When it comes to making games, I like to think of myself as a mountain climber. Not literally, though! No surly goats, freezing temperatures, or risk of falling hundreds of feet to my doom, thank you very much.
I climb the figurative mountains that are creative projects. When something inspires me – usually media from my childhood, a particular game mechanic, or some combination of the two – then I set out to make my own spin on it. For example, I loved X-Men and the Marx Brothers growing up, and those were the inspirations for my first two Equip Story projects. I’m currently developing a card game inspired by Magic: the Gathering, another childhood hobby, and a love for FMV games inspired my most recent game jam. (To those of you who commented, thank you! I’ll have an update soon on whether I can share the game.) I want to plant my figurative freak flag on the mountains that inspire me.
That’s ideation. When it comes to actual development, this is what tends to happen. I spend a few months creating a web or PC game, which often requires me to learn a new scripting language or development tool. I’m currently learning Unity via Playmaker. I’ve spent a lot of time with Ink. Remember when I learned how to develop in Dorian’s custom tool for a single project, dear reader? I’ve wrestled with HTML and CSS. I made a whole game in a tool called GameSalad, which was pretty cool actually, despite the hilariously terrible name. (To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “you don’t make friends with GameSalad.”) This is just the tip of the tool learning iceberg for me.
After learning a new engine or scripting language to make a particular project, I make a hard pivot. I’ll spend a few months focused on a tabletop game. It’s usually a card game. I love card games in particular, for some reason! I keep going back to that deckbuilding well. There are lots of homebrew card games on my shelf, which I’m too polite to ask friends to playtest with me, lol. After I’m finished with the card game prototype, I go back to developing a PC or web game, and either I need to learn a new tool entirely to build this new game idea, or after several months or years I’ve completely forgotten how to use a tool I already spent time and energy learning, and I have to re-learn it.
Learning is fun!
Re-learning is never fun!
It’s a frustrating experience. I should already know the thing. That’s what the learning was for. You’re telling me I have to keep remembering something or I will un-learn it? Brain not fair!!
I want to follow my creative passions. That’s what Equip Story is all about. Pursuing creative projects I love instead of ones I hope will get me money, status, or “the next Balatro,” a phrase I’ve heard at GDC this week about a thousand million times. The element of a potential project that excites me the most is mystery. “How did old school simulator games work?” “How would I structure a visual novel to properly emulate a Zoom call with my mom?” At my studio game jam, I wanted to see if I could build an FMV game, even though I only had a week and very little knowledge of Unity. How could I make it happen? So I’ll play a visual novel or a TCG, then I get excited to break it down and make my own version with my own twists and ideas.
Despite having a good time following my creative whims ‘n fancies, there is a source of internal frustration for me. I’m not mastering any of the tools I’m using. If you want to learn to play piano really well, you practice the piano. Over and over again. If you suddenly get excited about playing the violin or the kazoo instead, so you decide to switch instruments, your piano skills will suffer. True, there might be some overlapping technique between playing the piano and the kazoo, but if you want to be great at piano, having a singular focus is crucial.
It’s not that I care about being thought of by others as a “great” game designer. But it would be exciting to watch my skills level up in a particular aspect of game design. For example, if I focused my creative energy on learning the Unity game engine and committed to only making games in Unity, I could take on more sophisticated projects mechanically. To juice that piano metaphor a bit more, if you only learn a little piano, you can play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Is anyone genuinely thrilled with themselves for being able to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?” I’d say it’s babies, nursery rhyme nerds, and that’s it. However, if you can sit down at a piano at a house party and play the Severance theme, you are an instant hero to yourself, to your peers, and most importantly, the ghost of Kier Eagan! If I got good enough at making video games, or tabletop games, my games could get more polished. I might be more proud of the individual games I create.
There are also social opportunities that come with mastery, too. There are whole communities of designers who are brought together by the tools and types of projects they make. For example, I spent a year designing a D&D adventure. In the process, I joined several Discords to ask more experienced D&D designers questions. I met fellow designers as part of an online academy for designing tabletop RPGs. At game stores, I ran playtest sessions. Upon release, I went onto podcasts to promote the game. Over the course of the year, I met many interesting people in the D&D space! Then my interests shifted to a video game project and I drifted away from the community, so I could follow another flight of fancy. What if I had stayed and made more D&D modules? Would I be part of a tight knit crew of D&D designers with matching 20 sided die leather jackets who terrorize Gen Con?
I love mountain climbing, but admittedly, it gets lonely sometimes.
That said, I do worry about losing my spark of inspiration if I stick to one lane too tightly for my creative projects. What if I commit to making visual novels? Then, after two or three, I find the process of making them rote? And I stare out the window thinking about how fun it would be to learn how to make an animatronic, and there’s a class online… but NO. Discipline, Geoffrey! If you ever want to get good at piano, you must stick with the piano.
🎲 Your Turn: I legitimately don’t know if I should pick a lane or keep on swerving. This has been on my mind for weeks. What do you think? Are you more of a mystery or a mastery person? Reply to this email or hit the orange reply button below and tell the whole world your thoughts.
