What about the magic?

Today's post is made by Ola Holmdahl, game designer and CEO at Junebud. Ola's previous career includes teaching game design, doing game design, and creating concept art. In a previous life he was a freelance artist and an academic (but not at the same time).

Making games has a lot in common with creating other types of media. Don't get me wrong, game making is its own discipline. There are skills to master, special considerations - I'll talk about those in a minute - to take into account, but it eventually boils down to creativity. A game maker is an artisan, a craftsman. At the end of the day you're a creator. There's the raw energy of a game. The inspiration, the pure joy of playing it. The magic. Magic is not about performance specs or protocol standards.

Where does that magic come from, then? Picasso once said that as an artist, copying others is inevitable, but copying yourself a tragedy. Does that make it okay to just swipe ideas left, right and center? Well, sure, as long as you steal from the best. Whenever we sit down to create something new, the first thing we do is remember the things that inspired us. Most original ideas are really something old that has been reinvented or taken from one context into another. We can't help that, that's what we do as people. We piece the world together from all the things we see around us. It's how we piece things together that makes us unique.

                                  Picasso liked to put things in new contexts.

Trying to do the same thing over and over with only superficial variations is the quickest way to kill creativity. At that point you're only copying yourself (tragic!), trying to make sure all the things you create are in "your style". Boy, that's pretty dumb. I mean, whatever you do, no matter how different from what you've done in the past, it's still you doing it. So it kind of has to have the "you" feeling, doesn't it? But if that's true, how come the world is full of boring copy cats? Why don't we all stand out more? That's a thinker.

I believe it comes down to courage and honesty. Most of us want to be special because we want to be liked. But the best way to be liked is to not stand out too much. It's to do what everyone else is doing, only a little better. The problem here is that if we work too hard at being like most other people, that makes it hard to convey a personal "you" feeling.

It takes a lot of courage to follow your own intuition and taste. It takes deep honesty to even realize what you want to express, so you can try to be brave enough to express it. That's the part that usually gets me, the honesty bit. The most common problem for me is to feel that I don't have anything in particular that I want to say. That's not true, of course. Everyone has lots of stories. When I feel that way, other media is the best medicine. I particularly like stories about people who create, even if it's difficult and even if they are afraid. That's one of the reasons I love Michael Ende's books, like Momo or The Neverending Story. (I wasn't so fond of the movie. Read the book instead.) Man, I absolutely loved them, growing up. When I read one of my latest finds, Haruki Murakami's brilliant Kafka on the Shore, I get that same feeling.

           Some books are dangerously real, they say. I think they should be.

I also love crazy, wild stories about people who go all out and do their thing whether they're any good at it or not. John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China comes to mind, it's one of those movies people either love or hate. The main character is a gung ho klutz who can't get anything right - but he has a lot of guts and those stories always warm my heart. The theme doesn't have to be silly. One of my favorite movies is A Scene at the Sea, a Japanese movie by Takeshi Kitano. It's a simple story about a deaf and dumb garbage collector, who has decided he's going to learn how to surf - and does so no matter the cost to the rest of his life.

                Takeshi Kitano. This guy knows how to tell a story about the sea.

'Following your heart' is a beautiful theme that has been told in many different ways already. It's a story that has to be told again and again, in different media and in a way that connects with every generation, because it's too important to be forgotten. Even The Matrix is a version of that same story. To be honest and find out what really matters to you, no matter the cost. Even if you have to live in a rusty submarine and eat snot, that still beats living a lie.

         The power of imagination is great - but tomorrow's breakfast is still snot porridge.


Let's get back to game making, though. Games aren't books or movies, games are actions and the players who perform those actions. When you play a game you're not part of a "captive audience", you move around, you search and jump and fight and collect. You choose where to go, and if you like a place, you probably revisit it.

When you build a game you build a framework where players are free to act out their own stories. Your job as a creator is to make sure the players get good tools for doing that. It should be fun and challenging to jump from one ledge to the next. To enter a new level should be awesome.

Social games. Playing with a friend is more fun. 

MilMo has borrowed lovingly from a lot of sources, like Nintendo's Legend of Zelda and Animal Crossing games. Some of the DNA of the game comes from ID Software's classic DOOM, believe it or not, and some inspiration was taken from Arena Net's Guild Wars series. The important thing is to borrow from the best, and to be honest and brave when you use the pieces to build a playground where we can all help tell the story.

All the best,

Ola