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I’m reminded of Shigeru Miyamoto’s definition of a good idea: “A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once.”
The first reason is related to an adage that’s attributed to Elie Wiesel: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” It was clear that what was driving his anger was a whole lot of passion, and I would rather read lengthy diatribes about how to fix my game than simply gaze into an empty thread.
In the documentary The Great Directors, David Lynch says, “As soon as you finish a film, people want you to talk about it, and, um, the film is the talking. The film is the thing, so you go see the film, that’s the thing. It’s a whole thing, and it’s there, and that’s it!” That’s how I felt about Spelunky.
Hecker’s article hypothesized that “tangible, expected, contingent rewards reduce free-choice intrinsic motivation, and verbal, unexpected, informational feedback increases free-choice and self-reported intrinsic motivation.” In other words, giving people superficial rewards for already-fun tasks takes some of that fun away.
To me, it was the difference between telling a kid how tall her sandcastles are versus giving her a cookie every time she builds one. The former is a fun statistic, whereas the latter is an unnecessary reward that may motivate her to build sandcastles for cookies rather than for its own sake.
The thesis of the article is that finishing is a skill as much as being able to design, draw, program, or make music, and that finished projects are more valuable than unfinished projects. Most creative people are familiar with the first part of making something, and it’s easy to mistakenly assume that the rest is just more of the same. It’s akin to repeatedly climbing the first quarter of a mountain and thinking that you’re getting the experience you need to summit. Or running a few miles and thinking that you can run a marathon.
The article consisted of fifteen tips on how to finish a game: Choose an idea for a game that satisfies three requirements: it’s a game that you want to make, a game that you are good at making, and a game you will wish you had made. Actually start the damn game. Writing design documents and planning doesn’t count. Don’t roll your own tech if you don’t have to. Prototype. Make sure the core mechanics are fun. Choose good partners (or work alone as long as you can). Grind is normal, so factor it into your plan. Use awards, competitions, and other events as real deadlines. Push forward. Don’t
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I’m obsessed with finishing as a skill. Over the years, I’ve realized that so many of the good things that have come my way are because I was able to finish what I started. Trigger Happy, my first released game, was small and rudimentary, but it was a significant step forward and gave me the motivation, confidence, and experience to keep releasing. From there, Jon Perry and I released several other small games with Klik & Play, and these led to Eternal Daughter, which led to Aquaria, which led to Spelunky. Gardens and forests. Irrespective of how big the project was, each one I finished gave
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they never learned how to navigate that wasteland or overcome that consummate destroyer of dreams: being too much of a perfectionist.
In the end, isn’t that why we create things? Not just for the power of putting something into existence, but to connect with people and be part of the conversation that is human history. To have something that speaks for us when we’re not speaking and even after we’re gone.
