Kanye Tracks & Indie Games

I’m one of those people who never understood why people went mad about Kanye West’s music. ‘Isn’t this a developer blog?’ you’re thinking… ‘Huh?’... Well, yes it is however hang on and hear me out. Tunes from Kanye always struck me as shovelware crap when I heard them on the radio or on youtube here and there. By now if you’re a Kanye fan it may be clear that I don’t listen to hip-hop or rap as much as other stuff. Time after time I kept hearing Kanye this, Kanye that, Kanye so good you’ll lose your mind sort of banter and the number of followers grew bigger and their voice louder each time and I couldn’t stop thinking that there must have been something wrong with me since I didn’t really understand his music… or maybe I was right and it wasn’t worth listening to all along. There was only one way to find out of course, which was… to google ‘reddit why is kanye west so important’ and hit some links... and maybe after reading some of that I can listen to some songs because who doesn't need other people to tell them what to think.

After exhausting some written material I’ve learned that Kanye’s lyrics and his tunes brought some avantguard shit to the scene and he was an experienced producer who knew enough about his game to break its rules and craft fresh and bold statements people haven’t heard before. Then I went onto listening part… Still didn’t like it that much... but now I liked it a little bit more and I could feel that I completely shut myself out from giving it a chance before this. I knew where it was coming from and it had a charm it didn’t have before.

In the end what I’m saying is you can think of games, especially independent games as tracks from unknown Kanyes. Of course not all indie titles are opening up new genres and revolutionizing them but as an indie developer this could be a powerful mindset to consider. You can learn from Kanye and instead of getting trapped in a loop where you rehash and rehash existing material you may ask yourself ‘What is next?’. I'm not saying Kanye asked himself this question... all I'm saying is if you have the luxury to think about what you want to develop it may prove useful to take this question into account when you're churning ideas to develop or pitches to make.