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Description

Based on my most recent, though not very recent anymore today, play-through of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Explorers of Sky. Arguably one of my favorite games, period. I loved it as a kid and even though the story is exactly the same as the dozen times I played through it before, I loved it just as dearly if not even more so as an adult. Nostalgia probably played a major part in that.

I want to talk about some quite personal things, mostly ARPG related, that I thought about a lot while drawing this. If you aren't really into existential nonsense of some stranger you don't even know, feel free to skip the wall of text below, that is perfectly fine and understandable. Honestly I could make a whole post of its own on this topic but I don't know, I don't want to draw that much attention to it I guess. This is just me rambling at 2am about things this particular art piece had me thinking. And please don't feel like you have to try to cheer me up or make me feel better, as I'm not asking for anything of the sort - just getting some things off my chest into the void that is the internet.

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I started this piece a long time ago and forgot it under all the things I "had to" do, while in all honesty most of those things were no kind of necessity but rather things in the ARPG scene that gave me easier satisfactions.

I got into ARPGs pretty much exactly 4 years ago. I was in a very different place in life then, still comfortably in high school/whatever the equivalent of the Finnish lukio would be, in a loving relationship that I thought would last forever, with basically all the doors of opportunities still open for me. As a kid I'd always liked creating art but in my late teens I began to explore the ideas of not pursuing it as a career - I wanted to be rational about it and art just isn't something you make a career out of as simply as you would by studying medicine and becoming a doctor. I didn't feel like I was good enough at art so another career choice would be smarter. So when I discovered this whole new concept of Art Role Playing Games, I hadn't really drawn that much for a while, not very seriously at least. It got me hooked right away and instantly I was drawing again with a whole new passion. I felt purpose in every piece I drew because the point of the game is to reward every drawing one way or another. It got addicting. For the first couple of years I feel that I developed pretty well as I actually drew with purpose and tried to learn while getting that satisfaction of playing a game. It was nice.

But now I look back and there's this one part of me that wishes I hadn't gotten as into it as I did. It became a lifestyle more than an art hobby. In the past 4 years I have drawn very little art outside of ARPGs. Sure, ARPGs rewarded me for learning to draw decent backgrounds and I got to explore all kinds of prompts and situations I wouldn't have come up with, but in the end it all became just one simple formula: full body visible, colored, shaded, background of at least 3 elements. Rinse and repeat for the next prompt. Occasionally I would get an idea for an art piece but I'd end up scrapping it because it wouldn't fill the requirements for any of the things I had to do. Once in a while I'd get a new creature that would need a design and then I'd have to stress about training it so it can breed, because I probably have some pairing I'd be interested to try with that creature. But I have a dozen others in line already for their trainings. And monthly quests, those have deadlines so they must be prioritized to get the limited thing that I probably won't even get unless I grind up 10 entries for it. But now I have spent all my time and energy on this month's timed event so I have none left for those trainings I wanted to do, or that another thing I'd need for ranking these specific creatures up. Then I also need to track deals I have with others so I wouldn't have to do it all by myself: I'm waiting for something important from someone, the deadline has passed a long time ago and they haven't messaged me at all, I'd really need this to be done already for something or someone else. Should I be more lenient with these, am I too strict? It has been 2 months since I last heard of them but I don't want to be a horrible person so for the 200th time I'll just wait a little longer, maybe message them a couple of times in the next two more months with no reply. Or maybe I'd be feeling pissed that day and cancel the deal right away but then feel really guilty for being so strict - after all, the other person has their own problems and I might have added more in the form of guilt on them for failing the deal.

It's gotten more stressful than it is fun. But still I am hooked on the little rush of dopamine I get from producing a piece of art that gets me some reward in the game. The vast majority of the things I have drawn in the past 4 years I feel are mediocre at best if not utter garbage. But I've let myself get away with it because it gets me the reward anyways, I don't have to like it myself. I can be satisfied with the reward even when I'm not satisfied with the art.

And now I'm desperately trying to hold my life together pursuing art as a career in the game industry but falling behind in my studies, suffering both mentally and physically because of mental health issues that lead me to be so tired that I don't have the energy or willingness to take care of myself physically either. I feel a great loneliness in my day to day life because of how poor my ability to form connections with other people is. I have massive difficulties opening up about these things to people. My depression tells me every day how I've failed at everything, how I'm unworthy of anything good and will never have a future worth even living for. I don't believe in a better tomorrow anymore. Some days I can ignore it better and feel fine, sometimes maybe even good for a while when I'm distracted by something. I distract myself with things like ARPGs and video games because those give me at least some little sparks of accomplishment. In ARPGs I can feel that I have goals I can reach and things that do matter for me at least. I can put the pen down and look at a drawing I don't like but I don't push myself to make it better, because I don't need to. I just want to feel that little bit of satisfaction from it already. It's a trap of mediocrity that I can't seem to pull myself out of, not with how the rest of my life is.

If I was given the chance to go back in time to change one thing, I would go back to myself 4 years ago. I wouldn't stop myself from joining the ARPG scene, because in it I have found so many amazing people I wouldn't have met otherwise and had plenty of enjoyable experiences overall, but I would tell myself not to go in too deep. I would go back and have that younger me with brighter-looking future promise to do art properly both inside and outside of the ARPG things. That way maybe I wouldn't feel like I have let 4 years more or less waste away with opportunities closing, leaving me in this miserable mess I now find myself. Or if at least I could go back and re-live that time of my life when I was still so hopeful and happy. I'd really want to be happy again, truly happy and not just temporarily happy for 2-3 hours when I'm distracted from my own life and reality. Really, I'd want to go back to the 10-year-old me who played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for the first time and was just so full of joy that no power on earth could take it away.

