Live Pitch Event With Raw Fury

I went to a live pitch event with Raw Fury’s CEO Pim Holfve and Head of Scouting Johan Toresson, arranged by Games Denmark and generously hosted by Raw Power Games. Ten different teams pitched their games, and received feedback from Pim and Johan on their pitches.

Pitching is hard, but it’s a skill that can be taught and learned. The painful thing about it, is that you have to get it wrong a lot of times before you get it right. So it was great to experience 10 teams pitching 10 very different games, and mostly doing a great job.

Here are some of my takeaways from Johan and Pim’s feedback:

• Focus on player’s play styles rather than their demographics. Paint a clear picture of the player type in terms of other preferred games, social media habits, media consumption etc.

• Show comparable titles and how your game differs. Simply showing Risk of Rain II and Hades as references when pitching your roguelike is not enough. Explain how your game is different and where it excels in comparison.

• Have design pillars. What are the absolutely essential design pillars that your game is built upon? What do you want the player to feel and do? What is the mood?

• Show how gameplay can deliver on your design pillars. “We’re making Star Wars meets South Park” - Great. What are the mechanics?

• Have clear player verbs. Know what players will be doing in your game. Show it clearly in your pitch.

• Have articulated USP’s. By articulating your game’s unique selling points, you demonstrate that you know your audience, your genre and your game.

• Show gameplay. Maybe even have an appendix where you go through it in detail.

• Show how the publisher fits in. Be clear on what you need from a publisher, and how you see them fit in a partnership around your project.

• Show that you’re thinking about value creation for your partners. Make sure that interests are aligned, and there is room for every partner to make money.

• Think about how to do fun shit for Twitch - “Not enough people think about how to do fun shit for twitch” as Johan eloquently put it.

• What kind of pre-knowns do we assume from the player? Does our game build on something approachable, or do we assume that players are familiar with the cricket score system or the finer nuances of archeology?

• Sales projections are nice. But make sure that you base those projections on comparable titles and not on the outliers of the genre.

• Skip numbers unless they’re really clear. “As soon as there is numbers, I’ll check them in my head” as Pim pointed out. Attention goes away from what you’re saying, unless the numbers are clear and obviously match up.

• Live pitch ≠ mail-out pitch. Use way less text in your live pitch slides than you would in your mail-out slides. People listening to your pitch shouldn’t be distracted by dense and wordy slides.

• You only get one launch. “Can we just skip fucking early access?” Johan said. Early Access is the launch. The demo is the new Early Access.

I’ve revisited my Indie Games Business Case Template and made a few additions and adjustments here and there in order to incorporate the notes above. The goal of the template is to make it easier and faster to build a compelling pitch and business case.

Making Game Icons

Making icons is one of the many aspects of game development that I enjoy the most.

At first, just making something quick and dirty, or using found or borrowed stuff as temporary dummies. Making the first drafts, then making one you kind of believe in. Adjusting proportions and lines, testing it in-game in the desired resolution. Going back and adjusting the first ones to fit with the newly discovered rule. Slowly establishing a unified language, until finally having grogged it, and reached the point where it’s “just” a question of producing the assets…

Next Level Fascism

I was working on some 9-slice generic game UI, just for fun, all while getting fed up.

Lower Your Expectations

Missing bits of information and small misunderstandings lead to the big misunderstanding; Knowing how to read is a prerequisite for starting in school.

When my youngest cousin was about to first start in school, his mood was getting worse as the first day of school approached. At five years old it seemed like quite a mouthful to trade the cozy and familiar kindergarten in for a full blown public school reality.

Even though the public school was a fairly small one, and he already knew lots of the kids he’d be joining, it was getting clear that he felt more and more anxious about the whole thing. 

One day, as his mom casually tried to approach the subject, and to defuse the fear of the unknown, he couldn’t keep it tied up inside anymore.

“But, mom, I don’t know how to read!” he cried. “How can I go to school if I don’t know how to read yet?”

Where did he get that idea from? 

There is probably no specific answer to that. Rather it’s a range of missing bits of information and small misunderstandings that lead to the big misunderstanding; Knowing how to read is a prerequisite for starting in school.

My five year old cousin had through unfortunate circumstances established a self-imposed false expectation that was partially hidden for himself and his surroundings up until the point where it revealed itself as anxiety and tears, and he finally expressed it. He had in a way overthought what school meant, painted himself into a corner from where no escape seemed possible. The only escape–fortunately a good one–was to burst into tears and tell his mom.

