having fun and exploring possibilities.

-- 

Best wishes

Paul Mason              (http://www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~panurge)


From: gt8506a@prism.gatech.edu (Rob Mayberry)
Subject: Re: A Valediction concerning creation
Date: 15 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <5qg3mv$mge@acmey.gatech.edu>
References: <867938217.29981@dejanews.com> <5q3hq5$cn9@acmex.gatech.edu> <33C54D44.3A61@ll.mit.edu> <33C865FB.EF8F7854@ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Newsgroups: alt.games.whitewolf,rec.games.frp.storyteller,rec.games.frp.misc


In article <33C865FB.EF8F7854@ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp>,
Paul Mason  <panurge@ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp> wrote:

>By a curious coincidence 'The Mill' was the address of TSR(UK) in the
>days when such a thing existed...

Yeah, and it was posted to WW newsgroups.  I think that this was intended
to be just what it looks like, a critique of the industry as a whole.

>It did seem to me that this manifesto was very much in the World of
>Darkness mould: adolescent individualist angst, in which certain mildly
>unpleasant aspects of the world are blown up into a great existential
>welter of agonising and resentment.

Sam Chupp is anything but adolescent.  ;)

>I mean, yeah, like it's any different in any other job?
>
>The call for games companies to manage their human resources more
>caringly is all very nice, but is likely to happen in the future about
>as often as it has happened in the past. That's the reality we inhabit.
>Just be glad you aren't making railways in Burma.

OK, here is where I start to agree.  Frankly, any job is unpleasant:
that's why you are paid for it.  We try to choose professions which are
more enjoyable, but in the end, VHDL, economics, biochemistry, whatever-
all are sources of income which require creativity but which can become
boring, hackish and unpleasant.

>from the amateurs. The professional realises that they do not have to do
>every project offered them in order to keep in the Industry's good
>books. They know that the secret is to ration the industry, and use

Unfortunatly, the professional usually has kids and a house to fund.  The
reality is that if there are vast amounts of money to be made in the game
writing field, I haven't seen them, and I doubt that I will.  You take
what you can get because there are groceries to buy.  

Try making money on the jazz circuit.  Or acting for a living.  Art isn't
lucrative unless you are one of the incredibly rare mass successes.  

Rob
-- 
Robert Mayberry         Student of Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech
gt8506a@prism.gatech.edu          |     "Never underestimate the power of 
tanzeran@r63h163.res.gatech.edu   |      human stupidity"-  R.A. Heinlein