I really want to represent the idea of going home and the feeling of it but should I really? I can research a lot of it but I am a bit worried I'll once again enter a circle. From what I've done until now my reference topics for "going home" are wars (especially the 1st and 2nd World Wars and the Cold War), homelessness. There is nothing wrong with those topics, but if I am honest it is not what I am searching for.
Wars are of big interest to me but the problem with that is that was one of the 4 topics we had to research and I feel it will be a little bit of repetition. It is also a very comfortable subject for me, that I already have prior knowledge and I wanted to challenge myself with learning something new and exciting.
Homelessness is a very serious contemporary subject but it is not something I wish to invest myself in. Personally, for me, this is a very dark topic and I would rather pursue something more light-hearted.
Another point of view is that those topics would be quite obvious when talking about seeking a home. I think what inspires me more than that is the process of finding a home, the journey to realization or discovery of what home is to you. That is why I’m thinking of exploring more the idea of the “hero’s journey”. Something a la “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the rings” where the hero longs for epic quests and adventures and when suddenly dragged into this world of violence, they realize the importance of home. Maybe it is a personal projection, as I myself am a person who loves to read books about adventures and quests, and wizards and dragons. Maybe it is me, trying to create my own epic journey but isn’t that the reason why games exist? - to make all our dreams possible.
COVID-19 → being stuck at home → looking for adventures
Technically speaking I can also look into home in context with the whole COVID situation but if I am honest I do not want to. Nowadays the virus has overtaken our lives completely, and for me, it would be distasteful to create/develop a game that is related to that. Probably a lot of games will now be created where the main reference/topic would be COVID-19 anyways. I have a personal opinion and this blog is not for them, but I just wanted to say all that above.
It is important to talk about contemporary issues and situations, but at the same time - be the change - talk about something else. If everyone is talking about the big things, who is going to motivate people to look at the small issues? In Bulgaria, we have the saying “The small rocks crash the carriage”. The lesson here is that the big rocks can be seen and avoided, but the small rocks are unseen and thus you cannot avoid them. Basically, it's the same here - COVID-19 is a big enough issue to talk about, but there are plenty of small problems that will turn big if we do nothing. And I feel that my game should be inspired by the small or the overlooked problems, so it can make a difference.
So after I started researching "going home" as a theme I found my inspiration in discovering the Welsh word hiraeth. It is basically an untranslatable world due to the fact that it does not have one definitive meaning. It can mean anything from nostalgia and homesickness to longing and grief. After reading some articles explaining more about the translation of the world there was one sentence that struck me*: 'One attempt to describe hiraeth in English says that it is “a longing to be where your spirit lives.”*'
"Where the spirit longs to go"
Where the spirit longs to go → desire → purpose
Where the spirit longs to go makes me think about the purpose of a man, broken through the prism of desire.