Imagine the relief my cousin must have felt when he realised that school is in fact for learning how to read, and that kids–all the other kids too–are supposed to start from scratch on the first day.

Self-imposed hidden expectations are perfect for inducing anxiety and killing good ideas, action and energy in the cradle. Like a five year old we hold misunderstood and hidden expectations of how and what we should and ought to be and do. Positive and negative, both kinds potentially severely limiting our mental range of motion.

Worrying is imagination wasted they say. So is fantasizing about how amazing the not yet started artwork will be when it’s completed. Both perspectives are crippling. Worrying leads to anxiety, anxiety eats the soul. Fantasizing builds unrealistic and unachievable goals, and sets the soul up to failure.

The creative mind vividly imagines the future. It imagines future realities, works, outputs and outcomes. That ability is your strength as a creative person and—if not careful—your potential downfall. 

The more vivid the vision, the more ambitious the goal, the higher the expectations, the larger the gap between desired and expected outcome and what we are actually able to produce. What we produce does not compare to what we imagine before we start. Our limited ability does not deliver the desired outcome so vividly imagined. 

We become frustrated with the process and disappointed with our results. We feel self-conscious and embarrassed by our failure to deliver on our own expectations and the expectations we believe others will have to us. 

Worst case we quit new things before we get any good.

The challenge with expectations is that they tend to (often secretly) evolve along with one's skill level and results. The expectations of my cousin as a five year old first grader were naturally very different as he grew up and became a sought-after bricklayer.

As we do creative work, as we learn and practice, we need to actively manage our self imposed expectations and make sure that they still benefit and support us, and that they point the direction that we intend to go.

I’ll end with another lesson taught to me by kids.

My two four year olds (yes, twins) were playing on the living room floor. I was zoning out and wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing. 

“I can do it!” she yelled, fed up with her brother’s repeated attempts to show her how to. “I just can’t do it yet!” she added. 

Basically: “Back off, I can do this, if you let me figure it out!”

To me that’s a perfect example of picking meaningful and fair expectations of oneself. 

“I expect myself to be able to do this thing that I’m trying to learn. I know and fully accept that I can’t do it yet, but I firmly believe that I will be able to some time in the future. If only I practice.“

Examine the expectations that you feel family, friends, people, job and society have of you. Which ones are real? Which ones only exist within you? Most importantly; which expectations are aligned with your personal values and your dreams?

Cherry pick expectations that make sense for you. Pick meaningful and beneficial expectations for yourself. Don’t measure yourself by someone else’s ruler.

And cut yourself some slack. Pressure doesn’t work.

Writing Without Thinking

From one moment to the next, my writing went from an orderly narrative to a 1:1 mirror of what was on my more or less chaotic mind in that exact moment.

If you are an overthinker like myself, then you probably know that journaling is a great way to… overthink even more.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big fan of journaling.

Journaling, at its best, is a way to let go of intrusive and spiraling thoughts, to kill overthinking in the cradle, and to heal over time. It becomes a mirror to reflect and understand your emotions and thoughts. It becomes a record of your growth through hardships, your dilemmas and decisions, and a timeline of your life.

However, journaling can easily be just another channel for us to overthink:

• “Am I journaling right?”

• “Does that sentence even make sense?”

• “What do I actually feel about this?”

• “Would my reader think less of me if…?”

• “Is my handwriting getting sloppier?”

I have been journaling on and off for several periods of my life, always with a clear intention of writing only for me, with no other purpose than to help me reflect, understand, and vent.

Journaling was very important to me as I dug my way out of a depression. It helped me offload. It helped me look at my thought patterns in a more neutral, outside light. And to look back at the progress I had made.

Still, even though I was writing from that vulnerable place, with that clear intention of it being for my eyes only, I still managed to overthink it. I kept it humanly readable, rephrased sentences in my mind before I wrote them, and made sure to “get it right.”

Then suddenly, during a long stint of fairly consistent journaling, it just gelled for me: I don’t have to write full sentences. I don’t have to write anything that makes sense to anyone but me at that moment. I don’t have to write in an orderly fashion. I don’t have to think about what I’m writing in my journal. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to do anything. In fact, I should not think. I only have to write what’s on my mind, as it is on my mind.

The fact that you can do anything in your journal is, fortunately, very obvious for a lot of people. But for us overthinkers, it is way too easy to get lost and abide by arbitrary rules that only exist in our minds. Rules that we haven’t deliberately set for ourselves but are set by unconscious expectations and amplified by overthinking.

