I've just arrived home from a trip to London today to attend the kick-off meeting for the UK's EPSRC-funded AI / Games Research Network which is set to run for the next three years. As I came in my fiance asked me "How did it go? Was it nice?" and I struggled to express my feelings on the whole occasion.
I'd already been thinking about the question "how did it go?" pretty much all the way home on the train for 2 hours, in conjunction with reading some more of the fascinating book The Answer to How is Yes : acting on what matters by Peter Block. The two lines of thought have collided in my brain and produced this short post.
Ever since I left the event today, I've been cursing myself for getting stressed and angry while hearing the proposals of those in traditional academic AI research for possible games industry collaborations. I was constantly grinding my teeth and thinking "these guys have no idea about games! they're so naive!" etc. and unfortunately I let these feelings of they are getting it wrong dominate my thoughts at times, and even spill over into somewhat aggressive questions and posturing. I spent a lot of the journey home thinking "why did I let myself get wound up like that? what's the point in that?"
I have now concluded that what was really going on was the event tapped into my own latent frustrations with myself over the last few years for not acting on what matters, or more specifically, for not pursuing my own desires for game AI but instead remaining beholden to whatever current organisational agenda I was working under. These other people at today's academic/industry networking event all had their own agendas to pursue, their own backgrounds, and their own unique naivete and wisdom. Nothing wrong with that at all, long may it continue. At the same time I shall endeavour to pursue my own agendas constructively within whatever organisational context I find myself. These agendas will only ever partially synchronise with the organisation within which I pursue them or with the agendas of other experts, but that's perfectly natural! At the end of the day we're all blind men touching the same elephant!