5.31.24

For the last month, I’ve been in this beautiful place, Bold Point, trying to think about creativity, creation, the games business, technology, the economy. I’ve been trying to read a lot, write at least a little each day, create SOMETHING each day.

There are at least two major topics that I keep circling like a creature who sees something interesting but isn’t sure it is a trap. So I keep drawing in close, then backing away rather than engage. Let’s at least call them out directly:

Why does the video game industry appear to be in such an unhealthy fearful state?

How does the rise of AI that can create things change the human need to derive meaning from creation?

 

5.29.24

I keep coming back to the idea of the people you meet along the journey of creating something as the real ultimate value to you, the creator.

The people you work alongside to create things are like currents in the sea: they aren’t what the world sees when it looks at a successful voyage, but they are where the real power to make such a voyage possible lies.

“I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me…”

 

5.26.24

Why are some creative projects so obsessively compelling while others should feel exciting, but you have to force yourself to work on them?

Among other things, I’ve been reading Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book, Be Useful, which is mostly a highly amusing motivational book in which Arnold brags about his life. He keeps talking about the importance of developing “your vision” for your life and what it should be.

And this got me to thinking about why certain projects, creative endeavors, or times in your life you (I at least) become manically obsessed with a particular thing I’m doing and other times have to really force yourself to focus and make something happen.

Why do certain projects become obsessions while others don’t?

There are games I’ve made (Brute Force, MCOC, Disney Mirrorverse, many others) where I worked 14 hours a day and still had a notebook by my bed filled with scribbled To Do notes every single night. There are books I’ve written that achieved the same level of obsession. Sometimes companies can be that way too; there were certainly weeks at a time when I gave almost every waking moment to, say, creating the Digital Games division and strategy at a company. But then, there are other projects that languish, where there’s always something else more interesting to devote time to, or where putting one foot in front of the other and getting ‘her done (as the Canadians would say) feels like WORK. Why?

Why do certain visions turn us (sometimes many of us) into devotees and others may be interesting, cool even, lucrative, etc. but just don’t capture our imaginations and become an obsessive vision like the Governator is talking about?

 

5.23.24

 Let’s talk about money.

I used to tell people that, “Everyone lies about two things: sex and money.” I still mostly think this is true.

And it is interesting to think about why these concepts belong in the same sentence, occupy much of the same overlapping space in our individual and collective psyches. (If you doubt this, consider that the biggest news story of the week in the US is about hush MONEY paid to a porn-star for SEX by a former president.) But I don’t want to talk about sex here, this blog attempts to evade the lurid for the most part.

So let’s talk about money.

In particular, I find that many people have a very complicated and awkward relationship with money. Mostly people are quite lousy at managing it or thinking about it as an objective math-problem, which it mostly should be. And people do lie about it compulsively. And even a few folks who are pretty good at managing or tracking or growing it still seem to allow it to cast undue emotional shadows on their lives. (I’m one of these.)

Now for some folks – regrettably many around the world – the push to have enough, to sustain for their families, to avoid starvation, afford clothes, shoes, school for the kids, and so on really is a daily struggle. But for many in the developed world, this is simply no longer the situation. We live in a time of profound abundance, and, yes, the price of milk is high now, but folks are mostly carrying iPhones so…

Why are well-enough off people still constantly stressed by and defined by money or worry about its lack?

A friend tells me “90% of my stress is about money” but on the same day tells me, “I’ve been to all but 2 of the Top 30 restaurants in Austin.” So it isn’t that we don’t have money, are starving, existing at a subsistence level. It’s that our desire for a relative level of wealth drives anxieties. (This is not a new concept so far Thorstein Veblen pointed this out at the turn of the last century in his scathing critiques of the well-to-do.) Why do people who have plenty still get so obsessed about being able to have even more in order to experience the more rarified things money can buy?

 

There’s something more here too though: I recently had a call with two brilliant researchers from Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology. Their focus is on economics, currencies, the use of money and tokens as a symbol of trust, proof of work, and so on. Obviously there are Web3 implications to this kind of research but I find myself thinking of it more as a “Three body problem” of economics. This is highly theoretical stuff with deep real-world application. And it speaks again to the importance of this abstract concept: Why do homo sapiens – the really smart ones and the less-so – all get so obsessed over this concept?

And what does any of this have to do with the creative impulse or creation in general?

This one is easier for me to answer, I think. Some people are inherently driven by a desire to create things. Others mostly focus on consuming. (I have yet to meet anyone who would self-describe as being in that latter camp, but people show you who they are in what they do. “What is something you’re proud of creating this month?” If the answer is, “Oh, I haven’t had time…” Well, there you go.) But many of the things that the monkeys imagine and want to create (pyramids, AAA video games, etc.) take the concerted efforts of many people over time to come to fruition. This means that in order to succeed at creating some kinds of things, you must be able to persuade (or compel through force, in the case of the pyramids) many others to devote significant portions of their time to a particular goal. This means you need to pay them. And this forces some part of most creative activities at scale to become financial exercises.

So it is virtually impossible to disentangle some categories of creative enterprise from discussions of money.

The role of sex and the desire-for-sex in motivating creation will have to wait for a later entry! 😉

 

5.21.24

Who do you create things for?

Have there been people at different phases of your life who provided the impetus or reflected back some creative spark in you, fanning it into a compulsion to create this thing together?

 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

This is the first serious novel about the games industry I've ever read.

Generally very well written, and a good look at the interplay between life, relationships, and the games a person creates or tries to. It's all about the way relationships influence the things people create, and about the way the stuff (games) you make are a reflection of all the life that is happening at the time.

It's also a fairly accurate and aware look at a time when making games could be -- was -- mostly a labor of love between a few creators. Smash the Police State, everything at Eclipse, Brute Force, I'm thinking of you. The early days (for me) of Kabam Vancouver. And, of course, the many other creators I've had a special - but usually brief - creative synergy with.

There is a lot in this book worth thinking about and talking about, if only because, well, it feels like a chronicle of some of the lives I've lived. Impossible not to hear echoes of friends long gone in this relationships and smile ruefully at how well Ms. Zevin captures the challenges of creating video games and running game companies while trying to live your lives and be a human.

A well done and moving book, Ms. Zevin.

Throughout the novel the three main characters refer to their games, their company as their children.

