Indie Madness

Action and GBGames have recently been having an interesting discussion on the concept of being bold.  A lot of it seems to come down to rising above your “path-of-least-resistance” internal programming in order to get out there and achieve something of consequence.  However, as I read through these posts I found myself asking, ”Is this the most productive way to think of being bold?  To rise above… to ditch the path of least resistance forever… To take the path of MORE resistance, in order to get results…”

 ”Why not?” you may ask — “This path-of-least-resistance tendency I have makes me sluggish.  It hampers my growth!  I am mired in stagnation!”

The reason you’re on the path of least resistance is that it is impossible to be otherwise.  That’s really what it comes down to.  Your brain is a path-of-least-resistance machine, and you cannot fool your brain.  This path is your friend.  It brings you precisely what you want.  If you run into a burning house to save Mittens (your baby pug), are you being bold?  Sure!  But did the action come from a decision to be bold or from resistance being added to all alternate paths?  In such an odd and extreme case you’re still taking precisely the path of least resistance — you just couldn’t bear the future consequences of inaction, so you acted.  It is when these resistances build up on all fronts that the path of least resistance becomes more and more bold to the observer.  It’s when the final straw is added to the pile of hatred that you have for a job and you march into the front office and quit.  It’s when the potential/romantic tension between you and the girl you’ve been hanging out with makes the situation awkward, combined with your extreme resistance to the memory of the past few months alone and the fear of a few months more that you reach out for that first bold kiss.  Resistance will come from the past, present, and future, and the human brain is very quick to sort these things out and deliver a decision about what to do in order to bring you what you want. 

 ”OK ok.. so what… I’m just supposed to wait around and hate my life until it becomes unbearable and it will change all by itself?”

Well if you can’t change the resistance of any given situation or path, and if your brain creates the perceived path of least resistance based on what you want…. what’s the problem?  The problem is very likely that you haven’t clearly defined what you want.  As far as I can tell, when the brain is teetering between various paths… each with about the same resistance (of one form or another), it defaults to the path with the least resistance in the present.  This can be an important distinction — One path has NO resistance for about 3 days… and even then the resistance is limited to getting up for a drink of water.  That path is lying on the couch.  Down the road further this “lying on the couch” path will result – weeks later — with being fired from your job (not that you’ll be there to get the pink slip), eviction from your apartment, and starvation.  Obviously that’s a lot of resistance… but it’s all so very far down the road.  The second path involves working hard in the present towards say… making a game to sell.  This option might involve unbearably boring toil for a while, and then after that becomes unclear and confused, but may involve making a decent living at some point.  The reason we so often choose to sit around doing NOTHING is because when the decision time comes, the brain favors the least resistance in the present.  If you leave it up to biology to determine what you want it’ll always be relaxation, sleep, food, sex, and a nice comfortable temperature.

So in these teetering decision moments, with two primarily unclear paths and a longing desire to be capable of choosing the “correct” one, what can we use to tip the scales?    There is one thing that can be changed over time (or rather quickly sometimes) juuuuust by thinking — your mind.  Change your mind about what you want.  The easiest way to get good results in attempting this is to examine very closely what you have and what you don’t have… gaps and voids and sometimes gaping hellish void-holes will emerge.  Some of these may be things that you haven’t considered in a while, as you’ve effectively suppressed them for so long that they no longer provide the required resistance to spur change.  By examining your desires closely, you’ll come to understand what you really want out of life — hardening your resolve, piling up resistance on all those paths that you don’t truly want to be on, loosening some of the resistance that you’ve experienced on the paths you DO want to be on (like fear)… and pretty soon you and Mittens will on your way together and you can look back and claim bold action for yourself.

So there you are:

The indie game developer — sifting through your options for a next project as the current one draws to an overdue close.

 The project you’d like to do next has a certain immensity to it…  It might take a year… or two.  It’s one of those epic tales.  The kind that when forged correctly can make an actual mark on the fabric of humanity’s recent mythmaking history.  A good game.

But there — ever looming, is the fact that your company’s only income during this development cycle will be whatever scraps come in from your first project AS a studio.  Consequentially, the financial forecast is indeed a mite grim.

 There are, in addition to the epic project, a number of other project options that might inhabit the next-in-line slot.  These would be shorter projects, which while inspired would not be a dream to work on.  They may be alternately casual, niche, or outright bizarre… but each of them would promise to be DONE sooner — contributing according to their individual means to the corporate coffers within months rather than years, whatever the amount.

