A Gaming Recipe

Where do words come from?

Where do ideas come from?

Did it sit there all this time, waiting for a specific moment to enter the mind?

All of these are questions without a true answer. Some might say that it develops inside the mind and take shape by events surrounding the thinker and situations they go through.

Everything on this Earth will go through a journey and where that journey takes it, no one truly knows beforehand.

If you were to take food and follow it from the very beginning to the absolute end you’ll have quite a journey to witness. Perhaps not every step will want to be seen, but, hey, it’s part of life.

Games tend to have a rather charismatic and exceptional cycle through which they go. In most cases they will develop and exist inside a person’s mind and if it reaches a certain pique, it will explode into something truly magnificent or perhaps be laughed out by people not grasping said idea.

If one were to look at a kitchen, you’ll notice that so… Stop looking at your kitchen or even just the direction of your kitchen, focus here, on the words.

Focus.

Take the idea of a kitchen and the functions of a kitchen to mind. Add some gaming, and we’ll see where all the ingredients come from and where they’re off to.

Infiltration

Coming home from the shops or your local grocer, you’ll put down all the plastic covered goods or encased inside a box, onto the counter. All of these ingredients and goods will await their place where it will wait upon retrieval.

Take a parsnip for example. If you w… Put down the parsnip!

If you were to take the preceding parsnip and put it in its rightful place of waiting and thereupon retrieve it when you are preparing a dish for a couple of house guests or maybe a small dinner for yourself, you may also look at it as an idea. It enters your mind and gets categorised accordingly. If you’re not one to remember very well, it may be seen as a rodent infestation inside your cupboard. I tend to have an infestation myself every now and then. (That sounded like an ideal thing NOT to say on a first date.)

Preparation

The idea has been brewing in its own presence and when it is ripe, you will retrieve it and make good use of it. Unless it is an idea about killing the viral infections of an individual with a tactical carpet bombing. It may work, for all intents and purposes, but the host will not be there to enjoy the lack thereof.

If the time is right, you will reclaim the parsnip from its place of meditation and make good use out of it.

If you’re a game developer, the equivalent of the parsnip may be seen at this stage, as a pitch about your idea and how it will obliterate the competition. The other developers and their ideas may be seen as mere baked beans and a few undernourished peas.

Hopefully you’ll receive funding, with planning and development shortly underway.

Execution

The gaming parsnip is being chopped up into a bunch of delicious bits, where it will be added to a pot of progress. It takes a moderate amount of time to cook and reach a certain point until the developer / cook is satisfied. (Cough, BioShock Infinite, Cough.)

The boiling pot emits a satisfying smell and hopes to please everyone eagerly awaiting the meal. No one is certain of the end result or how it will taste. The gaming-chefs and customers’ hopes are getting high.

Finishing Touches

A few extra spices may be added to provide a gratifying flavour. Special plates are taken out for the final product. However the state of this parsnip-inspired meal, it is about to be dished into the extra-special china.

This is the ideal time to add a few touches to make it all the more rewarding. Perhaps a delay to fix a few bugs and add an extra layer of polish to the game. (Cough.)

Perhaps a dash of parsley to the boiling pot and even to decorate the plate. Maybe a dash of freshly ground pepper? It will take a bit longer than intended, but it will hopefully be worth it.

Dishing Out

Everything that was needed has been added and the contents of the sweet-smelling pot are being dished into bowls or plates. It’s so close everyone’s mouths are simple salivating…

It that final stretch of handing the game over to the mysterious places where the discs are being pressed and placed into cases with the appropriate covers. (Pro-tip: Do not press the second disc with content from another game. See Black Ops II and the second PC disc with Mass effect 2 on it.) A salad may be added for extra sustenance. Avoid the situation in brackets provided above, by not serving your guests a bowl filled with poison oak.

While you’re busy making sure about the salad, use this time to double check your parsnip. Make sure it is not a poisonous parsnip – see Cicuta. Simple reason: Gamers will be pissed off if not dead.

Dinner Is Served

The hungry, if not, starving dinner guests are already enjoying their meal. Reactions will soon follow. Your meal may be an absolute delight or the next cause of a shoot-out blamed on violent video games. It’s not always fair, but, hey, very little in life tends to be fair.

The games are distributed and placed onto the shelves. Reviews will be out soon; if not out already. Think of it as an impatient customer worming their way over to the cooking pot before the actual serving.

Handing Over The Bill

The customer / gamer will be asked to compensate for the meal. Not all restaurants and gaming retailers accept sperm and blood donations – resulting in compensation in cold hard cash. Whether you’re satisfied or not, you must pay.

Conclusion

Everything in life must undergo a journey. An idea, a parsnip and literally everything.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll witness a cat being run over and in five to ten years, end up inventing a shoulder-mounted rocket-launcher targeting anyone even looking suspiciously at any random cat…