The Dink Network

It's sad to hear that there was a time you wanted to kill yourself. I'm extremely happy you're still alive as you've brought a breath of fresh air here and I'm sure there are people in your life who really care about you!

You're right when you say that you manufactured the ideas that made you feel very bad about your past. You could have left Dink behind forever and I can practically promise you that none of us on here would have been angry with you after all this time. But most importantly, even if there were still people who regularly went around talking about "how bad that Cocomonkey is at making DMODs" I just don't feel like things like that are worth dwelling on, especially considering how young you were. I understand though, it wasn't just your old experiences with Dink that made you feel bad, it's lack of purpose in general. The best way to solve that of course is actively finding purpose. I know I know, easier said than done, but it's never impossible.

It's interesting that you mention you are on here to "chase ghosts". I kind of feel the same way about myself, as I knew about DMODs and loved to play them, and even have experience developing things, and yet never succeeded in making a notable DMOD of my own. Sure I played around with the editor and built some "somethings" which were completely uninteresting and unfinished. I was old enough to know they were bad so I never bothered releasing them or even really backing them up so that I wouldn't lose them. So basically, I had nothing to show for how much I loved Dink and the DMOD's it's community created. I guess the DMOD (not the contest one, but the big one) I'm making now is my way of hopefully giving back to this community I love before it's too late. I just wish I had the motivation to work on it more, because this time, I know that it's something special I'm making.

Instead I spent the last several years making a game that seems like it will never be finished. I still work on it a lot and have a friend who helps me with the project which keeps me somewhat motivated, but it's really an unbelievable amount of work and my ability to focus is not always as strong as I'd like it to be. I know now that making such an ambitious project as my first real game was not a good idea, but it's a bit late for me to change my mind now. I just have to drill through until I finally get it finished one day...

Anyways, I just wanted to let you know that I can relate with your feelings...I don't know if I would consider myself "depressed" but I could certainly feel a whole lot better about my own accomplishments in life than I do. It's mostly because almost everything I've spent my life on is a "WIP" and I just can't release it yet. Hopefully, I will feel a lot better as I find more things in my life to do and actually complete some things. I hope you too are feeling a lot better and I want to let you know that no matter how pointless or hopeless life might seem at times, there is always a way forward and more that can be done to give meaning to life.

All those DMODs. Each is a piece of someone I've never met. The best moments are those when I feel I have connected with another human being through their work. The worst DMODs are those where I can't feel anything like that. Although I appreciate those mods that go out of their way to do something very different, the inherent similarity of the great majority of them produces an interesting effect. Like a control group in a scientific experiment, the things that stay the same make the things that change more relevant; they give a little window into the person who left them there. Not one of us will last forever. A few of the authors of these DMODs are already gone, but when I play them I feel like they're here with me, telling me jokes, challenging me.

I think this too is part of what makes DMOD's meaningful to me. It's ironic that I've just lately started being a part of the forum, definitely one of my regrets. I'm very thankful for the few authors who have stuck around to talk every now and then, even if it's just once in a while. I don't think any one of us are deluded into thinking that Dink is mechanically one of the best games ever, and I've never really played Dink for the gameplay so much. It's more the experience of seeing what people make and how they think that I find meaning in and that keeps me playing DMODs. It's a unique experience that hasn't been properly replicated very many times.

I hope you let you negative feelings for your past go, since that's the only way to truly go forward. It's not important to anyone that you haven't done a lot of good here when you were younger, and as you can see it also doesn't diminish what you can do in the future. Now I just need to do a better job taking my own advice and start taking more control of my own life.

Thank you for reading. In an effort to provide some variety, I will be starting a new project very soon - a screenshot and text based Let's Play of Dink Smallwood, but with an unpredictable twist. I hope you'll read that as well.

This actually sounds more interesting to me than a video Let's Play. I always get bored waiting for things to happen in video Let's Plays and I can tell when people are running low on conversation ideas and topics to keep me engaged. In short, I tend to prefer playing a game over watching someone else play a game. I feel like your idea is a little more interesting and easier to consume. I don't feel like I've seen anyone try to do anything like that before though, strange. Looking forward to it.

I'm going to send you a PM, Cocomonkey. It might get a little lengthy...