I guess that too is a form of striving for immortality.

 

5.20.24

Currently, all of my creative endeavors are so tangled up with and concerned with fundraising, securing funding, and so on that I find I am struggling to really focus on the act of creation as a joyful process unto itself. And while I’ve written out the intellectual proof-points that should be able to defeat this kind of thinking here on this blog over the past month, those sorts of “go create art in the woods” theories are great, but none of those actually take care of payroll for the kinds of teams of people required to build the things I want to build.

And at least 80% of the folks who reach out to me to talk about their creative projects right now when you scratch beneath the surface, they are really looking for money to help fund their projects too!

“I can’t forget the sound, cause it’s here to stay: the sound of people chasin’ money and money getting away!”

So let us instead return to the books, to giving thought to the creations of others. I guess that’s how creativity always really starts, right? You fall so in love with what someone else is doing that you think, “Someday maybe I can do that!”

Yesterday I finished Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

I was first assigned this book in high school, likely a sophomore year (1992?) English class assignment. (Written in German, but “English” is what “Literature” was called back then.) I’m sure I understood as much about it as an entitled 14 year old boy really could understand about a non-fiction work describing life in concentration camps and the use of a particular didactic of psychoanalytic theory to help people think about the meaning of their lives.

In my studies on Happiness and philosophy and cognitive psychology this year, I kept bumping into Frankl’s concepts again and decided to reacquaint myself.

Descriptions of years in Auchwitz and Dachau provide the framework for Frankl’s experiences and much of his thinking about how people can assign meaning (and why they need it) in even the bleakest circumstances. This is the first half of the book. The second half is a meditation on “logotherapy” which is the school of psychoanalysis Frankl fathered and spent the second half of his life advancing.

There is much in this powerful book to contemplate. A few of the key concepts here:

The twentieth century showed us that human beings can create the gas chambers, but that human beings – having been stripped of almost all of their humanity, shaved, tattooed, starved and beaten – can also still walk into these chambers with their heads held high. These two poles of human expression serve as a sort of alpha to omega of the power, terrible cruelty, and the ennobling dignity of the human spirit.

That even when all other things are taken from a person, that person retains the ability to decide how they respond to any stimulus. This forms the basis for all modern ideas of mindfulness. You decide.

That each person must find their own meaning to their own life; there are few standard answers, all meanings are bespoke and can only be determined by the individual.

In an oft quoted line, we are reminded that “when there is a powerful WHY a person can deal with any HOW.” Purpose and meaning insulates and fuels survival (thrival!) in any scenario; without purpose a person will give up. With sufficient purpose they can survive almost anything, or at least go to their death with some level of peace.

Frankl lists out three things that tend to be a source of meaning to many people: The first of these is love of another human (or other creature I suppose). The second of these is the compulsion to create something (Frankl’s need to finish his book on Logotherapy got him through camp life). The third of these is the ability to impart meaning to unavoidable suffering.

Obviously, the first two make a lot of sense to me. Moms developing the superhuman strength to lift a car from the legs of their child, the writer who holds on against cancer until their great work is finally finished, etc. The third (finding meaning in unavoidable suffering) I continue to struggle with a bit, seeing it as a bit of an intellectual skeleton key designed to give people without either love or creative drive a reason to keep plodding along. But maybe upon further consideration I’ll understand it better (hopefully not through personal experience!)

One final concept that is mentioned a few times is the notion of dealing with life by imagining you are at the end of it, looking back, and believing you did everything wrong. Now go back and do it the right way.

“Think on yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what is left and live it properly.”

Maybe we’ll try on Marcus Aurelius next.

But first, let’s go try to find folks some money to enable creation in others.

Yes. I promise I will get around to doing real thinking and writing about the topic we are clearly circling here...

What does Creativity mean for humans when we have created Artificial Intelligences who can create as well or better than we can? 

But not yet. 

For a little longer I want to keep thinking about the forces that drive and impact human creativity. 

And about books, of course. 

 

5.18.24

I believe there is more to say on the role of fear in impeding the creative impulse in many people. In particular, I think it likely that loss-aversion is the motivating drive for many in never starting, never trying. There is more to say here, but I believe it is largely beside the point and risks distracting us from the bigger issue. Let’s move on from fear. We cannot let our fears slow us down.

Carl Jung tells us, “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”

I maintain that the surest and most joyful way for people to add meaning to the otherwise indifferent chemistry and physics of the spinning universe is to create things that have a chance of improving the world and outliving the creator. Immortality through Creation. And fear is just an impediment, one that is (relative to time, space, physics) fairly easy to dismiss. So we move on and think more about the how.

What is the ideal organizational structure to promote creativity?

I’ve spent thirty years now working for startups. I’ve also spent many of those thirty years working for big companies, public ones. The startups: Eclipse Entertainment, Digital Anvil, Certain Affinity, Kabam, Wizards of the Coast, Cloudmind, Conjure Games, GlobalStep. The Public Companies: Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Activision, Netmarble, Hasbro. The paradox of working regularly for both startups and big corporations for many overlapping periods gets to the heart of something I think is important: Almost every one of the startups eventually became part of a public company. And even when this didn’t happen directly, it was the resources of one or more big PubCos that allowed – paid for or gave mission and purpose to – the startup’s existence.

Public companies and large corporations in general (never worked for a really big company that was privately held) have purpose and a mission and often the ability to devote (!) a truly significant raft of resources to driving towards a particular outcome. This can be fuel for creating things.

Startups have focus, the powerful esprit de corps that makes innovating possible. Startups are constantly being beaten about the head and shoulders by that great Mother of Invention: necessity and hunger. If there is a more powerful way of driving innovation in small groups than getting a bright and dedicated bunch of diverse misfits into a too-small room full of whiteboards for weeks at a time… I’ve not seen it. The small culture of startups is fertile soil for creative innovation.

We need both.

Without the innovator’s spirit small and ragged teams promote, big companies descend into a quagmire of beauracracy and politicking and busy-work reporting. Without the resources and drive for profit of a big company, startups can become a clubhouse or a think-tank. Combinations of the two is the best way I’ve seen to unlock and fuel small group creativity.

I’m certainly not the first person to observe this.