Description

Based on my most recent, though not very recent anymore today, play-through of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon - Explorers of Sky. Arguably one of my favorite games, period. I loved it as a kid and even though the story is exactly the same as the dozen times I played through it before, I loved it just as dearly if not even more so as an adult. Nostalgia probably played a major part in that.

I want to talk about some quite personal things, mostly ARPG related, that I thought about a lot while drawing this. If you aren't really into existential nonsense of some stranger you don't even know, feel free to skip the wall of text below, that is perfectly fine and understandable. Honestly I could make a whole post of its own on this topic but I don't know, I don't want to draw that much attention to it I guess. This is just me rambling at 2am about things this particular art piece had me thinking. And please don't feel like you have to try to cheer me up or make me feel better, as I'm not asking for anything of the sort - just getting some things off my chest into the void that is the internet.

---------------------------------------------

I started this piece a long time ago and forgot it under all the things I "had to" do, while in all honesty most of those things were no kind of necessity but rather things in the ARPG scene that gave me easier satisfactions.

I got into ARPGs pretty much exactly 4 years ago. I was in a very different place in life then, still comfortably in high school/whatever the equivalent of the Finnish lukio would be, in a loving relationship that I thought would last forever, with basically all the doors of opportunities still open for me. As a kid I'd always liked creating art but in my late teens I began to explore the ideas of not pursuing it as a career - I wanted to be rational about it and art just isn't something you make a career out of as simply as you would by studying medicine and becoming a doctor. I didn't feel like I was good enough at art so another career choice would be smarter. So when I discovered this whole new concept of Art Role Playing Games, I hadn't really drawn that much for a while, not very seriously at least. It got me hooked right away and instantly I was drawing again with a whole new passion. I felt purpose in every piece I drew because the point of the game is to reward every drawing one way or another. It got addicting. For the first couple of years I feel that I developed pretty well as I actually drew with purpose and tried to learn while getting that satisfaction of playing a game. It was nice.

But now I look back and there's this one part of me that wishes I hadn't gotten as into it as I did. It became a lifestyle more than an art hobby. In the past 4 years I have drawn very little art outside of ARPGs. Sure, ARPGs rewarded me for learning to draw decent backgrounds and I got to explore all kinds of prompts and situations I wouldn't have come up with, but in the end it all became just one simple formula: full body visible, colored, shaded, background of at least 3 elements. Rinse and repeat for the next prompt. Occasionally I would get an idea for an art piece but I'd end up scrapping it because it wouldn't fill the requirements for any of the things I had to do. Once in a while I'd get a new creature that would need a design and then I'd have to stress about training it so it can breed, because I probably have some pairing I'd be interested to try with that creature. But I have a dozen others in line already for their trainings. And monthly quests, those have deadlines so they must be prioritized to get the limited thing that I probably won't even get unless I grind up 10 entries for it. But now I have spent all my time and energy on this month's timed event so I have none left for those trainings I wanted to do, or that another thing I'd need for ranking these specific creatures up. Then I also need to track deals I have with others so I wouldn't have to do it all by myself: I'm waiting for something important from someone, the deadline has passed a long time ago and they haven't messaged me at all, I'd really need this to be done already for something or someone else. Should I be more lenient with these, am I too strict? It has been 2 months since I last heard of them but I don't want to be a horrible person so for the 200th time I'll just wait a little longer, maybe message them a couple of times in the next two more months with no reply. Or maybe I'd be feeling pissed that day and cancel the deal right away but then feel really guilty for being so strict - after all, the other person has their own problems and I might have added more in the form of guilt on them for failing the deal.

It's gotten more stressful than it is fun. But still I am hooked on the little rush of dopamine I get from producing a piece of art that gets me some reward in the game. The vast majority of the things I have drawn in the past 4 years I feel are mediocre at best if not utter garbage. But I've let myself get away with it because it gets me the reward anyways, I don't have to like it myself. I can be satisfied with the reward even when I'm not satisfied with the art.

And now I'm desperately trying to hold my life together pursuing art as a career in the game industry but falling behind in my studies, suffering both mentally and physically because of mental health issues that lead me to be so tired that I don't have the energy or willingness to take care of myself physically either. I feel a great loneliness in my day to day life because of how poor my ability to form connections with other people is. I have massive difficulties opening up about these things to people. My depression tells me every day how I've failed at everything, how I'm unworthy of anything good and will never have a future worth even living for. I don't believe in a better tomorrow anymore. Some days I can ignore it better and feel fine, sometimes maybe even good for a while when I'm distracted by something. I distract myself with things like ARPGs and video games because those give me at least some little sparks of accomplishment. In ARPGs I can feel that I have goals I can reach and things that do matter for me at least. I can put the pen down and look at a drawing I don't like but I don't push myself to make it better, because I don't need to. I just want to feel that little bit of satisfaction from it already. It's a trap of mediocrity that I can't seem to pull myself out of, not with how the rest of my life is.

If I was given the chance to go back in time to change one thing, I would go back to myself 4 years ago. I wouldn't stop myself from joining the ARPG scene, because in it I have found so many amazing people I wouldn't have met otherwise and had plenty of enjoyable experiences overall, but I would tell myself not to go in too deep. I would go back and have that younger me with brighter-looking future promise to do art properly both inside and outside of the ARPG things. That way maybe I wouldn't feel like I have let 4 years more or less waste away with opportunities closing, leaving me in this miserable mess I now find myself. Or if at least I could go back and re-live that time of my life when I was still so hopeful and happy. I'd really want to be happy again, truly happy and not just temporarily happy for 2-3 hours when I'm distracted from my own life and reality. Really, I'd want to go back to the 10-year-old me who played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for the first time and was just so full of joy that no power on earth could take it away.