I still can’t believe it. You Have To Burn The Rope is nominated for IGF’s Innovation Award! I thought I had a fair chance of making it in the browser game-category, but the Innovation Award, that’s crazy! (What happened to the browser game-category, anyway?) I’m so proud I’m about to burst. Mostly I’m just happy I get to go to the IGF, I’m going to meet all of my heroes! (Some of them I’m even competing against! Jason Rohrer! Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn!)
Congratulations to all the other finalists! I’m looking forward to beer-ing (I just made that word up) with you.
YHTBTR has taken me (and Henrik) to fantastic places. Hugh MacLeod, author of the inspiring Gapingvoid : How To Be Creative, writes “The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours” . It is uncanny how much this resembles how YHTBTR was made and the thoughts that went through my head at that time;
We all spend a lot of time being impressed by folk we’ve never met. Somebody featured in the media who’s got a big company, a big product, a big movie, a big bestseller. Whatever.
And we spend even more time trying unsuccessfully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own companies, our own products, our own film projects, books and whatnot.
I’m as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of different things over the years, trying desperately to pry my career out of the jaws of mediocrity. Some to do with business, some to do with art etc.
One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn’t really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.
Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to impress anybody, for a change.
It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to have some sort of commercial angle, for a change.
It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.
It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.
And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.
16 Comments
Congrats dude! See you in San Francisco! :D Will be so much fun!
Thanks Daniel! See you soon then!
I find this post extremely reassuring. (I just criticized IGF a bit on TIGS for your nomination, aah!) From this angle, it seems like a Good Thing indeed. :)
Congratulations again to you! I’ll see you at GDC (assuming I’m allowed back in).
Kian! I’m really happy to see you in the finals! Keep up the good work and be sure to take lots of pictures so that all of us back here in cold boring Sweden can share the joy!
warm congratulations
Grattis, Kian and Henrik! Really cool you got nominated! Like the quote from MacLeod as well. Hope to see you at IGF, this year I finally have to go …
You’re going down, man! ;)
Or maybe we should conspire to kidnap Jason Roher. We both know we don’t stand a chance against him.
Congrats! I’m looking forward to GDC even more now!
That quotation is awesome, I might have to borrow it at some point :)
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!
Thanks everyone!
Congrats :) Good luck at the IGF!
To see teh GaeM as an IGF finalist is awesome. Little did we know…
Hugh MacLeod has inspired us so much through the years. We should send him some money through PayPal one day. Well, the day we actually have money to send.
Congrats Kian.
Congrats me.
:)
Congratulations! Thanks so much for the link to How to Be Creative. That and especially the part you quoted here was a very important reminder to me. I sometimes find myself slipping into that sort of success-seeking, jealous mindset, but this helps me remember that it is not at all what I truly want.
“So if somebody wants to rip my idea off, go ahead…You’ve got many long years in front of you. And unlike me, you won’t be doing it for the joy of it. You’ll be doing it for some self-loathing, ill-informed, lame-ass mercenary reason.”
Yeah, that’s not what I want to be doing. I have plenty of inner drive that can carry me much more sustainably, as long as I take the time to figure out what is truly mine and what is just a reaction to the success I see elsewhere and what other people say. Figuring out which game ideas I really want to make and which to give away in The Game Idea Giveaway Thread is a step in that direction.
Also some interesting thoughts there about balancing between money-making and passion, or commercial and artistic, or whatever. Thanks.
You’re welcome! I’m surprised not more people know about How To Be Creative. I regularly visit it, there’s lots of really interesting thoughts there they I seem to constantly need to be reminded of. I hope you find your schtick! :)
I think the game would be much improved by having a pause button.
Grattis! Well deserved!