I think about Claude Shannon in the Cold Spring Harbor Lab, in Bell Labs. I think about Xerox PARC labs, I think about E&S in Utah and the spinouts (Pixar, Silicon Graphics, Netscape, Adobe) that sprouted from that soil. In many ways I think even about my own experience with Kabam Vancouver (nee Exploding Barrel) which in my memory had these characteristics (if perhaps not quite the brilliance of Claude Shannon or Ed Catmull.) Creating safe and largely uncontrolled spaces for the very bright to innovate creates new kinds of businesses and ideas. The spark of creation is more apt to shine bright and be able to be captured in a startup culture.

But without the fuel of capital, the massive support service structures required to scale and distribute, and the discipline to remind people to tie their shoes and balance the books, these places can spin off into chaos easily.

And this is the inherent paradox – and a clear recipe – for how to create the kinds of cultural organizational structures that will lead to innovation and creation and also to the ability to bring these creations to large numbers of people.

We must kindle lights of meaning and be able to bring it to the world. And that takes innovation, discipline, capability, and resources. 

 

5.17.24

“That’s it? Silver spoon much? You entitled ponce. What about all the real and serious consequences people fear if they try something and it goes sideways?”

I am scared that if I create something the boss doesn’t like I will get fired and won’t be able to find a new job in this economy; my kids will go hungry.

I’m scared that creative failure will result in having to shut down the company, and a bunch of friends I hired will be out of work because of me.

I’m scared that people’s spouses will leave them because a project or company failed.

I’m scared that powerful forces will take umbrage to what I’ve created and will throw me in prison.

I’m scared someone will attack me with a knife because of something I’ve created.

 

And some of these – all of these! – are very real world examples of things that happen sometimes when a creative endeavor goes wrong.

Taylor Swift snidely sings, “Yeah they sit around talkin’ about the meaning of life and the book that just saved ‘em that I hadn’t heard of.”

And I recognize that there is a certain level of entitlement, privilege, and pseudo-academic snobbery associated with writing about books, writing about creativity, and with the incredible fortune of being in a position where the kinds of fears you can articulate have to do with the emotional consequences of a poor creation. These are not the fears of folks in Gaza today. These are not the fears of writers and poets publishing in secret inside totalitarian countries. These are not the fears of the hungry, those on the run, the wrongfully imprisoned, or those living in abusive relationships.

And somehow – wonderfully – humans DO keep creating things. They write poems on prison walls, they public newspapers in secret that critique the regime, they work on video games while the bombs fall on their country, they squint through the black eye and sketch with charcoal on rough paper, they write imaginative novels of their furious disrespect even under the threat of an irrevocable a death sentence.

Humans create despite their fear.

And yes, I am incredibly privileged to be able to think about books, and writing, and games, and creativity. And I am very fortunate to not have to truly worry about much other than some mild public teehee if I stumble or fail. (And, it’s important always to remember “you wouldn’t worry so much what people thought about you if you realize how seldom they do.”) And I suspect that MOST of the would-be creators who hesitate because they are afraid don’t truly face many of these real or dire consequences.

So keep creating.

Keep trying.

If you stumble, brush your shoulders off. Try again; fail better.

And remember you’re in good company:

Even the wealthy, popular, and powerful Miss Swift appears to have late night fears about her creations not being popular asking, “Will you still want me when I’m nothing new?”

 

5.16.24

Why does fear inhibit the creative impulse?

 

I want to think about the way that the things we are afraid of inhibit our desire and ability to engage in acts of creation.

 

One of the projects I’m working on right now is way outside of my usual comfort zone: It’s hyper technical, involved in a business sector I’m not familiar with, fairly novel, experimental, and could do much good for the world, but could also do much harm. I was trying to describe the anxieties I have about the project to one of my family members who asked me, “What are you afraid of?”

I am scared that ... technology ... is evolving so rapidly that I don't know how to build a business on top of it.

I am scared of potential risks.

I am scared that this will have ended up burning a bunch of money to test something that we are unprepared to really build and run; we will have wasted a bunch of money.

I'm scared of publicizing this mission and then failing at it.

I'm slightly scared of succeeding at it.

I think these fears are an interesting cross section of the kinds of things that regularly prevent people from trying to do things. It’s very scary to try something. What if you fail? What if they all laugh at you? What if it poisons future opportunities for you? What if it wastes a lot of money?

And because a bunch of these fears speak to the heart of identity and a person’s role in their community, in culture they are powerful demotivators to many. Indeed, I suspect that some of these fears are the primary reason that the vast majority of humans are consumers rather than creators: The fear of trying and failing is powerfully dissuasive.

I don’t really have antidotes to most of these (clearly) but I do find the following technique to be useful:

Sometimes when I feel overcome by an anxiety about some particular topic I try to engage in a Socratic dialog – in writing – in which I try to ask “Okay, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

I find often this approach helps to neuter fears like these, because you realize that really… If you try to create something and fail, mostly, you’re no worse off than you are the day before you tried.

What are examples of public failures in the act of creation that ended up defining the lives or ending the careers of the creator who failed?

 Rest in Peace, Alice Munro. 

 5.14.2024

The first game I ever made, called Tim's Quest, was made for one player, my brother Mike. He's the only one who ever saw it.

The games I created at Kabam: Marvel: Contest of Champions, Disney Mirrorverse, Fast & Furious, Transformers: Forged to Fight, Shop Titans collectively reached and (mostly) delighted more than 500,000,000 players around the world. All in they grossed somewhere north of $3,000,000,000 USD.  

The games I helped build at Hasbro mostly haven't yet reached those level of success, though Magic the Gathering: Arena delights lots of people, and some of the licensed products like Scopely's juggernaut, Monopoly Go!, could well be on track to exceed that level of popularity all by themselves. 

Add in the Call of Dutys, the Halos, the Need for Speeds, and many other creations over the last thirty years and we are probably approaching close to a billion people on Earth who have enjoyed something I had at least some small role in creating. 

.        .        .

Today I creted a piece of art that I hid in a deep part of the forest on a very remote island, where I can be reasonibly sure no one but me will ever see it. 

 5.13.24

 

How can thinking about the types of communities people are seeking help us fix the games industry?

And what does this have to do with this month’s theme of Creativity?

