One of my must-read comics growing up was What If…?, a showcase for the Marvel Universe’s most interesting butterfly effects. For example, “What If Doctor Doom Became a Hero?” or “What If Magneto Took Over the U.S.A.?” or “What If The Hulk Turned a Refreshing Lime Green?” (That last one features a rare team-up between Bruce Banner and the Kool-Aid Man to defeat Thirstmaster, who makes innocent people’s mouths uncomfortably dry just by staring at them. None of that is true, but I wish it was!)
I would read What If…? even if I hadn’t read the original comic issues they were riffing on. I think that’s because I enjoyed how What If…? showed the world descending into madness and apocalypse based on a single hero’s action, which I found fascinating, and in retrospect, campy. “Wow, I guess Loki would have enslaved humanity if Thor never took care of his dandruff problem!”
This week marks the one year anniversary of Equip Story! To celebrate, I thought I’d share with you the big “What If” of this newsletter. If you’ve been subscribed to my work long enough, you may remember Adventure Snack, my last newsletter, an award-winning series of short interactive fiction. I ended that newsletter after publishing 100 funny, bite-sized text adventure games in four and a half years. For my follow-up newsletter, I almost went in a very different direction. I was seriously considering betting the farm on the Adventure Snack concept. I was going to put a lot of money, time, and resources into creating an turbo-charged version Adventure Snack, until I read a book that changed the way I thought about making art in my spare time.
When I first came out to Los Angeles, I performed in live comedy shows at the UCB Theater and others. In a way, publishing Adventure Snack brought me back to my performing days. Every other week, I was going out on a digital stage (Substack) with a very strange act. It wasn’t improv, sketch, or the dreaded novelty song about dating in LA played on an acoustic guitar. It was me telling a story about Bigfoot being your landlord, where the audience decides how to get him to fix their overflowing toilet. Come to think of it, I did an interactive story show live at UCB with my custom programmed 2-XL robot toy. As I recall, a few people really liked it, and most probably would’ve preferred the novelty song about dating in LA.
I loved publishing Adventure Snack, but if I’m honest, I loved it most when it felt like a success. An early reviewer compared my writing to Douglas Adams, a personal hero! I was featured by IndieCade, the indie game festival! I kept adding new subscribers to the newsletter at a fast pace, growing from a few dozen when I launched to over a thousand, then over two thousand! When the audience laughs and applauds, being a performer is a great high. When my day job writing and designing game narratives for studios felt stifling or frustrating, I could get a little dopamine by releasing a new Adventure Snack and watch it catapult up the “Popular Posts” chart on my old Substack page. Line goes up! You like me, you really like me!
In the final year of Adventure Snack, something began to change. New subscribers trickled in still, but my growth was noticeably slower. Players weren’t engaging as much in the comments. Friends and family stopped telling me how much they enjoyed Adventure Snack, and when I looked at my stats page to see if they were still subscribed and playing, they were not. (I’ve stopped doing that. It’s extremely unhealthy behavior, lol!) But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Fix Your Mother’s Printer was featured in Edge magazine and received a lot of complimentary reviews in IFComp, including a few heartfelt emails from players. But when I felt the spotlight less, my enjoyment dimmed.
When I began reckoning with these feelings, my first idea was to redesign Adventure Snack from the ground up. I could make it better! Faster! Stronger, even! So I devised a plan to reboot Adventure Snack as a daily newsletter, instead of bi-weekly. Every month would be a new story campaign, broken up into 30 short segments delivered to inboxes once per day. The stories would still be funny, but more epic, like a D&D campaign. Players would make a choice each day in their inbox, leading to a different email the next day, depending on their choices. I could create a more immersive experience, while maintaining the “snack” feel, and I’d have a chance to get a hit of applause every single day, instead of just twice a month.
Technically speaking, I knew this wouldn’t work on Substack, but other email service providers have the ability to categorize email recipients by which links they click on, so I could sort players based on their choices automatically, then send them the next branched installment. Taken altogether, it would’ve turned Adventure Snack into a meal. Maybe this would become huge. Maybe this would finally take the project to the next level. Maybe this would make me a famous game designer. Maybe I could charge players a monthly subscription fee.
But there was another idea for what to do with my newsletter. It began when I found out a former boss of mine – the brilliant Stacey Mason, a game creator, researcher, and critic with a PhD in artificial intelligence – was reading a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, who I knew as the Eat Pray Love lady. I have not read Eat Pray Love. I mostly know Eat Pray Love from jokes comedians make about white women. But if Stacey was reading Big Magic, I knew there was a good reason. The book, which is about how to live a creative life despite fears that hold us back from pursuing our artistic ambitions, blew me away with its ability to balance inspiration with pragmatism. It wasn’t “woo-woo.” It was “whoa-whoa!”
Everyone in my family pursues their creativity, some of us professionally. When I was a kid, I was a local actor who performed on stage and in radio commercials, just like my mom and sister. I wasn’t afraid to pursue creativity as a career. It came naturally to me. But Big Magic got me thinking about why I make things. Was I just the product of my environment? Or was there something more to my pursuit? There was a quote in the book that really got to me:
“What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant? What do you love even more than you love your own ego?”
–Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
Over the years, I’ve rejected a lot of personal project ideas – mostly games – because I didn’t think they would succeed commercially. Too weird. Too personal. Too something. What if I spent tons of time and energy developing a game and only a few people bought it? Or worse, only a few people even played it? What if nobody applauded? What if I flopped? But this quote got me thinking about what I would build if I put my ego aside. If I could challenge my preconceived notions of “success” and “failure.” All my life, I’ve been creating art with a certain set of expectations. What if I didn’t?
I agonized over the decision for weeks. Do I build the All-New Adventure Snack or follow this amorphous feeling I had to pursue not just a new project, but a new way of living creatively?
You know how my story branched. I didn’t build Adventure Snack: The Meal. But for once, it wasn’t because I thought the game would fail commercially. I actually still think the idea is viable! It’s like D&D meets Wordle. Money, please! The problem was that I wanted to pursue it because I thought it would be successful. Applause, applause, applause. Line goes up. Start a Patreon. Go viral. No, triple viral. My ego was holding on to Adventure Snack, because I wanted that high again.
You’re reading my other idea, Equip Story. Instead of pursuing projects for material aims, I’ve been trying to make projects that excite and challenge me, and make them enjoyably and sustainably. I haven’t always succeeded, but I’m learning more about my creative process with every step, documenting my findings and writing about them here.
Equip Story isn’t a show. This newsletter is a journal of my creative life, read aloud. I decided to come out from behind the curtain. Not for the applause, but to get some fresh air and just hang out.
🎲 YOUR TURN: Is there a “what if” in your life? Do you think you made the right decision? Do you ever imagine what would’ve happened if you pursued it? Reply to this email with your what if, or tell the whole world by hitting the orange button below and leaving a comment.
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