Mimicry and the Derivative: Read More, And Ignore

It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I really hope that's true, because this week I've wasted at least two hours holding my head in my hands agonizing about originality.

In the past I've conquered this by reminding myself not to be overly religious about originality. Some people are, and that works for them. The comedy troupe Picnicface, for instance, spend a lot of time working for original content. In comedy, it's important to stand out.

In speculative fiction, which is what I spend most of my time agonizing about, originality tends to take a different form. A lot of readers criticize medieval European fantasy for being essentially a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings. That's fair, but it means originality for a popular fantasy novelist is often found within the plot or the characterization, rather than world dynamics. There may be bilgy orcs and fair elves, but perhaps they fight over gender politics and peace treaties?

I often find it difficult to read those kind of haphazard reimaginings, mostly because the originality is achieved by injecting very contemporary, often very subjective politics into already-established fantasy archetypes.

Let's pull away from novels, though. My current bout of angst (which is also conveniently leading to my first proper post here in a month or so) concerns mimicry in game design.

I taught myself to write by reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again and again and again. In high-school I was a fixture atop a particular ledge in a particular hallway, always reading the same book. I began writing seriously about the same time and initially I drew a lot of my style from Adams intelligent colloquialism. Problematically—and perhaps fortunately—I was telling a story of hopeless existential genocide, which forced my voice and style to grow.

I've now written so many mind-numbing articles for J-School, the Gazette or this blog that I've developed a more unique tone, I think. But when it comes to games, I'm a rank amateur. I dabble, I experiment. And now that I'm old and educated enough to notice, I get very worked up over my inability to be original in composing game concepts.

I need to stop doing this. (More, I need to stop doing this, then procrastinating about not doing it and ending up here, blogging.) Mimicry is how we learn to create. I feel strongly that it behooves any inexperienced creator to consume not just widely, but to consume quality (expressed in a better way than I can a couple of times in this very valuable list). We can all read, watch or play masterful work and imbibe it, fusing one classic to another and, hopefully creating something original.

The only way to improve my game concept that will, in all likelihood, play like a bad Final Fantasy knock-off, is to play more games, cultivate more ideas and try them. That means it might play like a bad Uncharted rip-off for awhile. Eventually, with enough tinkering, it might be something original, or at least as original as one can get. “There's nothing original under the sun,” and a game like Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is pretty much a bad Final Fantasy knock-off in LOTR IP, anyway.

Originality is maybe the hardest thing to develop because just about any thing can be considered derivative, as that most recent link argues quite successfully. It takes confidence to play around within established forms, averting and flipping ideas when one can, and that's hard to do at 3:20 a.m. when chapter 32 or a dialogue tree is going very badly.

The only solution. Mimic away, don't worry about it, and let things come freely. Now, back to that derivative game concept.