A decade ago, a very bright designer I know pointed out to me that the massive increase in the number of gamers around the world means that there is an appetite and an audience for almost any game you wanted to make. His point was that if it is exciting and interesting to your team, or to you as a creator, then that is probably a good indication that there are other people in the world who will be excited about it.

This reminds me of being a teenager and hiding my Dungeons & Dragons books and dice and fantasy novels (even my Commodore 64 computer) when my first high school girlfriend came around. This kind of nerd stuff was best hidden in the shadows in Austin at the time. I remember friends who would shamefully admit to collecting comic books around the same time. And, of course, Marvel and video gaming have been two of the pillars of the entertainment industry over the last decade. It turns out that our little niche subculture was far more widespread than we thought.

I think about the successful business that some creators have made out of building “work simulator” games. About a CEO I heard from a few days ago who is relentlessly focusing on RTS games and busy smirking at “execs” from big publishers who tried to tell him that there’s not a big enough market for these kinds of games.

The point here is that creating something for a small audience can be a viable business provided the team creating it can keep their budgets in check. And, as my trip down teenage memory lane reminds us, sometimes niche markets can explode and become incredibly popular. (For some reason I’m thinking of the rise of vampire fiction, Sookie Stackhouse and Twilight last decade.)

So one option for many of the creators who are worried about the huge costs and instability of gargantuan two hundred million dollar game projects and teams might be to focus instead on working with smaller teams to build smaller games.

This could yield a couple of benefits: First, there is little more joyful than a tight-knit group of collaborators who are obsessed with a shared vision for something they want to create. Small teams can be such fun, move so quickly, and create a sense of belonging, shared purpose, and esprit de corps that can be so very hard to establish or find on massive distributed AAA projects. Second, niche audiences for these kinds of games can end up being quirky, fun communities that are small enough for creators to interact with in a way that can be very hard (or unwise) to do on massive commercial projects.

There are disadvantages here; I’d be remiss not to mention. But since the goal of this post is to keep people creating, I’ll do no more than list them: Greater professional instability, fewer & worse benefits, complex market fit economics, losing the thrill of having huge audiences love your game.

One option I’d suggest to those creators who have lost the joy of working on big games with big teams for big corporations is to partner up with a smaller group focused on delighting a niche community.

I’m not sure that’s what I personally want. But it could be one solution to the angst some folks have expressed to me about their roles in the games biz.

Above all, I suppose I want to tell these folks not to lose hope. Keep making things. 

The things you create don’t have to target a massive audience to be fulfilling or financially rewarding.

 5.12.24

Two different people over the last few days have said something to me like, "Now that you're free and thinking about what you want to do next, maybe you can work on figuring out how to fix the games industry." 

And aside from being mildly flattered and simultaneously bemused and horrified at the idea that anyone could believe I would have (or want!) that level of influence on such matters... I keep returning to the idea, and it leads me to a question: 

What do we believe is wrong with the digital games industry currently?  

The Creators

This weekend there is much social media chatter about a couple of studios Microsoft acquired at some point and has recently shut down. (I’m being vague not because I do not know the details, the games, the decision makers, and people impacted, but because I don’t want to focus on this particular incident, but on the concept of a broader malaise.) This is an example of the gloom on the side of the game makers: We’ve had huge numbers of layoffs in the industry over the last 24 months, many more studios are struggling and will likely close their doors before this year is over. There’s a strong culture of fear in many places which makes people afraid to speak up or even commit to a particular course of action because they are worried about losing their jobs. “Just survive ‘till ’25” is a phrase I heard repeated so many times this spring that it was almost a rallying cry for this year’s Game Developer’s Conference.

So let’s agree that for people working in the games business, there’s a strong sense of fear and the worry that things have changed for the worse, and they aren’t sure how to find their footing again.

The Players

And then there are the players.

The current Player v. Industry dust-up involves the players of a game called Helldivers 2 who love the game but have given the publisher and the developer nonstop grief over many things, most recently some efforts to force players to use a Sony account system to log in and play the game.

Perhaps the players have legit beef in this case, perhaps there were good reasons (there usually are!) for forcing the use of a particular account or login system.

But again, the specific case here is less interesting than what I think could broadly be made as a true statement:

There is a deep sense of regular outrage and antipathy between players and the creators and publishers of the games they play.

The Investors

And then the investors are uncertain, many sitting on the sidelines. A few experienced VC groups have raised fairly sizeable amounts to restart investing after 18 months of caution. Investment IS returning to the sector, albeit slowly.

There are likely three big reasons for this: First, at the macro level, interest rates remain high. There are other places which are far lower risk to go get a return that outstrips inflation. Second, the industry is seen as being in a correction post-pandemic after 2020 highs for almost the entire sector. Third, at least a bunch of VC took a bath on Web3 gaming investment, AND are now watching companies they funded for seed rounds struggle to raise enough to bring whatever games they are working on to market; so many VC firms may feel burned by investments over the last few years.

Investment into the games industry remains depressed and uneasy.

Some Areas for Further Thought

I’ll take these three categories of malaise as a reasonable answer to the question, “What do we believe is wrong with the games industry?”

I want to think more about what solutions we can see that will bring about the kind of change folks want to see. But before wrapping up for the morning, I need to add two more observations and an exhortation:

First, I cannot help but see a bit of a backlash against the hugely expensive AAA products that dominate sales charts.

Of the games that are getting the most attention, few are big AAA $200M blockbusters. Consider this NTY article from this morning, in which almost every one of the games recommended are smaller indie projects.

Recently, Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely swept the industry awards, for good reason. (Obviously I’m far from impartial to the success of this project, as I was involved however distantly.) But BG3 clearly delighted fans and critics the world over, and did very well for its creator, Larian. So there IS still appetite for giant, expensive games.

But there is also clearly a hunger for gamers (and creators, and investors) for smaller, lower risk enterprises.

Second, I think there’s value in zooming out from the games industry as a particular case study, and look at the broader relationship between consumers, the technology companies that provide them with content, and the workers who comprise those companies.

Noah Smith writes a provocative piece on the “death of the internet” in which he argues that people are increasingly turning away from content sources on the internet because the types of content there are increasingly low quality as a direct result of the need to drive profitability. (Cory Doctrow’s “Eshittification” of the net, “Slop” of AI generated stuff, disingenuous content posted by foreign agitators are the big three culprits in his mind.)

