Here's a thing I like to point out to people—I'm not really anti-piracy, I'm not really pro-piracy. I pirated stuff when I was a kid because I didn't… - Jonathan Blow

As you get a game closer to done there are more graphical assets, and they get bigger and bigger and it takes longer to do things like load them or process them if you need to do some automated processing on them or recompute the lighting for the world, and it gets to a point where it becomes very sluggish to just try to get new things done and that was a real drag. And it's especially a drag when there's so many things to do and you feel like you can't do them very fast because of the computer. And part of that was programming in this programming language C++ that most engine programmers use to build things with, and I just had this very fatalistic attitude toward it like "Well... we can't do anything about that so I just have to like deal with this and get the game done". And then at some point I just changed thatI was like "Wait, is that really true? I know that that's what everybody thinks but is that really true?" And I was like "Yeah, no, it's not true". Like "I shouldn'tlike, we should finish this game in C++, but I don't have to accept that this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life. I can actually change this and do a different thing", and that's what led me to work on this new programming language. But as soon as I decided to do itas soon as I said "This is actually not an unfixable problem; we can do something about this", I became much happier, immediately, because I was no longer in jail; I was no longer in C++ jail for the rest of my life. So I try to use that as an example for other things as well. WheneverI know that feeling now; I know smaller versions of it, like when it comes to the way a game is designed, like "Oh, I realize I'm having this 'I'm in jail' feeling like I don't like this part of this game's design, but I've assumed that it just has to be the case." And I just go back and look, "Does it really have to be the case? Well, I mean, I decided that because this but we could make that decision differently if we're willing to pay the cost of making the decision differently. Is that cost worth me being happier with the game because it's a better game? Well, yes." So once you learn to revisit those decisions it becomes a very good thing to do and so that C++ instance I think was the biggest one, but I've learned to do that more often from that example.

So, let me say something that may—I mean, some people get a little nervous when you talk about things like meditation and I'm gonna say something even worse than that. So if you're about to embark on a long project, you might ask yourself the question, "How do I know this is the right idea?" Right, if I'm gonna spend years on this project, how do I know it's the right thing? How do I know I'm gonna stick to it and get it done? So I came up with this thing that I sort of facetiously called the Cry Test, which is just—imagine you're in a very safe place, with somebody you care a lot about—very intimate relationship with this person—you're very comfortable with them. And you start explaining to them what this project is that you wanna do. If you're not in danger of breaking out in tears, not even necessarily in sadness, not even necessarily breaking out in tears, but having some involuntary upwelling of emotion. If that's not going to happen in that kind of situation, this probably isn't a project that you're that committed to. Because to do a really long project, that drive needs to be very deep. It needs to come from your core. If it doesn't then what's gonna happen is you start working on this thing, six months later—oh, I have a really neat idea for a game, it's got a grappling hook and stuff. That sounds neat, and you start working on the grappling hook and stuff and it turns out to be harder than you thought. And not as good as you thought. And six months later you're like "Well, what if I had a jet pack instead?" And it'll just go like that. You'll drop one thing and pick up another thing and drop that thing and pick up another thing in a chain, because you're not that committed. To succeed in a long and difficult project, there has to be love in the idea. And I don't—you know, in English we toss around the word "love" all the time, like we say like "I love pizza" or something, but I don't mean that. I don't mean "I love this idea" as in "oh, it's such a great idea". I mean, "I love this idea in the way if I don't do it, I'm gonna feel like I'm not doing the purpose of my life." It has to be that strong. So the problem is that most people don't know how to find something that strong in game development. You certainly don't get taught that in school, so—at least, not any school I've ever seen—so I'd just encourage some deep introspection, just try—ask yourself what you really care about, really, because usually that answer will be very different from—usually, if you ask yourself what I care about, you'll come up with some answer, and then if you ask yourself "Really? Is that what I really care about?" Not really, it's usually some kind of politically correct answer that we tell ourselves. If you iterate on that, if you keep asking yourself what you care about, and not accepting the previous answer, you just ask again, ask again, eventually you make it to something you really care about.

Some people wanna be indie developers because there's a community of happy people who do the kind of things that they do and they can hang out with those people and it's just not—I don't really get nourishment from that, I'm not even really—ideally, I wish I was a community person, I wish I could find my community out in the world but I never have. So I'm the kind of person who—I have small numbers of friends who I have quality time with, and that's just how I do it. And so when you speak of the "community of game developers", even in the late '90s, when I was going to—in the first few years I was going to the GDC I didn't really feel like part of that, and it's so much less of a community now than it was—back then it was people working hard to make real games for the most part, and now you go to the GDC and it's like how to catch the whales using your shitty IAP whate—are we allowed to say that?