I feel like the World is ending every day a little more.

We are living through an awful time, and I feel utterly powerless. Our planet is slowly cooking and yet we are forced to wake up every day to go to work. In most countries, including mine, fascism is on the rise and hate speech has become normalized, while being very aware I am one of the lucky ones compared to what's happening in other countries. Capitalism and imperialism are literally killing the World.

But I don’t want the World to end. I still want to live, to find small moments of joy and connection with people around me. Being aware of the end of the World hurts me but doesn’t deprive me of hope. I am not feeling doomed, I feel angry, I feel sad and scared and I am struggling a lot every day with my mental health, but I still find things in me that make me keep going. One of them is creation and my creations are video games.

I make games for the joy of creating things. I make the games I want, the way I want. I would like to live off of it even if the chances of this happening are very slim, but I don’t care, I carve my own path, make games my own way with the tools I can use, because I enjoy it. But enjoying it is not the sole explanation. I don’t make games for making games alone, I make them with an intention, a creative drive. But I can’t really put my finger on it.

Most importantly, why make art when the World is dying? I am often wondering if I use my time correctly, if the energy used for creation could be used for a better purpose. It is silly to think any time should be used the most effective way, but long term, is there a point to make art if no one is left to enjoy it? Especially for me, who have an audience of like, less than 100 people, my creations won’t last forever, heck I am not even sure they will be still around in my lifetime.

What does it mean to make art at the end of the World?

I struggle a lot with this question because to answer I need to put words on my feelings. Okay, let’s start small with a simple belief of mine: I believe that there is no high or low art. Even silly arts, like a funny drawing, have a value. A doodle you make on a piece of paper means something to you, even for a moment. If you felt something at some point, that’s art. There is nothing more human than that. Even the most basic art can provide something, like a few seconds of entertainment. Being entertained doesn’t always mean trying to forget real world issues.

Here’s another belief: If a human life is a collection of small experiences, I want for the people around me and myself to have a happy life full of those. I cannot fulfill their needs of food, shelter and basic human’s right but I can share with them a small experience. As for me, I create games.

When I create games I basically put together a small experience, to make people feel something: laughter, entertainment, frustration, a story I want to tell. I like to make small worlds for people to explore because this is my way to express myself

Not everything I make carries a meaning. But every game I created meant something to me at some point in life. And I like to think it meant something to someone else. Probably something else than me, and that’s the point. My games are inspired by the games I played in the past, from the console games to the small web games. Those games themselves were inspired by other games too, or by other kinds of art pieces, or by life experiences. All those experiences are part of a gigantic web of human experiences that cover the entire World. And if one person enjoys my game and finds inspiration in it, I would be happy to know that I took a small part in something intangible yet bigger than any of us.

Because the World is ending but new things can be born.