Nintendo dreams
My son, Kevin, age 12, has a dream. He dreams that Nintendo will use the ideas he is feverishly developing with a team of two other 6th graders, an 8th grader, and his nearly 9-year old brother for a future incarnation of the Zelda series of video games. And all he asks is that he get a free copy of the game when it's done.
He sent an e-mail to Shigeru Miyamoto (he googled his e-mail address) outlining his ideas. He plans to storyboard the entire game concept; he has assigned friends to design different elements of the game, including bosses and mini-bosses, weapons and landscapes. He has mapped out an island, and has written a central narrative. And he is hopeful that Shigeru-san will respond to his e-mail, and eventually adapt his ideas into 3-D rendered virtual reality.
My son dreams big.
I've tried to lower his expectations somewhat, without dashing his obvious enthusiasm. My wife was more blunt. “Everybody's so negative,” he said to me in tearful frustration last night. “I'm not getting any support.” So I tell him that it's good to dream, that he should keep it up, and have fun with it. But he says, “What's the point if it's not going to happen?”
My son has yet to experience the collapse of a dream as big as this. He's had some smaller dreams fulfilled, and others turn out to be less than what he expected when he actually got to execute them. He complains that his two weeks away with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation this past summer were too hot, and the bugs too bloodthirsty.
There are few things that I can get him to muster any enthusiasm about. But this one, he's latched onto it. He's in charge, directing others toward his vision. And he can't stand to think that it won't work out.
So what do I tell him?
I can only offer him my support, and advice. Anything else, he sees as tearing down his dream.
There's something so 1997 about all this.