From one moment to the next, my writing went from an orderly narrative to a 1:1 mirror of what was on my more or less chaotic mind in that exact moment.

Warts and all. Thoughts racing by, taking detours, coming back, remembering something, there’s an emotion, what’s that sound, anyway, where was I? No doubt absolutely useless to an outside reader, but much more useful to me.

How did that shift happen? How come I could just switch from one mode to the other, in an instant?

I had gradually gotten closer and closer to a state where I just did it. I just wrote in my journal, without thinking about whether I should or not. I had established a rooted creative practice that gave me something back. I felt a sense of release, relief, and calm after having written a page or two. I had reached a point where writing in my journal had become an automatic action that didn’t “require me to overthink it.”

And I had been doing it long enough for my Judge—who knows nothing about creative acts—to become bored and fall asleep.

When Creativity Is The Enemy

Tom Sachs is the artist, and his studio assistants must work in strict adherence to Sachs’ code, to fulfill his vision. Or else.

Andy Warhol was somewhat notorious for his use of assistants. Three of his studios were even nicknamed “The Factory”. As in; an army of assistants mass-produced art, straight from the assembly line to the gallery. 

Slightly controversial: If the artist isn’t producing the actual piece, is it then their work?

Lots of the most successful artists in the World have big studios and several assistants employed to produce their works. The artists themselves have more of a directing role than an executing one. Tom Sachs (1966), a renowned American artist, is one of those artists. 

To help manage his studio, assistants and production, Sachs has compiled a detailed set of rules that his New York studio employees have to adhere to. The rule set “Ten Bullets” was released as an artist zine in 2005 and turned to film by Tom Sachs and Van Neistat, filmmaker and then Tom Sachs assistant, in 2010.

The opening page of the zine reads: 

“CREATIVITY IS THE ENEMY” – Tom Sachs

Creativity is the enemy when working in adherence to established principles.

Creativity is unwanted when following a specific set of instructions aimed at reaching a certain objective. Whoever gave the specific instructions has no interest in any displays of creativity from the person carrying out those instructions. Working to code–abiding by the set of instructions–has top priority. The person doing the work is nothing more than a mere worker ant, carrying out their task.

Tom Sachs is the artist, and his studio assistants must work in strict adherence to Sachs’ code, to fulfill his vision. Or else.

“Work to code and you might not get fired,” as it’s stated in the film.

Tom Sachs and his studio assistants is a case of two modes of working:

1. Open mode, and 

2. Closed mode

The Artist–Tom Sachs–operates in the open mode. From the open mode, the artist will produce instructions in the shape of ideas, sketches, rules and directions. Open mode is about inventing the new. The Artist will hand off instructions to the assistants, and expect them to produce the work, no questions asked, no detours made, no ideas added.

The studio assistants operate in the closed mode only. Here they submit to the instructions received, and produce accordingly. Closed mode is about producing the work imagined in the open mode. Assistants do not question instructions from The Artist, they don’t add their own instructions, they don’t get any new ideas. They don’t get creative.

The artist has oversight, and makes sure that any unwanted creativity displayed by the closed-mode assistants is defeated and a work is produced. 

A lot of Tom Sachs’ works would not exist without his staff of assistants. The assistants are crucial in order to produce the works. Without The Artist’s instructions the works would not exist. Both functions are needed to produce works of art.

When you’re working on your own, there is no Tom Sachs to hand out a set of rules. There is no Tom Sachs to foster a vision that you can submit to. There is no studio full of assistants ready to execute blindly. There is only you. You are the artist and the assistant. You are vision and execution.

The Auto Repair Shop Where New Cars Go To Die

First we have to suck. Then we get better. But only if we allow ourselves to suck.

I once had a conversation with a teacher at a vocational school. He trained youngsters who dreamt of becoming auto mechanics to a point where they would be good enough to complete their education as trainees at an actual auto repair shop. 

We were kicking tires and talking as he showed me the shop. His on-campus garage had a fully equipped, professional looking repair shop with all the tools of the trade. The place smelled of oil, tires and exhaust fumes, the music was loud and everything seemed just right. They even had a couple of very nice cars sitting on the lifts, plus a few more waiting their turn outside, completing the illusion of a commercial repair shop. 

I assumed that people would book a repair, drop their cars off at the shop and wait for a few weeks to get a repair done by students, at a very slow pace, overseen and validated by a professional. In return for a longer stay at the shop, customers would get a very fair price on an otherwise expensive repair. That made sense to me.