The epic project likely means another year or two of day-job servitude.  The others, depending on which, could lead to faster freedom for full-time status.

The first also might mean a business loan — employee(s), growth, and the potential for great expression…

The latter would likely not contain any of these elements in any great degree, but could add to a budding young studio’s portfolio of games-for-sale in a fifth the time.

So which do you choose?  Why?  Would your choice be different if you had but five years left to live?  (this I just think is interesting… the urgency factor)

Ah well… I’ve still got work to do on Blobyrinth… so I had better stop rambling.  Just more madness to enter into the ongoing indie meme soup.

 ’til next time –

-Tim

I think I’ll file my one GDC post under Madness…. since that’s entirely what it was. Sorry for not being one of the many folks blogging from the CA lounge, posting cellphone pics of session slides moments after they happened with in-depth commentary on what everyone was saying about whatever all was new in the land of game development. It might have been interesting for the hardcore blog-surfers out there, but I barely had time to eat, sleep, or talk to my girlfriend — so the blog thing had to take a backseat.

First I’ll summarize a few key points about my experience with the GDC Conference Associate volunteer program.

Tim and Ian have put together a brilliant program… Everyone I met was interesting, somehow… (how????) which means that whatever filtration methods they’re using to parse the pile of essays, I am a supporter of such methods. Not only was everyone interesting, but nearly everyone was nice… and very nearly everyone was intelligent, to boot. Throw all that together and then remember that the number of CA’s (note, I didn’t really meet all that many of them) was about 260, and you’ve got quite a party of orange-shirted Madness. These were good people, and good times, and I hope to beat myself up again next year by doing it all over again.

While not working, I was networking, and learning a ton about the industry. I don’t think it’d be too safe to try to summarize what I learned or who I talked to here (just because I’d probably fill my 50 gigs of hard drive space), but on both fronts it was VERY worth taking a week off of work (both the day job and Ghost Ship Studios) to do. I especially recommend the CA program for anyone who is looking for a JOB in the industry. I was trying my best to avoid getting a normal industry job, but GDC, and especially the CA program, is a fantastic place to be for those who are looking in that direction.

Highlights:

Kornelia told me I had “nice shoes… good style.” This made me smiley. She is, after all… Kornelia.

Will Wright’s keynote. This guy is truly the maestrotaku… His wandering (but artfully crafted) speech flowed from one near-and-dear geek topic to the next, from procedural (er… generative) content creation to Drake’s equation for the distribution of extraterrestrial life… He takes his work seriously, researches very thoroughly, and deserves every sale his titles get.

I was working the cancelled Peter Molyneux session (which still required working since it was replaced by some other folks) — and Will Wright walks up to see it. The look of disappointment on his face, complete with hanging his head and sagging his shoulders… was almost as dramatic as my own 15 minutes earlier.

I had my head stepped on… that was new to me.

There is too much to say… it’d end up sounding like the rambling war stories of an ancient veteran. I’ll spare you and just say — next year, GO. Be a CA volunteer.

OK… so I’ve given a couple of updates on the Indie… but what of the Madness?

I’m on a path to make and release games — downloadable — but why? The answer, in as few words as would be reasonable, is money. Make the games, take in some reasonable amount of income from it, and move toward days lined up for the pursuit… of what?

Games are an end in themselves, to be sure. This Molyneuxite has long made a mental career out of world-creation-for-the-sake-of-world-creation. This… obsession, is deeper than the desire for money, though it may be even less healthy. All trivialities laid aside, the desire to create worlds is the desire to become a God. Gods are the creators of worlds — not men.

It started with the oral tradition — the telling of tales — on through print and film; our tools grow ever more-sophisticated. Our purpose, in the end, remains the same: We create worlds. We show that there are alternatives when it comes to choosing a reality for the moment. We play God. It is an expressive delusion of grandeur. Madness?

The current projects I’m entrenched in — these are not “worlds”, or even reasonable myths unto themselves. They are mere amusements, built with some hope of financial independence waiting in the wings of the path of least resistance. Is the hope really so vague? There is money to be made — line up the right partners, play the “games game” well enough, and there is little need to worry over financial failure in the long term…

However — given some amount of financial success… even the bottom of what amounts to a remote possibility — if freed up to create as only the designer and Myth-maker in me wants to create… what is it that I want to create? What is it that I want to become? Some day, perhaps, I’ll cling to something like an answer to these questions. For now, the quest is the goal, and there’s fun to be had in the process of learning.

Sorry ’bout the mess.

-Tim