"Nourish the people around you with creations that are fierce, loving and hopeful – we need it more than ever."
Kia ora everyone, my name is Emily. Some of you may know me as the old community manager for Balancing Monkey Games, and some of you may know me as the current narrative designer and writer for Beyond These Stars, Balancing Monkey’s second title that’s due to release in early access sometime this year.
Though… not for much longer. After five years with the studio, I’m finishing my tenure and moving to Germany. I have a secret to tell you about this.
I am absolutely terrified. I wonder if this is what the Peeps felt like flying to Kewa with naught but a rucksack and a whole lot of courage, determination, and probably a healthy dose of fear. I didn’t realise there’d be such strong parallels between the Peeps landing on Kewa’s back and my own journey to Berlin, honestly; we are leaving behind our comforts and everything we’ve ever known in the name of growth, exploration, and adventure.
Being scared and doing it anyway is a common theme for most women in games. I want to make it very clear that we do not exist in a state of fear, yet sometimes it finds us anyway. We exist in an industry that is oftentimes openly hostile towards us. More times than I can count, now, myself, my game dev friends, and my colleagues who are women have been “intimidated by”, “anxious about”, “scared of”… it can be really hard, is what I’m saying.
But regardless of gender, what I’m trying to get at with this post today is to just Do It Scared. As I get older, I realise more and more with each passing year that, if something scares you, you should probably do it. It’s why I’m leaving behind my beloved antipodean home to see what life could be like for me in Europe. The fear of new things doesn’t seem to lessen, it just happens each time you approach doing something that seems difficult, or breaks some sort of personal taboo.
And truly, this “it” can be anything. For example, Nina (our lovely QA analyst) is learning the bass at the moment. It’s a source of anxiety for her sometimes, but has she given up? No! Of course not. She’s doing it anyway, muddling through the weird feelings. Sarah, our producer and social media gremlin, has written her very first book and is tentatively stepping into the world of book publishing this year! What a huge feat. I know she’s intimidated, but she’s doing it anyway. Anna helped start Balancing Monkey Games with zero game development experience. Can you imagine how stressful that would be?! And, for me (moving across the world aside) working on Beyond These Stars has been a challenge in determination; the game is, as you know, a city-building/simulation game where you build a civilisation from the back of a Space Whale, and includes themes of exploration and discovery, rediscovering lost things. PLUS, it’s also anti imperialist and anti colonial, and there’s themes about climate change being bad in there, too.
Hey, fun fact, did you know that games from the city building and simulation genres tend to be really colonial and imperialist?! Their mechanics are kinda built on the assumption that yoinking resources from surrounding regions and building a big city whether the local inhabitants of that land like it or not is a perfectly good and normal thing to do. Anyway, time to shape a really subversive narrative and story around those kinds of mechanics! To be very vulnerable with you all, every day I struggle with feeling sure that I’ll pull this massive story off. But despite the imposter syndrome, and despite the fear, I turn up to work every day and do my best, despite all the challenges I face. I keep going. I do it scared.
And in this weird old year 2025, the world feels more challenging than ever, now. What we see and hear about every day on the news is startling, alarming, sickening. I want to encourage everyone reading this to go and make something. Nourish the people around you with creations that are fierce, loving and hopeful – we need it more than ever. Your creation doesn’t even have to be good; as Anna says, “perfect is the enemy of done”. Art, music, song, dance, play – yes, I am talking about games – have been important to us silly lil humans for a very long time; they exemplify the self, and the cultures surrounding them. Did you know dice and board games existed in cultures as old as Ancient Egypt? The catharsis of games, of artistic creations, are critical through tough times. Catharsis can carry a message, too; resist, don’t give up, keep going, it’s okay to be frightened, and you have a right to exist in this world. So please, for this International Women’s Day, make art, like we are – like I am – even if it’s scary. I emphasise this especially so if you’re someone who exists in an industry dominated by people who aren’t like you. You might change one person’s life, or maybe the world. You might even change yourself along the way too.
Alright gang, that just might be my final blog post. I’ll miss y’all <3
Emily
Narrative Designer & Writer