The guy laughed. No, these cars would never be driven by anyone, except for the youngsters at the shop. In fact, once the cars had stayed in the shop for a while they would typically have sustained quite a few damages. Usually you’d expect the opposite of a repair shop.

“They’re just kids,” he said. “Some of them walk in the door, so sure of themselves, inflated egos, convinced that they’ll be World class mechanics in a minute. They usually don’t last long though. The ones who last know how to suck.”

Youngsters, full of high expectations of their own mad skills, rushed in, and made a shit job of even simple repairs. Broken bolts, ruined threads, missing bits and so on. When faced with their own–expected and natural–incompetence, those, who had never learned how to suck, left.

First we have to suck. Then we get better. But only if we allow ourselves to suck. We are not meant to be good to begin with. We need to lower our expectations. Strive to suck less today than we did yesterday. And then keep at it until we don’t suck. We are meant to suck. We are meant to practice. And gradually to suck less.

So where did the nice cars in the repair shop come from? It turned out that local car dealerships sponsored cars for the students to work on. 

Why? What is a better way to make sure you can get qualified trainees to your dealership, specialized in your brand of cars? 

Give them a nice car to work on…

Underthinking Leads to Shit - As it Should

I’ve been practicing underthinking lately. As a way of minimising overthinking and maximising creative output. Maximising output is key. It’s about quantity over quality.

Some of the output—let me be honest—most of the output is shit. But some of it might turn out good. Who am I to judge?

The whole point of it is to get past the shit, and on to the actual work. Get past the overthinking and inaction, and on to the creative practice. And sharing the—at times agonising—results with the World.

Underthink

Overthinking things is a big culprit in choking creativity. Lately I’ve been challenging myself to underthink and focus on quantity in my output.

I’ve made a simple dogmatic setup for myself:

1. Quickly put the first thing that pops into mind on paper…

2. Snap a photo with the phone and airdrop it to the computer…

3. Adjust levels in Photoshop, paste into Illustrator, image trace, quick edit…

4. Paste back into Photoshop (Smart Obj., new artboard), layout, tweak, fix…

5. Auto-export .png with File > Generate > Image Assets = Done!

To me, the key is to minimise the distance and amount of work I need to do from “idea” to “finished product”. I’ve set a very low barrier for what constitutes an idea, and a very low barrier for what a finished product is.

Best case is, that—given enough repetitions—I’ll come up with some design that’ll be good, or that I’ll end up with a body of work that as a whole will amount to.. well, something.

Getting Started in Games

My 10 most important tips for new teams getting started in game development

If I was to start over, and make a new game company from scratch, with 0 experience and a whole lot of energy, this was what I hope someone would tell me:

1: Agree on paper

Talk things through, you and your partners. Make clear agreements on who owns and does what, and what happens if you disagree, break up or get lucky. Write down your agreements. Even an outline in an email is better than nothing.

2: Reduce Risk

As you’re just getting started, and have little to no money and little to no experience, your mindset should be anchored in reducing risk. How can we make sure that our likely failure has minimal negative impact on our finances, health and opportunity space?

3: Get Experience

You need to accelerate getting experienced as individuals and as a team. You do that by making products and completing full production cycles. You gauge how your product performs, how players react, and you actively seek to learn from it.

4: Make Something Small

By making something small you A) reduce risk, and B) accelerate your own learning. It’s more important to ship, than to ship something amazing. Make a really small game, ship it, learn from it and build from there. Dare yourself to make it smaller.

5: Launch Quickly

If you’re not super embarrassed about your game when you launch, then you’ve launched too late. Launching quickly will let you learn directly from the market and players faster. Launching quickly speeds up the experience loop and reduces risk.

6: Repeat

Launch the first thing. Then build on top of what you have. Launch another better thing. Build on top. Iterate on the thing you made. Consider your development process and ongoing chain of experiments. Test what works, emphasise and magnify what works before you add new things.

7: Focus on the First Minute

Your audience will judge your product extremely fast. Focus on getting the first few seconds right, then the first minute, then the first five minutes etc. When you have something that will keep players on board for 10-20 minutes, you’re in a good place.

8: Let People Pay You

There is no reason to wait until you have 6-12 hours of polished gameplay before you let people pay you. Start with a tip jar. Make small instant games with ads. Pre-sell your full game at a discount. Start a Patreon. At the very least give people a way to “pay” by giving you their email address.