I’d like to think about all of this a lot more, but I see a couple of major social forces in play here:

First, employees and consumers alike feel hostile towards corporations right now. I think of this as an inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism, in which the inherent profit motive of corporations is distasteful to folks who feel left out of the benefits of the system. This has little to do with gaming in particular, and everything to do with discomfort people who (mostly) don’t have capital feel towards a system working as designed.

The system isn’t built to make your life better, creators. The system isn’t built to delight you, consumers. The system is built to maximize return on invested capital.

Second, I think that in a world where the concept of community has largely unraveled, and there are few abiding family structures, social structures, or faith in religion or government to give people a sense of belonging… In this post-trust environment, many people may be desperate for smaller, trusted groups to feel a part of. This is a quest for identity at its heart for many.

People need purpose and a sense of belonging, and when the larger social super-structures no longer are great at providing this for many, this seems to force a splintering into niche communities.

 In a world where big structures aren’t working for many people, are they seeking out smaller communities, more niche experiences as a way of coping?

 5.10.24

Does approaching an act of creation as a commercial enterprise inherently devalue the act?

 

Two different entrepreneurial colleagues have offered perspectives on this topic over the last few days and I think it is worthy of consideration.

Let’s imagine two different acts of creative genesis:

In the first of these, a painter recycles a canvas, combines the last of their acrylics, and sets out to capture the feeling of a sunny afternoon in a lovely field near their home. They have no expectation of anyone ever buying the resulting painting, they are carving out the time to do this work from some other more lucrative pursuit.

In the second of these, an artist is hired to generate six pieces of pen & ink concept art for an upcoming video game; they are given a particular style target (Zach Synder meets Hokusai!), a deadline, a target number of images, and a per diem.

One of these is clearly a commercially minded enterprise which will result in the generation of artwork. The other of these is a personal expression which will result in the generation of artwork.

Does intent matter in the creation of art in the way it does in, say, the commission of murder?

These two entrepreneurs  both independently advised me of the following:

“Do not pursue a new startup venture with a goal of succeeding in a particular business outcome; instead focus on creating a business that will expose you to problems and opportunities and people you are interested in.”

Both of them effectively argued that the profit motive will create undue stress and rob the exercise of joy such that you, the creator, will end up making bad decisions for the wrong reasons and will be much more inclined to quit when the going gets tough than if you were pursuing the effort primarily because it was something you were intellectually, emotionally, or creatively passionate about.

While on the surface this again feels like the Steve Jobs “follow your passion” type argument that we explored and dismissed a few days ago, I do think there’s something here worthy of consideration.

Creating things IS sometimes easy and often quite hard. The usual travails of life regularly make it difficult to stay optimistic, or even to stay focused on the task at hand. But inner fire for the act of creation likely IS a far stronger fuel to at least ensure you have the stamina to stay in the ring.

When creation is a job you have another choice if it gets hard: you can go get a different job.

When creation is an innate desire, you may well need to take other jobs, do other things to satisfy the conditions your life demands, but you will keep creating all the same.

This post is so flavored with the spirit of Sherry Fields, who has ALWAYS created artwork, mostly without any real expectation of profit, in all the many different seasons of her life.

So, thanks, Mom, for embodying the ethos of the lifelong creator. You have given me an example of what it looks like to compulsively create even when life put other demands on your time.

Approaching the act of creation as a commercial enterprise doesn’t inherently devalue the act; but it doesn’t give you the stamina to keep creating things no matter what.

 

5.9.24

Weezel sent me two horror novels by this, her favorite horror writer just as soon as she heard I might finally get to come up for air for a few weeks. I read them both quicky; this is the first.

The Devil Crept in by Ania Ahlborn

There’s a young pre-teen boy and his best friend cousin type disappears! But then he is found, but when he comes back, the isn’t quite right because… He was abducted by this eeeevil house in the woods! Where an old lady looks after her demonic offspring who has been kidnapping and glamoring (and sometimes eating) cats and dogs and is ready to move on to bigger prey. Which he does! Wickedness ensues.

The Bird Eater by Ania Ahlborn

Upset by the death of his son a guy returns to his childhood home in Wherever, Arkansas. But it’s an eeeevil haunted house! The Bird Eater lives there! And the man tries to wrestle with some psychological and substance abuse demons while hanging out in a haunted house, as you do. Wickedness ensues!

 

Thanks for the two fun horror novels, Weezel! They were a great palate cleanser and a good reminder that as tempting as it might be, you really don’t need to overly complicate a scary story to make it work.

One of the things I found myself contemplating while thinking about these two was about cliché, and how and why they work so well in storytelling. It’s often very tempting to want to defy cliché and steer far clear of it, and yet… When an audience wants popcorn, when they WANT to understand what is happening and digest it quickly to feel smart or in the know – (“Get out of the house, you fool!!!”) – you don’t do them any favors by going in a different direction or subverting their expectations.

How should we think about creativity and breaking new ground for narrative structures where the audience wants to get what they expect?

Makes me remember guidance from an old mentor of mine, Steve Barcia, a great game maker. He once told me, “Every game should be 80% familiar, only 20% fresh. More than that and the players are disappointed by not getting what they expect.”

And, of course, over time, as audiences consume more and develop a greater repertoire of story arcs and characters they immediately grok, presumably the 20% for each work that is truly fresh can ever widen, as our 80% lake of familiar grows ever deeper.

Makes me think of a conversation yesterday with a friend who had just read Hesse’s Siddhartha for the first time. We agreed that while the idea of someone turning away from the cultural sicknesses of the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe and seeking spiritual enlightenment in the Far East may have been fresh and influential in 1920, by now it’s so beyond cliché that a Nolan Batman film need devote more than about 20 seconds to the montage in which, “Then Bruce Wayne goes to India and becomes a spiritual badass.” (Or was that Dr. Stephen Strange? No matter.)

Audiences love cliché because they get to be in the know, and it helps them shortcut complex ideas that have already become part of the 80% Lake of Familiarity.

 

5.8.2024

Why should you care about creating anything?

A couple of different reasons sing to me:

First, it’s fun.

Second, it’s one of the only ways to fight back at the existential void that threatens most anyone who is thinking about why we are here and what it all means and all those other 3am kinds of questions.

