Holidays

There is not that much game related content for me to show currently, because our main seasonal holiday has landed and my kids are now at home for the coming 6 weeks.

All kind of interesting family activities are now taking place at my home, from ‘building a new shed for our bicycles in the garden’ to ‘staying over at grandparents’.

For me the holidays are an excellent time to reflect on life. So I wanted to share some insights on the concept of ‘creativity’.

Digital escape wrap-up

So with the dust settling I can finally see some clear outlines.

I definitely think I need a vacation and be a bit less attached to my client’s projects. On one side it is good to be concerned about the well-being of a client project but everyone has the right to their own problems, and I should let them have those.

My lesson is that want to be able to work in projects with problems and alongside others, without the need to solve those problems. Yes I can help to make the issue more clear if they ask me to do so, but it is still their own call to make.

Creativity and how to spot it

Doing something ‘different’ than normal can be hard. We often call this ‘creativity’. But can you measure this creativity? This is something I am interested in. Especially if this makes it more easy to ‘manage’ your own creativity and ‘get more of it’.

This one is from Jordan Peterson. I find it easier to digest this lecture if you know where he comes from. For him, humans are destined (programmed/pre made) to function in a community and help their community with what they got. And if the human understands what he/she got and put it to good use, this human will enjoy life and be rewarded by the community with a fitting reward that encourages more.

I like that he goes from idea’s to being creative, but at the same time addresses the issue that it is very easy to get idea’s but to execute on it is harder and to be renown for it by the community is almost impossible. (Sounds like game development, right?)

On this time mark he shows a way to measure creative success. I think this framework can help to be more aligned to your creative process. To be more observant of yourself on when you are being creative, or when you are ‘just wasting time’.

When I apply this on game development, its like this: having an idea is ‘level 0’. Building it is ‘level 1’. Having people buy it (on Steam or other platforms) makes it ‘level 2’. Getting recognized (reviews, community rewards) is ‘level 3’.

So yeah, getting a game out and having people buy your game is ‘very creative’.