My Story - Dopamine Rush

For a while I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get a single like when I dropped the first two areas of the map of Metroid Prime in the dedicated facebook group. Was it really that uninteresting?

Fortunately it turned out that the lack of response was due to the fact that my post still had to be approved by the admins. When it did get through the response was overwhelmingly positive, raking in some two hundred likes, shares and encouraging reactions to continue finishing the whole map. 

In all fairness, it’s quite a thrilling experience to have something you’ve made yourself gaining that amount of traction. I can’t deny that my ego got a proper boost at that moment. Either way, I’ve found a new obvious short-term goal in my life, which was finishing the map of Tallon IV on a step-by-step basis, and getting those motivating social media dopamine hits in the process. 

So after publishing the Impact Crater and Tallon Overworld in the first post, I continued with adding Chozo Ruins, Magmoor Caverns, Phendrana Drifts and the Phazon Mines areas in subsequent posts. This took me about a month, give or take. Every one of those updates had a similar impact on the community, and by the third post there were people voicing the wish for printed versions of the final product. 

There was this weird, almost alien experience for me. For over a decade, I’ve been chasing approval of my artwork. Nothing substantial happened in those years, no matter how good I thought I was. However, I made this artwork out of boredom and a general lack of purpose in my life and it spread like wildfire. People were actually waiting for the next update. I can’t shake the feeling that there is a life lesson hiding somewhere in this preposition.