Defining Awesome

As I’m sitting here, contemplating on the dish of ravioli I just made I inevitably start thinking about true art and the meaning behind the sense of excellence. So let’s resume our little talk about art because it is soo important. Art tells us a lot about not only us as human beings but also about our experience and what should we do with our lives in general.

This post is probably about the source of art and to talk about art I must talk about our minds internal representations. It is a speculation on my path of searching for the true meaning of art and how to create it.

There are certain questions you encounter on this path. For example what comes first: emotion or thought?

Let’s define thoughts as everything that is happening in your awareness such as your inner voice, abstracting, analyzing, rationalizing, imagining, visualizing, hearing, seeing stuff inside your mind.

Emotion is whatever you feel in your body or in general, like the state of mind you are in.

Now do thoughts change emotional states?

Or do emotions change thoughts?

For example I can be sitting in my room thinking happy thoughts about bunny rabbits and how cute they are. Now this will make me joyful. But is it like that? Can’t it be the other way around?

What if I was already feeling joyful and that produced the thoughts of hopping bunny rabbits.

It is important to know what comes first because then you’ll know where does brilliancy come from. Does it come because you think about it and then produce it, or does it come from some place else, rather undefinable. A place which can’t be described much in words, cause you can never catch it like that. A place which is always there with you, every second of your existence. You know about it and you feel its power. Like a tingling sensation inside of you, of existence itself.
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 “If” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run —
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

Maybe it is spring or something and we expect change. Sigvatr and I have come to the conclusion that we are heading in the wrong direction and we need to reevaluate not only our game design approach but our life philosophy in a further cosmological sense. Life is not a random event that is to be wasted. Either we take the best of it or we die trying. I personally have no interest in mediocrity. Sigvatr agrees. We also agree we are only humans and have physical limitations and the only thing that will break these limitations is our desire and drive to create brilliancy. I believe each of us can learn how to create excellence and how to master any specific area of life. In our case, the creation of games as true art that will stand the test of time.

That being said we are throwing weeks of work into the garbage. Berserker at this point is fun but we both know we can do better. So we’re starting over, mainly in the visual and feel department. The game you see now on the previews is just a sketch. We want more and we’ll take it.

Yours truly,
MM

Finally the deal is done. German pop star Thomas Anders from the famous duo Modern Talking will be writing the complete soundtrack for the upcoming Transhuman Design game Berserker. Anders after splitting with band mate Dieter Bohlen was looking for new challenges and decided to write music for a video game. The following clip is from the recent TV interview from German station Pro7 where Thomas announces his upcoming work on the game Berserker.

Modern Talking was a German pop music duo consisting of composer/producer/background singer Dieter Bohlen and singer Thomas Anders. Genre-wise they were often classified under italo-disco. By sales, it was the single most successful pop group in Germany.

Thomas Anders (born Bernd Weidung, 1 March 1963, in Koblenz, Germany) is a German singer, composer and record producer. Anders was the lead singer of Germany’s popular pop-duo Modern Talking, which was produced by Dieter Bohlen in 1984-1987 and in 1998-2003.

Berserker is a side-scrolling multiplayer fighting game set in a mental institute where mental patients kill for survival and for fun. The game is being developed by Transhuman Design.