How I deal with the downs
Thank you for 100 subscribers!
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
Y’all, I can hardly believe it, but there are more than 100 of you subscribed to this newsletter now..! I said this recently when I published the 100th issue, but seriously, thank you so much for reading my weekly ramblings!
It’s a pleasure to have you here!
I decided to skip last week’s newsletter because I was so occupied with the secret game I’m working on. The hours just rushed by, it was so easy to work on it. Ripping myself out of that to write a newsletter felt a bit… destructive? distracting? The point of this newsletter is to document my creative process. I think a healthy rule for that to work out is to never let this newsletter get in the way of my creative pursuits.
The ultimate failure of this newsletter would be if it became my only creative output. To just hypothise about making stuff instead of actually DOING IT.
That’s not the subject I wanna talk about today though. It’s the up and down of working on this secret game project.
How I deal with the downs
With this current game project I’m roaller-coasting quite a bit. For a couple of days I’m extremely into it and optimistic. Then I feel the opposite for a few days, doubting everything. Luckily, my doubtful days are way fewer than the optimistic ones.
I have learnt a few things to pull myself out of those day’s (or sometimes minutes) of self-loathing.
Something that zaps my motivation is when I know, “this is not good enough, but I don’t know what to do about it.” Taking any kind of pause can help a bit with this, a pee break, stand by the window. Or a pep talk from my partner helps especially much.
But watching someone else play the game and then listen to their feedback is a real kick in the ass for me. I get very specific ideas of how I can improve the experience and what is actually important for me to focus on.
I usually listen to two episodes of Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games, or My Perfect Console on my walk to and from ping-pong practice. I think what does the trick for me with these podcasts is that they often talk about the problems and difficulties of designing a game, and they find it interesting instead of frustrating. It helps me reframe problems as stuff I need to pay extra interest to and be excited to solve. Otherwise it’s easy for my reflex to be helplessness and a feeling of stupidity for not having been able to predict and avoid the problem.
”It’s gotten to the point that we get worried if a film is not a problem child right away. It makes us nervous. We’ve come to recognize the signs of invention—of dealing with originality. We have begun to welcome the feeling of, ‘Oh, we’ve never had this exact problem before—and it’s incredibly recalcitrant and won’t do what we want it to do.’ That’s familiar territory for us—in a good way.” - from Creativity Inc, Edwin Catmul
Which makes me think that maybe the process of actually designing a new game is to find that frustrating stuff and hyper-focus on it. The easier parts in design usually comes from using common design conventions. The harder parts comes from combining stuff in unexpected ways or exploring something completely new. But even making a simple, not so innovative game is a challenge. Maybe it’s because I’m a bad game designer? I mean, who knew that the quality of level design can completely make or break a game? I thought I just needed to implement all the mechanics.
If you lack understanding of a type of game, then it will be hard to make it come together no matter what.
Either way, I just try to be a sponge when I listen to these podcasts. I did the same thing when I was starting out with Space Deer. I listened to Unpacking Peantus obsessively. It’s reassuring to know what experienced thinking sounds like.
Another, last little trick that often helps me is to just get started doing some tiny thing. Even if it’s not the problem that matters the most right now, it makes me get back into the project and it’s much easier to slide over to what I need to do.
And that’s all I can think of for now. I’d love to hear about how you deal with the downs! Feel free to tell me in the replies or reply directly via email. :- )
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
Thank you for reading Indie Notebook! I’d love to hear what today’s issue made you think about.
Take care and have a creative week.
Those seem like healthy and constructive ways of dealing with the downs.
There's a saying in moviemaking: "if it is easy to make, it will be hard to watch!"
I've always pondered that line, but it might be true -- to an extent. There's definitely also been times when creation just flowed for me and it led to something pretty worthwhile.
Personally, I don't think I have a lot of deep experience with the downs because, until now, I've never really had to be reliably creative. So, I've taken the opportunity to go deeper, work on myself and things like that -- just take my time. Now, with a weekly poetry series, I might have to familiarize myself more with these downs. Fortunately, I'm far ahead of schedule!
With that said, the poems are based on people anonymously submitting their greatest love and fear, and if any of your lovely 100 subscribers should want to contribute to what I'm doing, here's a small anonymous form :)
https://forms.gle/8LnzT9ZBTXWmSkGM7
Are the downs useful to you? Why act on these feelings and give them validity, rather than meditating and letting them pass until you're trained to never feel them? Surey they are part of your process for better or worse and therefore useful else you'll cast it away.
When I was in production mode for my game, I worked 10 hours a day on it for weeks. I didn't have time for doubts. I let them go. I kept thinking about how the game could help people, and that I'm not to live forever.
I do have a logical plan in place for doubts: if this game doesn't pick up steam by maybe December or January I'd be happy to nuke it (turn it into a singleplayer paid game (with paid DLC for self-hosting to play with friends)) and start my creative journey over for better luck. Until then, I have things I want to do with it to make a stronger game and portfolio item.
I made a cooler trailer for my game with some animation :) https://youtu.be/KsiXvZKPfMM
> [The failiure would be] To just hypothise about making stuff instead of actually DOING IT.
I like that you think this way because I feel similar with my things :)
Your drawings look great; spacedeer and sketchbook.