"A project starts with an idea, a vision, something that is hard to define, something kind of magic and amazing. This is step 1. This is gold. This is beautiful. You can't yet see the details, but you have a sense for thing you want to make, and hopefully you're swept away by it.
Usually in the creative process, the next step -- step 2 -- is to think about the project intellectually, to talk about it, to look at it from various angles, to plan it out, maybe to second guess it or to problem solve it, maybe reconsider it a bit. This is the talk.
The next step, step 3, is to actually make this thing, to get down to it. This is the rock. And we like to think that the process goes from 1 to 2 to 3.
The trouble is that step 2 can get a little serious, particularly if it's a collaborative project. There's a lot of talk. A lot of planning and revising. Maybe some doubt. Maybe some deviations from the beauty and clarity of step one.
I was in the [video game] industry for a few years, and step 2 is a big deal there. Committees and middle-management and shareholders are all talk. Everyone wants to talk. Eventually, maybe it's all just talk, there's nothing left.
And maybe that's where it ends. Maybe you get lost in all that talk -- all that intellectualizing, all that 'what if?', all those numbers and sales projections or what-have-you, all that self-doubt -- and you lose your way. Maybe you never even get to step three. Or maybe whatever survives has none of the inspiration of step 1: it has been diluted, compromised, transformed.
That's why Jordan Mechner's advice -- and it's so beautiful -- is to proceed from 1 to 3 to 2. Go right from the inspiration -- the vision -- to actually making it. Don't think it through. Don't talk about it. Don't plan it. Dive in and start making it happen. If you do that -- if you can start rocking -- you'll get some momentum, and when you have some momentum then the project has a chance, because now you're into it. It's going somewhere, it's tangible. Sure, you'll still run up against problems to solve and decisions to make, but you'll approach these in the moment and solve them in the moment. You'll solve them so you can keep moving.
Of course, if you're in a situation where you can't just go from 1 to 3 to 2 -- if you're all bound up in structures and processes -- get out. Get around it. Do something.
The take-away here is: rock before talking."
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Une excellente lecture sur le langage natif des jeux vidéo. Si vous avez déjà joué et aimé Super Mario Bros, Ico, le premier Prince of Persia, Shadow of the Colossus ou les premiers Zelda, vous allez adorer.