Third, it can make the world better. (I just read this month’s Gates’ Notes this morning and am reminded of how much good we can do when trying to indulge the desire to create and coupling it with a desire to make the world better in measurable ways.)

Fourth, it can allow you a way of connecting with other humans in a pleasurable way.

Fifth, it can materially improve your life and the lives of people you love.

At Kabam, number 3 and 5 were two of the philosophies that I tried to speak to the staff about regularly. There’s a lot of value in reminding – aligning – people on why it is that they care about what they do professionally. Indeed, I’m not really sure there is much more important as a leader. “Teach them to yearn for the sea,” and all of that.

So then let’s get personal, since I’m the only one reading this:

I want to create more things.

And over the last few years I do not feel like I’ve been able to do much of that. (Game Development 2042, which I finished in 2021, was the last successful creation that I can think of, though there are a few other fun things in the works.) So I’ve spent a lot of the last week of (relative) down time thinking about what I want to be true going forward, professionally and personally:

 

• I want to spend at least some of my time each day creating something new.
• I want to work each day alongside people I like, respect, admire.
• I want to create things that delight, entertain, or make the world better.
• I want to do things that add create significant value and enrich the lives of everyone involved.

Over the coming month I will spend more time thinking about what specific opportunities I have to indulge these desires.

 

And I’ll let Word return to books for a bit.

 

5.7.2024

But wait a minute… Haven’t you basically just justified any job as an act of creation? Seems like you’re stripping the word of any real meaning. I’m pretty sure being a middle manager at a Burger King isn’t a creative act that will lead to immortality.

To start, I think there is dignity in most any work. So any snide comments about fast-food restaurants do us no credit. “Labor disgraces no man, though some men disgrace labor!”  

There’s an interesting diatribe here about the way that mass-market labor and capital have fundamentally changed some of the pride of craftsmanship that likely existed for many types of work in previous generations. Imagine a cook in Japan at a ryokan, selecting whatever produce or catch of the day is the freshest, combining them thoughtfully, preparing meals for each weary traveler in accord with what the cook might imagine would appeal to them. Consider the precision of the cuts, the savoring of each flavor, the pride of creating, say, a perfect tomago. Is cooking a satisfying act of creation? It absolutely can be. Inherently temporal, certainly, but the recipe and techniques can grant immortality; just ask the Earl of Sandwich.

So why would working as a line cook in a fast-food chain seem to be something different? The insulting adherence to minimum-wage and not-a-penny-more. The relentless beeping of machines that are designed to standardize the timing, each meal an idealized version of whatever the food-photographers artfully presented to the focus test groups, every action choreographed to increase efficiency, reduce operating expenses, maximize return on invested capital. There’s no act of creation here for the fabricant line-cook living in this Papa Song hellscape. What’s the difference?

Following instructions, a process, a system to achieve a known outcome, is fundamentally different than an act of imagination, a creative impulse to generate something new that didn’t exist before. Standardization and reduction of unknown potential outcomes feels anathema to the act of creation.

But doesn’t a master craftsman, who has, say, sculpted with a type of stone ten thousand times have a process carefully designed and honed to minimize unexpected outcomes?

Yes, perhaps. But these are techniques designed to maximize the chance for the craftsman to create the thing they want to build.

The genesis act remains central to creating something, even if process to minimize risk and maximize return has built up around it.

But the vision or imagination of human creators has to be at the epicenter of the act. 

 

5.6.24

Can facilitating or managing creative work be an act of creation?

 A few years ago a friend and mentor, Aaron Loeb, described his role at Scopely to me as that of a Creative Executive or words very close to that effect. He described this as a role that “helps creators go achieve their vision.” And at the time the description stuck in my mind (and made me raise an eyebrow.) Yes, we all want to imagine that by helping facilitate the acts of creation that others can undertake that we are – in some small way – creating something.

But are we?

This topic is (like most of this sequence) obviously somewhat on my mind because I am clearly working through my recent roles in the games business, as a creative, and contemplating how I want to spend the remaining time I have on this earth. So let’s sketch out the journey from creator to “Creative Executive” whose primary job is to build environments in which other people get to create.

I started as a creator; an artist and an animator, a game designer, a storyteller. My official job titles involved these kinds of things for the first few years. But quickly it because clear that I could accomplish a lot more by helping get other people excited about the mission, the game usually. “Lead Designer” was probably the first role I had where I officially should have spent more time helping other creators build things than building them myself. I think many of the worst outcomes that I experienced during this time was as a result of trying to continue to also work as an individual contributor to games and not just leading and managing others.

When you make games for a living, if you’re like most of the people I know in the business, you end up working on far more games that never go to market than games that do. While getting games killed and killing games is always a slightly bitter pill, the guidance to “murder your darlings” is good. It’s good in creative efforts and it is particularly valuable in commercial creative efforts. It’s easy to come up with an idea, and it is painfully easy to fall in love with an idea. You can devote (that word again) lots of time to building the wrong thing; this is time wasted. And so getting good at killing games and reevaluating what a team is working on is critical. It’s not actually a bad thing that many games get killed early in their creative lifecycle; this is the basis of a functional gate-system, which any developer or publisher needs.

And in time, what becomes clear as a game designer, as a creator, is that most of the reasons games get killed often have little to do with the merit of, say, the design or the art style. Market dynamics, lifetime P&L, cost-of-capital, ROIC, and many far less sexy elements of the business side of creating consumer products (which is exactly what commercial game development is) end up deciding which games should live and which should have a small funeral before too much time or money gets devoted (!) to them.

This leads many creators, as they gain experience and lose a lot of games, to increasingly shift their focus to the business side of things. You end up moving from creator to Creative Executive because the B2B deals, securing financing, making sure teams have the right people, and the dull mechanics of accounting end up being many of the biggest risks to ever getting the games you want to make made.

If I were to describe the job of a Creative Executive, or a CEO, or other leaders of game development studios and publishers, it would be this: Your role is to ensure a healthy ecosystem which increases the likelihood that your teams are able to create the most beloved and commercially successful games possible. You’re a farmer whose job is to think more about water, sunlight, the Ph balance of the soil, and the talents of the other gardeners who will work the land than it is to lovingly dig each hole by hand, or even always select which seedlings should get planted.

