Who is your inspiration in life and why?

[Linz]

Time to get out the feels, guys!

Who is your inspiration and why?

My personal inspiration is both my Mother and my Gran. My mum especially. My whole life she has been my rock, my guidance, my teacher. She has always given me freedom but reinforced boundaries. She let me discover my identity by making my own mistakes and taking my own paths. My mum is the one person who I want to be like. She's incredibly intelligent, caring, and has the patience of a saint. There is not a single bad bone in her body and i've probably only seen her get mad ONCE in my life. She's gone through many life threatening illnesses and every time she's remained strong and always worried more about me than herself.
When I was 12 she had to give up her dream job due to depression. My dad also left us. During this time I became her carer. I had to grow up and become her rock. I also developed anger issues, anxiety and worst of all, depression. Together we helped each other out, made sure we both didn't do anything stupid. We saved each other. My mother still suffers from depression to this day, but it is her determination and her passion to be strong that leaves me in awe. I still obey what little rules she has which include, 'No watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and no playing GTA.' I can confess to you all that I have indeed obeyed those rules to this day.

My other inspiration is my Gran who sadly passed away on the 3rd of February this year. My Gran was a crazy Belgian lady who came to Scotland during the 2nd World War. We have the exact same take no shit attitude and I remember going to her house to enjoy a good bitch together. She, like my mother went through many illnesses that threatened her life and through it all she remained dignified and strong. She was a well kept woman, you would NEVER see her without her hair done and her makeup on. My Gran loved her bling and fur, she was such a classy lady. The lesson I took from my Gran was 'If life fucks you over, hit it in the face with a high heel.'

Both my inspirations have made me the person I am today. I thank them both and I hope one day I will do them proud.

(:
I can't wait to hear what you all have to say! I've opened up my soul to you guys, for once!

<3

[Sylux]

My inspirations are Shioon Yi from The Breaker, Kenichi Shirahama from History's Greatest Disciple: Kenichi, and my stepdad. They all work hard and never give up. Shioon almost committed suicide, which is why I can relate with him. Kenichi has no talent in martial arts, which is why I can relate to him. My stepdad has been more of a dad to me than my real father, so I just call him Dad. I love him a lot. He is very strong and cares about his family. He also fought for America in the armed forces, so he is a hero to me. I have manic depression, bipolar depression, ADHD and anxiety disorder that I inherited from my mum and biological father. I have wanted to kill myself several times, but I can keep going because the inspiration Shioon and Kenichi give me, and because I want to make my dad proud of me. When my dad dies, he will die happy because he knows he made his son into a man.

[JJJorgie]

My inspirations came from two summer camps. At each, there was a girl that could drawing anime amazingly, and they both really got me into art. Then, I found Mark Crilley's videos which really encouraged and inspired me, as well. I think MT's been a big inspiration, too. All the artists here and my whole journey through my critique thread

[jubeh]

I had a subscription to playstation magazine, but only for the demos. Even before I was too young to tell good reviews apart from bad ones, I knew that a magazine named after the product they were reviewing would probably be biased and bullshit. But, cmon -- demos.

I can't even imagine how many times I played the Metal Gear Solid demo. I'm not going to pretend to be one of the cool kids that remembered the original Metal Gear because I had played it at that point. The strange familiarity you were expected to have with Solid Snake was weird and uncomfortable to me, but I just couldn't believe a game like this existed.

So you may not remember but during the psOne era games were all about good ideas being executed poorly. Every game you'd read about would have some sort of defining feature, and it would either fall flat or blatantly advertised. I only remember on ad for Metal Gear Solid, and it was a picture of military vehicles and a cardboard box. I think it said, "which is deadliest?"

The defining feature was that you could hide in a cardboard box? Yes please.

Back then there were these vans that would drive around and you could play demos, and they'd hand out shirts if you accomplished a task in the game or something. I earned my shirt after reaching the Darpa Chief at a mind numbing speed. I even wasted time getting the nikita and fucking around with it.

Metal Gear Solid 2 upset me at first. Like a lot of silly people, I was confused by the sudden switch of protagonists, and I initially hated Raiden. Also the more romantic aspects of the game were gone. Instead of lamenting the deaths of the bosses you fought, you were glad to be rid of them because they were despicable people for the most part. It wasn't until years later when I replayed all the games in order that I really understood what an inversion of the original it was. If I had played the original two games, I may have had a chance to understand that Kojima is a master of deconstructing his own mythology. I feel like he and Hirohiko Araki are counterparts of different mediums.

With each installment to the series, Kojima reminds us that things will be lost to change. Freaks become less important because their abilities can be replicated with nanomachines. Traditional soldiers become obsolete due to the power of cyborgs. The romantic in me wants to draw parallels to game design. As more avenues open up for small development studios, will publishers become obsolete? Or maybe we -- the ones who play games -- will change.