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I’m outside and I’m looking in


12/5
I keep finding myself in creative spaces where I feel like an “outsider”. Let me be clear that this is not the fault of any events or the attendees there, it’s entirely on me. 

I have an unhealthy coupling with “art” and “industry”. Growing up working class meant my only exposure to creativity was through videogames and kids tv shows, most of which are products being sold. People who worked there were providing a service to create those products. At 11 I had independent internet access which was… questionable, but I discovered DeviantART and ConceptArt.org which while very helpful for career development, further emphasised the link between creativity and external validation.

So from a very young age, my mindset was: artist = having a paid job as an artist at a studio somewhere. I thought it wasn’t an innate ability you had, it was something you had to prove externally you were good enough to be hired for. 

I’ve done a lot of therapy in my life and I’m glad to say I truly believe creativity is innate to us and what defines us as human. It’s our right as human beings to create. 

So it’s absolutely ridiculous to apply the same old busted logic of “I require external approval to feel like I belong” to creative events.

And I originally wrote a whole load of paragraphs explaining why I’m an outsider, but honestly what’s the use in that? Something new would be to just say “I definitely belonged in this space” for 99.9% of the events I’ve attended. 

1000xRESIST

Sunset Visitor


  • 28/4/26


    1000xResist feels like an amalgamation of everything I value most in art. It's unlike a game I've ever played before which is truly special. It’s a game that takes its story completely sincere, and its sincerity and commitment to it being Art that it can have fun with itself, most notably for me in the childlike scribbles made from the hand of the apparent God of the world.

    In an industry where expectations of high fidelity and being able to do Everything Forever in a game is becoming the norm. 1000xResist is a story that you meet head on, explore and then most importantly walk away from afterwards.


    Resistance is an interesting theme and I learned how many definitions and positive/negative connotations of it can exist in this game. Resistance can be both a positive and a negative. One of the main characters Iris resists her heritage in front of her school friends, she resists Jiao’s closeness. Iris resists being used as a guinea pig for scientific research. Watcher resists tyranny and a changing ruling class with the same problematic ideals underneath.

    This leads me to an interesting thought I had about the changing power systems in 1000xResist - there’s a political saying particularly relevant to today’s world of there being “same policies with a different face”. I felt particularly struck by Knower looking down at my handcuffed self telling me “this time it’s different” as I then found myself apparently liberated by a person with the exact same face as the one who imprisoned me.

    I really enjoyed the surprises this game had in store for me. There’s an expectation for sci-fi to strictly stay within its worldly confines of a distant future. Any references to current day politics are veiled within metaphor. When I suddenly found myself transplanted into the middle of a violent clash between Hong Kong protestors and the police I was in complete awe of a team not being afraid to SAY SOMETHING!!!!! About what is happening in our world.

    There is an animated short I was reminded of throughout this game, called Tough by Jennifer Zheng which shows conversations between a mother who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China and left, and her daughter who grew up in the UK. There is a generational and cultural divide between the two of them and an explicit barrier between them in the animation - the mother speaks Mandarin and the daughter replies in English. In the interactions between Iris and her mother, and even between Iris and Jiao I was reminded of this animation.


    Learning that the team who made this game came from performing arts, illustration, motion graphics and the like was an exciting discovery. As an animator in games, it makes me so happy to see a restricted budget work so successfully.

    The animation budget was clearly restricted for the most vital moments and as an animator myself, I was so happy to be reminded of how much our brain can fill in the blanks. Do characters really need perfect lip-sync? Do we need to see a sequence of tens of soldiers shot up all at once? We don’t actually!

    The flash forward/backward sequencing is such a clever combination of intent and animation budgeting. The game deals with cause and effect and the ability to flick back and forth between timelines was the perfect way to explore that. It also felt like the process of 2d animation flipping through keyframes.  Particularly the soldier’s death you can play/rewind and most importantly, hold, on those moments, of her freefall down to her death. It’s theatrical and the game is the stage.

    To summarise, I could talk about this game for a very long time. It has reinvigorated myself creatively and I’m so so thankful that a game like this was able to be made.