This kind of role is inherently the job of the Creative Executive. It’s harder than actually throwing yourself into creating something. It’s less rewarding in most ways. But there are some advantages. Let’s think about them for a moment:

-          There’s great joy in getting to mentor and experience vicarious pride from the successful creative efforts of others. Watching a studio GM ship something amazing and their team get rewarded by fans, media, and financially can be quite satisfying. You know you helped and played a big role in that success and it feels good.

-          There’s less obligation to be slavishly devoted (!) to a single project or game. While each of the games you’re trying to help succeed are important, they often benefit from a more measured level of involvement. When the team knows what they are doing, has what they need, and the organization is ready to help them bring it to market effectively, you can limit the amount of time you spend on that project. Don’t throw people off balance when they’re in a groove.

-          Many games don’t work. When a game doesn’t work, the team who is focused on the game often get laid off. Helping lead a portfolio of projects acts as a hedge against a single failed projects. This is true for an individual as it is for a company.

-          Because the dollar values you’re responsible for are (much) higher typically, the compensation is often better at a leadership level than it is for individual contributors. This may rankle, but it is the case for most businesses.

So is facilitating or managing creative work an act of creation?

Yes. What you are creating is something different. You are building teams, companies, projects. But when it works, you definitely HAVE created something that did not exist before. Indeed, the act of “value creation” is likely the primary job of both the entrepreneur and leaders at publicly traded companies.

And it can be a very satisfying act of creation indeed.

5.5.2024

But what is all this pretentious shit about “immortality?”

Why does this concept matter to you, and – more specifically – why is this a valuable lens for looking at the act of creation through? Is it?

“Great is the enemy of good,” it is said, and there’s definitely something to this. There are likely a hundred thousand Great American Novels that have never actually been started. Worrying too much about the longevity of a piece (or a whole category, like video games) of art is the opposite of sparking the desire to create something new. It invites the creator to obsess and worry over something being good enough to last rather than encouraging them (Me! You!) to roll up our sleeves and just do something, create something, make something.

And, it is true too that many of the acts of creation we revere were never thought of much during the creator’s life. Emily Dickenson, Vincent Van Gough, and so on. Worrying about someone – anyone – liking what you’re trying to create is a dangerous game. Bertrand Russel goes so far as to even tell you that if you’re writing or creating something to try to impress or appeal to someone else then you’re doing it for the wrong reason.

Of course, this level of “follow your dreams” talk sounds a little bit like the advice of someone who inherited an Earldom rather than having to work for a living. Recently I believe Professor Galloway called out this kind of Steve Jobs advice as being the kind of guidance that only the wealthy can give out to the young; and it does sound a bit out of touch. Creation with a capital-C, and any concept of immortality resulting from the acts of creating seems far-fetched, dreamy and naive in a time of constant tech layoffs.

So how to think about creation as a profession or even just a job?

Let’s fall back on my experience:

I said before that I’ve met very few game makers who do it for the money. And this is true to a point, but it is also true that creating software, or books, or music, can be a successful commercial venture. Indeed, there are billions of dollars that go into creating consumer industries around building and marketing each of these kinds of “Art.”

“Is commercial art really Art?” sounds like the kind of question I can imagine art school undergraduates in the sixties asking one another. There’s an inherent yawn in the question; like if you can even be in a room where someone is asking it you already were raised with some kind of silver spoon. And, worse, there’s something in this line of inquiry that inherently feels like people who aren’t successful commercially, or worry they won’t be, trying to hide behind the fig leaf of some higher calling. “Oh, my work is too deep or edgy for people to get it; I’m an artiste, not some crass cog in the capitalist machine.”

I think this is an adolescent, seductive rabbit trail to get lost in. There’s nothing wrong with creating things that people like. Mass market success IS success, though it is not the only thing that matters. In our culture (in most every culture I’m aware of ever), people expressing excitement about what you’ve made, through patronage, through album sales, though in-game micro-transactions IS a very validating way of knowing that you’re doing something – creating something – that people value. “Your dollars are votes.” This is how many people express appreciation in our culture.

So let’s agree that there is nothing about being popular, commercially successful, or even pursuing commercial success that invalidates the act of creation.

And worrying too much about how popular or successful – how immortal – a thing might be can pour cold water on the act of creation.

Which takes us to the next question.

Can facilitating or managing creative work be an act of creation?

 

5.4.24

But what about games?

I’ve spent my adult life-to-date creating entertainment. Yes, I've published a number of books, and written many many more, but mostly, were I done today, my life would be remembered (to the degree that it would be at all!) as a creator of video games. 

Thirty years ago this fall two young geniuses from Borland, David Stafford and Eli Boling, took a chance on an unpolished kid in Austin, Texas. I was honestly surprised when they offered to pay me; I barely understood games an a business at that point, it was a craft. And from there Eclipse Entertainment to Digital Anvil to Microsoft to Electronic Arts to Certain Affinity to Capcom to Kabam to Hasbro and that’s half a life gone by. Devoted – and I use the word with all it implies – to creating video games and software and, later, creating the teams and companies and conditions that allow them to come to life, to entertain the world.

Some of those adventures have been right down in the hot sweaty details of creating, designing, birthing games. Working with obsessively devoted creators, whole teams of them sometimes. Other times it has been a more managerial or clinical approach – all spreadsheeets and the court politics that use favor to decide funding. Certainly the acts of creation are more inspiring, more exciting, but both are necessary for bringing video games to millions of players around the world.

But are games art? Is the creation of video games bringing us as creators closer to immortality?

Games can be art. There’s just no doubt about this in my mind. Consider the moment with the giraffe in The Last of Us. Consider early Electronic Arts advertisements asking, “Can a video game make you cry?” Consider beautiful works like Journey or Flower or Sky. Consider the cultural impact of games like Grand Theft Auto, or – more darkly – the role of first-person-shooters in the debate about incel violence after Columbine. Games combine audio, visual, mechanical interactive elements to transport players, bring color to lives that are sometimes grey, create heroes, allow the lonely to make friends. They can make you think differently, even argue for a perspective. Games can be art.

But do they have the lasting power of the Word? Or are they inherently more akin to the lake-water calligraphy: temporal, performative, fleeting?

I think of this in two vectors.