9: Show Your Work

Share what you make on whatever channels you have available. Figure out where your players are, and show them bugs, failures, fun, great looking stuff, ugly stuff, warts and all. Show your work and humanity. You attract people who share your values by expressing your values.

10: Keep Going

You do not need permission to get started. Just go. Then make sure that you can keep going until you make something that works. Keep the band together. Work day jobs if you must. Keep going until something sticks.

Bonus: Get (Make) a Mentor

Lots of people have walked the path before you, and many of them are more than happy to help you out. It never hurts to ask. Don’t ask for a mentor, but ask for advice on a specific thing, go do it, then later tell them what happened and ask another thing. Slowly you’ll turn them into mentors.

Put it On the Wall

This post is available for free as a more attractive and printer friendly PDF.

Limit Your Canvas to A Minimum

A big empty sheet of paper is intimidating.

Make the canvas smaller.

Subdivide the area to release tension.

Subdivide and conquer, bit by bit.

The Indie Game Business Case Template

Building a compelling business case for an indie game is hard.

I recently found myself banging my head against the wall in frustration, as I tried to build a decent business case for a game. It felt like I was wandering randomly in the fog.

The culmination was a slightly embarrasing pitch meeting with a friendly publisher, where a couple of obvious flaws in my analysis was pointed out. I needed to make a better tool for myself.

One thing I had struggled with was finding actual relevant comparable games. I guess that's often a case of "my game is unique" syndrome. That, and the fact that I found it utterly overwhelming. So many games, so much data to dig through...

I ended up making a spreadsheet which is basically a combination of the Comparative Analysis approach from Rami Ismail's pitch template (https://ltpf.ramiismail.com/pitch-template/ - Specifically this slide Thanks for sharing, Rami!), and the Revenue Calculator from VGinsights.com (I've found their 'Indie Access' paid tier worth the subscription fee).

I've also found https://games-stats.com/steam/tags/ super useful when exploring the right tags.

With this spreadsheet, combined with data mining on VGinsights, it feels much more manageable.

I hope you'll feel the same way.

The Antidote to Insecurity

The antidote to insecurity is to allow yourself to be vulnerable and take action. To be vulnerable means allowing yourself to ask “stupid” questions, to seek answers, ask for help and to be coachable.

Being vulnerable, asking questions and having a learning mindset is something many people need to practice deliberately. I know I do.

Ask yourself:

• “Why do I feel insecure right now?”

• “What is the underlying question/uncertainty/challenge that make me feel insecure?”

• “What are some questions I can ask, to mitigate, learn about or solve this?”

• “Who can I ask?”

Phrasing questions without feeling too exposed can be hard. Here are some starting points:

• “Would it be OK if I ….?”

• “How would you approach [the challenge]?”

• “Do you have any ideas for how to ….?”

• “I’m thinking of [the challenge]. Do you have any thoughts on that?”

• “I’m feeling insecure about … “

That last one is not a question. But simply stating our insecurity to someone else most often unlocks a comment, a conversation or a moment of sparring that can help us through. And often stating the fact deflate the feeling.

I often feel insecure about sharing what I made.

But today, I’m sharing my course The Value Playbook publicly for the first time. One of the things I wanted to address with the course, is first time founders’ secret insecurities.

The Secrets That Product-centric First-time Founders Share

Product-centric first-time founders often share a set of secrets that hold them — us — back; We feel insecure and incompetent about business decisions.

Some of the most commonly shared insecurities for first-time product-centric founders are:

• How do we build a “real” company?

• How do we transition from being a few founders in a “club” to a company?

• How do we best communicate about our company?

• How do we best articulate where we are going?

• Am I doing this right?

As product-centric founders we try to keep our doubts and insecurities secret. Instead of showing vulnerability we are doing all they can to build and maintain an image of a professional company, run by great people who are in control.

When we try to pass as “great people, in control” we sometimes resort to arrogance, bolt-on jargon and hyperbole or we simply don’t go anywhere, paralysed with fear and doubts.

This means that hard and defining choices, that would really shape the future of the company, happen way too late, if ever. Important time is lost, and learning happen too little and too late.

In the best cases, the first-time founders get outside help, or they evolve fast enough, in time for a new beginning for the company.

How To Make Hard Choices Easier

Many indie game devs fail not because of an inferior product, but because their company is built on a poor foundation.

Product-centric founders with no business background - as indie game devs very often are - tend to overlook or neglect important aspects of building a sustainable company. As a result, hard, defining choices often happen too late in the company life-cycle.

