Well, I thought that I’d talk briefly about some of the many reasons why literally every creative work matters. This was something I ended up thinking about in early-mid April when I found myself watching an “Alieann” livestream of the then-new rural fantasy 3D platformer game “South Of Midnight” (2025).
Although I don’t have any modern enough tech to run the game on, and it probably isn’t available in a DRM-free edition at the time of writing, I was absolutely fascinated by the footage of it and it took me a moment to work out why. It was a modern game that was heavily influenced by the gothic horror game “Alice: Madness Returns” (2011) – a game that will instantly be on my “to play” list if a DRM-free PC version is ever released, but which I played parts of at a friend’s house back in the day and have seen lots of footage of.
Even though the setting, characters, atmosphere and story of the “South Of Midnight” (2025) footage were totally different to everything I’ve seen about “Alice: Madness Returns” (2011), everything I saw of the gameplay seemed to remind me of “Madness Returns”. The triple-jump with glowing magical effects, the giant plants and giant talking fish, the fact that platforming and combat take place in separate segments, the psychological/emotional themes of the game etc… The footage just had the feel of “Madness Returns”, whilst also being its own thing.
And this made me think about why literally every creative work – at least those made by real humans, rather than artificial intelligence – matters. It matters because there is a chance that it will influence a later creative work in some way or another. Even when something isn’t that original, or fits perfectly into one genre, there’s still a chance that it will be someone’s very first encounter with that genre and/or will make them interested in that genre and, if they later create anything, then it might be an influence on this.
Yes, originality emerges from having lots of different inspirations – but also from the unique mixture of inspirations someone has and the different ways that things influence different people. Even if a creative work only influences 1% of another creative work, then it still matters because of this.
And, on a side-note, this is one of the many things which sets real human creativity apart from generative A.I. – and why the latter often seems “soulless”. A human artist, writer, film-maker, musician, game dev etc… will have a smaller, but unique, mixture of inspirations than the billions of “inspirations” that are identical for every user of an A.I. program. Not only that, a person will instinctively take influence from different elements of these things than other people will do. For example, two artists could be inspired by the same film – but one might be more interested in the lighting design and/or colour palette, and the other might be more interested in the cinematography or compositions used in it. Both have the same influence, but the resulting art will be different.
But I’ve only talked about published creative works so far. Unpublished ones matter just as much as well. Although they might not influence anyone else, they’re either useful practice for making later published work and/or they are something which feels relevant to the person who is making it. And this last point cannot be overstated enough – there is really nothing else like making something which feels relevant to you, even if you don’t end up posting it online or showing it to anyone. Not only that, the actual process of making something is often half of the fun.
Even failed creative works still matter for different reasons. If they are published, then they can provide lessons to other people about what to avoid whenever they make anything. And, if they are unpublished, then – again – the person making it still gets to enjoy the actual process of making it as well.
But, yes, literally every creative work matters for some reason or to some extent.
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