10 responses to “Mystery vs. Mastery”
There are people out there who are really good at focusing on one thing and mastering it (Olympians, professional musicians, quantum physicists, etc.)
However, most people don’t do that. And, I think collaborative projects need both types of people to work.
In other words, you’re a swerve person not a focus person, and nothing will change that, and that’s okay. It’s not like all that time you spent making a D&D adventure doesn’t inform your other art-making activities.
On a game dev team, you are never going to be a great coder, drawer, or musician, but you could be a great project manager, and the everyone needs one of those!
In general, I agree with what you’re saying. Know who you are.
In my case, I did spend a lot of time focusing on my craft as a writer and I become a professional narrative designer with many shipped titles. So I think I’m capable of that kind of focus, I just waver on whether I want to apply it to my creative practice outside of work.
Wow, it’s like you read my mind. I do exactly the same thing. I always figured it was because I studied so much mathematics; the thing about mathematics is that you prove that something is true, or that it exists, or that it’s possible…then you leave the actual calculation to the engineers, while you go find the next interesting problem. Maybe that’s just how my mind works, and that’s why I was always good at math. Or maybe everything in my life influences everything else.
Anyway, I doubt I can give any advice because I’m kind of mired in the same problem. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to working on my Z-machine interpreter.
John… are you my bizarro?
Have you read the picture book “Wee Gillis” by Munro Leaf (1938)? Here it is read aloud by Dana Kilgore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-ICeBOMPk (about 11 minutes)
What are the common themes in your swerves? Do any of them “build the same muscle?” Can you apply that strength in a new way?
Thanks for sharing this, Brad! I didn’t know this story, but I think it’s a great one.
There are common themes in my swerves with my voice as a writer and my design principles. It’s the tools that challenge me. The tools you use to make a D&D campaign are different from the ones you use to make a video game, which are different from the ones you’d use to make a themed experience. The challenge is that my swerves are taking me to different mediums entirely, which means starting from scratch in fundamental ways. If I pursued projects that used the same tools, it would make pursuing my swerves easier, and I could probably execute on them with more mastery, but there could be a lingering regret for limiting myself.
You know what I’m gonna say…
https://tenor.com/lreYHJAisFD.gif
…you can also pick one skill to build for the next few years while you swerve? Harder to juggle, but you won’t be closing so many fun creative doors.
Whose house?! (Our house! We live together!)
Yeah, that’s wise advice. I definitely think there’s a balance to be struck, not unlike Swerve jumping several feet off the stadium stairs to strike Moxley into the arena concrete.
Oh gosh. I decided when I was 10 that I wanted to be good at everything when I grew up (I never thought that was remotely *possible* but it’s been an ideal and a hobby ever since) so I could probably write whole essays on this…
I think the two things that most jump out to me are 1. it’s not either/or; it’s how do you balance the two. Could you (once a week? a few minutes a day?) work on long-term skill-building things while mostly having fun chasing the mystery? Could you focus some of your work on getting better at adapting to new tools: what are the skills that transfer?
2. Sometimes a viewpoint shift makes all the difference in the world: how could you look at “the same thing” as including new mysteries? Maybe you’ve rented the same house for 30 years but you rearrange the furniture every year? Maybe you’re doing the same *general* thing but the people you’re working with/playing with are different every time and you never know what a new group is going to come up with?
Hmm, and maybe 3. I think you’re conflating a couple different things, and the specifics may be important? If it’s tech, you might try to get better/faster at picking up new tech, or you might try to pick a couple more general tools that can explore with you. Ditto if it’s people: does it have to be a crew that’s devoted to one thing, or could it be a crew that you just *like* and are interested in exploring more broadly with you (and maybe can remind you of what’s exciting and mysterious about the things that you’re *already* doing when that’s helpful…)
I love 10-year-old logic. Attempt to do anything. Why not?!
1. Oh, but either/ors make for more fun writing exercises (and programming logic), as opposed to the very smart and correct solution of balance. The idea of spending at least a few minutes a day or more in Unity is a great idea, no matter how I ultimately decide to balance Mystery and Mastery. Thanks for the suggestion!
2. I see what you’re saying. A mastery project can contain mysteries and vice versa. The biggest challenge for me tends to be switching between physical and digital games. But I could, for example, try designing a card game in Unity, which I’ve never done before.
3. It’s not so much that I’m slow at picking up new tech, it’s that I forget how to use new tech quickly. Once a year, I take a class that involves Arduino, and it requires I completely relearn Arduino. I’m not sure how to retain the knowledge except for if I use it every day. I think it’s the latter, picking tools with broad enough applications that I can use them on a lot more projects. For example, I learned Procreate recently, which I can use for lots of different types of drawing.
As for people – I mean, maybe! In internet world, it’s easy to find communities with keywords. Tools are good keywords, as are genres. Where are the people who script in Ink? The Inkle Discord. Where are the people who like interactive fiction? The IF message boards. Where are the people who are interested in freeform creative collaboration on digital and physical games and interactive experiences? I’m not sure.