As product-centric game people, starting a business, we’re often painfully aware of our own short-comings in the classically businessy aspects of starting and running a business.

Getting help to mitigate those obvious shortcomings is a no-brainer. We hire admin staff or external consultants to deal with payroll, bookkeeping and similar.

The problem is, that we often fail to see the important but non-urgent bits that make up the foundation of how our company operates and where we headed with it.

We fail to see the “soft stuff” that’s missing in our midst. It is not urgent. Nobody demands it from us. We’re only rarely asked about it. But getting it right makes a world of difference.

The solution?

How might we make a system of thought that would help us make hard choices easier?

• Discover and embrace your personal values

• Define and commit to a set of company values

• Develop a clear, inspirational and aspirational mission statement

• Use this to narrow your focus down to what makes the most impact

Then, make it a habit to check choices and actions against values and mission:

• How does this align with our values and mission?

• If we hold these values, what are the consequences in this current context?

Creative Process is Awesome Tricky Shit

You’ve probably come across some variation of the cliché above. It’s funny cause it’s true.

What if, we took the cliché seriously in a group or organisational creativity context?

Let’s try breaking the various stages of a creative ideation process in a group down into the mind states that the cliché offers, taking them as face value truths.

The Pareto Principle for Creative Process

The cliché indicates that 80% of the actual process is various stages of frustration, and the remaining 20% is flow, or getting shit done. The bits where we’re in the green.

Starting a new thing with a notion of “This is AWESOME” is fine. It is important to acknowledge that even though we tend to fall in love with the first “good” idea we see, the real creative process haven’t started yet.

Participant Mindstates: Symptoms, Risks and Mitigations

Looking at each of the stages in the cliché as an expression of participant mind state or the group mind state as a whole, we can identify a number of symptoms, risks, causes and mitigations.

Some of the mind states are unavoidable, many are undesirable, but the potential negative side effects can be mitigated, if we stick to some fairly simple best practices.

Get the Full Overview

Get the full version of this document in a hi-res PDF for future reference. It’s free.

We Are Not Competent to Judge Our Own Work

We can have intentions with our work, and opinions that we try to express. The best we can do, is to produce our work. We can try our best to transmit what we want to put out there.

But how the transmission is received is out of our control. How the work is perceived and judged is not for us to decide. We cannot judge our work.

We can — at a safe distance — look back and evaluate if we are content with it. If we like what we made.

Is it any good? Is it good? Or great even? There is no way for us to tell.

Same goes for our inner critic. They are no better than us. They don’t know anything either. They’re not competent. So why should we listen?

Clogging Your Drive

Figure out what is clogging your drive. To me it is the shed. If the shed is a mess, I can’t get anything started. Step one to anything is to clear out the shed.

The shed gets clogged during the short, dark days of winter. It’s like I spend the dark building a dam over a creek. As light returns I notice the flooding, and I must try to muster the energy to break through the clutter dam. 

Then, one day — after weeks of procrastination — I pile all the junk on the trailer, and the energy flows freely again. I can literally feel how I get renewed energy to do something. To make something.

What is clogging your drive? What are the things that tap your energy when left to decay?

How Can You Make It Smaller?

When making something, plan to make it smaller than you even thought possible. If the core is good enough it will be fine - better even - with being smaller. And then you can build from there.

Years ago we had a conversation with a game design celebrity about a game we wanted to make. We loved the idea we had. We had spent so much time in our heads with it, and had everything thought through.

The game would take the player to a variety of locations around the World and involve intricate sceneries. The celebrity designer listened to our pitch. He didn’t comment much on the idea or the gameplay, nor did he go into platforms, sales, marketing and strategy.

“That sounds fun. How can you make it smaller?” he said.
“Why go around the World, when you can go around the block?”

By making the product smaller we increase our chance of not failing. We increase our chance of completing, and then, our chance of succeeding.

We made the game smaller. But not at all small enough. We ended up never shipping it.

First We Suck. As We Are Supposed To

The creative mind vividly imagines the future. Future realities, works and outcomes. That ability is the strength and — if we are not careful — the potential downfall of creators.

What we produce to begin with does not compare to what we imagine. Our limited ability as beginners does not deliver the imagined outcome. Our creative mind is disappointed with our results. Worst case we leave the new thing before we get any good.

We are not meant to be good to begin with. We need to lower our expectations. Strive to suck less today than yesterday. And then keep at it until we don’t suck.

We are meant to suck. We are meant to practice. And gradually to suck less.