First, video games, by their medium, are inherently temporal. While Frogger may live on in MAME cabinets or a few niche retro consoles, the Atari 2600 is – mostly – a thing of the past. And the lack of real portability or interoperability between generations of consoles (without a great deal of work from dedicated teams at Microsoft and Sony) mean that, for the most part, games disappear each year. Brute Force isn’t playable anywhere anymore (that I’m aware of.) Which means the passions and camaraderie, the sacrifice – the devotion! – of that group of young men (all of us were men almost back then) are mostly evaporated. Thousands of games disappear each year from public accessibility, and then they are gone. And, for the most part, they will not ever be resurrected. The epic of Gilgamesh, the (prophetic!) verses of a Shakespearean sonnet can live on and be reproduced for new generations. Most games will not.

Second, a person could argue that anything which touches lives and lives on in memory is still around. I like this argument, it makes a creator feel good to think that people remember a game or a character you’ve created. And people regularly tell me about this game or that and how it touched their lives. Indeed, I used this line of justification for many years to try to help teams be inspired to create great things. And despite what a few cynics (thinking of you, Chip) may have suggested, I genuinely believe that we can make the world better by creating entertainment that touches so many lives. This is not, has almost never been, just a cynical commerical enterprise for me, or for most of the games makers I've known over the last three decades.  

However, I do not believe this pursuit can mostly reach the level of longevity that I think would have to be required for approaching real immortality. Games touch lives, sometimes many, then maybe persist for a generation or three tops. And then they are gone. Lara Croft will still exist in the public mind in 2050. But in 2100? Doubtful. Mario for another hundred years perhaps. But even then, these are characters, caricatures, tropes even. Iago is not the text of Othello; he’s a character trope of a villainous jew. And at 400 years, he has lasted far longer than most. Can you name a video game character that will still exist in the public mind in 2424? I cannot make a compelling argument for any.

Video games are a delightful pastime for millions. They are – at times – a great business. They can entertain and elevate. They can certainly be art.

But I am doubtful that video games as an artform will convey immortality to the devotees who create them.

5.3.24

And what do we mean by “becoming immortal?”

In the damning, powerful conclusion to Lolita, which has been quoted here before, Nabakov’s anti-hero Humbert speaks of extinct aurochs, the secrets of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, and the refuge of art. He tells his doomed and already dead lady-love that these are the only immortalities they may share together.

Rushdie returns to the idea again and again, speaking of the power of poetry to preserve forever something of Victory City, now only present in the breathtaking ruins of Hampi. He talks about the power of Russian writers, executed by Stalin for their dissidence, but whose work has outlived the USSR. He harkens back to a Cairo poet, stabbed to death by a medieval radicalist. He conjures the specter of the dead cartoonists of Charlie Hedbo, reminding us that je suis Charlie remains as a cry of support for creators, even when those who murdered them are long forgotten as a footnote to the dying gasp of medievalist theology.

I suppose these thoughts – the notion that the art created can outlive oppressors and make up for misdeeds in life may be particularly appealing to a pedophile like Humbert (or a subversive like Nabakov) or to a writer like Rushdie whose works of tragic-comic subversion have made him a hunted man for so many years of his life. But in reflection, I think the hopeful truth advanced here is more broadly applicable.

Does all art have to be long-lived, or at least have the potential, to be valuable?

I am reminded of two forms of art which stick with me though they were inherently designed not to.

Once in Beijing while walking near the White Degobah on a lovely lake near the center of the city, I watched an older man with a large brush painting. The brush was nearly the size of a broom, and he was drawing the most beautiful calligraphy. Complex brush strokes of elaborate Hanzi, each word or letter beautifully crafted, though their meaning was indecipherable to an ignorant laowei like me. And after each character he would dip his brush into the water of the lake, and soak up more of the water that was his ink.

When I saw him he had clearly been at it much of the morning, and the characters behind him were evaporating. Was he writing an ancient epic poem? Critique of the government? A personal confession? I will never know, and after an hour or so, no one else would either, I suppose. This was one of the most beautiful displays of intentionally temporal art I’ve ever witnessed.

I think too though of friends who get together to jam improvisational numbers with bandmates. While some of the riffs they employ may have earwormed their way into our collective psyche and live on and on, most of their creations are defined by the serendipity and inherent fleeting nature of something created really just for the short term delight of the creator and any witnesses lucky enough to be present.

So some acts of creation are valuable – wonderful art even – but have no chance at immortality.

There is a certain caprice and wry acceptance of one’s mortality in this kind of creation. I would love to talk to a performance artist who loves this kind of thing. I’d like to ask them why they employ such skill and craft only to create something that cannot possibly last, and will inherently disappear without touching too many lives.

The act of creating many things (though not everything) has power to outlive the mortal span of the creator. And while even the great works of Ozymandias may eventually turn to decay, lost in the lone and level sands, the words of Percy Shelly will not. The stories of Rushdie, the verse of Kahlil Gibran, and the writing each and every one of us can do has at least a chance of touching lives, being reprinted, transmitted, and living forever.

Mighty stone edifices will eventually be worn down by wind and water, sculptures crack are swallowed up by fissures in the earth, or are left behind when the ships leave for the new world. Even the secrets of durable pigments may prove to be less durable than the painters who wielded them might have hoped. These are all still very worthy acts of creation; far more likely to endure generations than your 401k.

But because they can capture and transmit an idea, the form of art which is both the easiest and cheapest to use to at least try for immortality is the Word. 

 

To all of the creators out there: Keep at it. 

You are becoming immortal with every new thing you make.

 Trying by Yamadi Hobi and Elise Hurst

Trying is a lovely storybook with beautiful illustrations. It tells the story of a young person who is intimidated by the fear of failure, and the sculptor who encourages them to keep trying, keep creating. The Weezel sent it to me for my birthday, and the timing couldn’t have been better. I read it again this morning in the sunshine above the Salish Sea, thinking bright thoughts about the future and all the things I want to create.

Thanks, Weezel! 

4.26.2024

4.26.2024 

After some years that felt fairly derelict, I want to get back to writing about creativity and creation. 

 

I think that I shall resurrect Word as a place to do that. 

I’ll go back to reviewing each book I read, and also more broad writing on creativity and the importance of the act of creation to humans. 

Books this year so far: 

The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell 

The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell 

The Devil Crept in by Ania Ahlborn 

Trying by Yamada Hobi and Elise Hurst