I do not know if I am genius or not. In particular I do not care about that, I should not care about that. To become proud of yourself is a very dangerous thing, really dangerous. Pride can turn you into a monster. I am not joking, that is very serious. I simply do know a lot of people who seriously thought they're genius. And most of them became monsters, they're angry at the whole world.
The only thing I know for sure is that 10 years ago I have invested 5 years in learning for getting the higher education. Everything is that simple, just a higher education.
Another thing I could say right now at the age of 32 is that I chose my profession badly. I thought I would become a film director while I was young. But I wasn't realistic enough to understand that my country, Russia, is nearly in ruins and there wouldn't be any qualified film industry in next 50 years or even more. That was my big mistake. Russian film industry is like a stone age film industry, I mean the quality of the movies is real low at the moment. And it will be the same until the whole new generation of producers will come. Yeah, the problem is that the people who invest their money in the production of the movies in Russia at the moment aren't real professional producers. They're just simple millionaires, who're so rich that they do not know already where else to throw their money. And they're throwing them into the production of the movies. It's cool until they come and dictate you what is good and what is bad, they think they have a right to dictate all and everything simply because they're producers, it's their money invested... here we are. Most of the modern Russian movies are just a pile of stinking shit, meaningless waste of money. That's why I left the industry. I realized I will waste my whole life on making shit. It will change, I already see it's slowly changing. But I will be too old when everything will be all right with the Russian film industry.
So I moved into a nearly unexplored industry of the viral advertising. And I can say I am happy now, because you can't make bad short-videos, if so they just won't become viral. You just have to make really provocational, actual, interesting short-movies. You have to create things that will be interesting to the people, that's the only way to make those little pieces of art viral. That's cool I'd say. I love all those short-movies virals I've made (not alone of course, with my creative partner). And I am glad that I have my higher education as a film director and a screenwriter, because without that I could not so simply move into a viral advertising industry. So finally it came out real strange. What I thought to be my mistake turn out to be a way into a different "clean" industry.
As for games and modding. I would love to move into a gaming industry. But there is simply no gamedev industry in Russia, so there's just nowhere to move. There's quite a nice gamedev industry at the Ukraine (Stalker game series and Metro game series both became worldwide popular, that's cool). But Ukraine is a different country, it's not Russia in any way. No less different than Sweden for example. So seems like the modding is just a hobby for me. I would love to turn it to my job, I mean I would love to make money on what I am doing. But at the moment it's impossible. But I am trying. The modification I've made for Stalker: Clear Sky was the most popular among hundreds. I think that is a fine beginning. 300.000 downloads in a week sounds nice I guess. The only thing I regret is that I did not know about the MODDB existence at that time... now it's too late.
Anyway, now I moved to HPL2 engine. Because I am simply in love with the incredible unmatchable interactivity of the HPL2 engine. Sadly I moved on to HPL2 alone. I was modding Stalker with a creative partner, he's a real great scripter. Web-sites programmer in reality. But he decided not to continue with modding at all, he left modding completely. So... hmm... so let's see what I could do here