Slavery of the will.

I start building a game before knowing what it is going to be. Because in my experience, most of the ideas I have on paper don’t work out in practice. It’s better to just build the basic blocks of the game world and then see what I can do with them. Often inspiration comes in spades when there is something to look at and play with.

At some point, however, the game may be giving me ideas that do not seem compatible with my original vision. As a strong willed creative person, I reject such ideas. But that is dumb.

This is a very new medium and we don’t have a lot of methods and wisdom to fall back on yet. At least when trying to use this medium for artistic purposes. As a result, we may have great ideas but not know how to express them in the medium. The brute force of iterative prototyping seems to be the only way we have to slowly try to hack our way towards our goal.

But this is potentially endless. And always frustrating. A more fruitful way of achieving nice results is listening to what the game is trying to tell us. Certainly, in the beginning we may need to lead things in a certain direction. But at some point our initial intent will intersect with what the technology allows us to do, what we know ourselves capable of and what simply feels goods and what doesn’t. A number of paths will start to appear. One of those paths, inevitably the hardest and most unclear one, is the path that leads to accomplishing your goals. Other paths are easier and clearer, but they may seem simplistic or empty.

At this point, I know I need to reject my instincts to stubbornly follow my will. It’s strangely difficult for a creative person to choose the simple, easier path. But, I know from experience that that is the right one to follow. There will be plenty of opportunities along it for expression. And this path will lead to results. Maybe not the results I envisioned. But maybe interesting, surprising results. The other path, the path of the will, leads nowhere. It just keeps going and going, becoming broader and broader, and ultimately dissolves into nothing.