Enlisting the Aid of the Genius 14-Year-Old

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 8, 2015

I joke that I was the world’s greatest game designer right up until the moment I had to design games for a real audience, and then I sucked all of the sudden. Mysterious thing that…

Obviously, the point is that things always look a lot simpler from a distance than once you have to go down into the weeds. But there’s something to be said for that fervor and enthusiasm and complete disregard for boundaries and limitations from someone who is completely ignorant that those boundaries and limitations even exist.

For me, that’s my 14-year-old self. That kid didn’t have a clue, but boy was he excited about gaming. Both the dice-and-paper kind and the video gaming kind. Arcades, D&D, computer games, Atari. And programming! The kid was learning to program, with a shiny Commodore 64 which had a whopping 64k of memory (about 48k of it was usable RAM for programs), and man… things were awesome.

A lot of it came from having a lot of free time and this stuff was a primary diversion for him. I mean, me. I’d get home at some incredibly early hour in the afternoon… and while there might have been homework, I still had several hours to kill. And I often killed them on my computer, or in the depths of D&D manuals. Anyway, the ideas would flow, maps would get drawn, the first part of games would get written (I’d rarely “finish” anything). But there was a raw creativity born of enthusiasm and a lack of experience. A lack of being jaded, to some degree.

I still like to harness that. It’s like a brainstorm… most of the ideas will suck, but the point is to not pre-filter so that you can enjoy a more pure creative flow. The 14-year-old me had a whole ton of ideas and no pressure whatsoever. If he’s still in me, I want to take advantage of that. Channel that crazy, wild-eyed enthusiasm without constraint. Then mix it with the capabilities of the modern world, with far more powerful machines and tools than my 14-year-old self could imagine.

Of course, it’s not really just about remembering what it’s about to see the world through more innocent eyes, and remember what it was like when video games were the most amazing things EVER and how could any mortal being actually make something like that and Dungeons & Dragons was one of mankind’s greatest inventions (along with air conditioning and, of course, video games) and George Lucas could do no wrong. While it’s a fond recollection, I’ve heard lots of 14-year-olds since then, and I wouldn’t exactly want any of them on my design team. My younger self included, I’m sure.

The real point is trying to “program” myself to get “in the zone” quickly on the creative level the same way I get in the zone as a programmer. And there’s no question that those are two radically different zones, at least for me. It’s hard enough to get into one, let alone jump between the two. Shifting those gears doesn’t come easy for me. Yet.

(No, not that zone…)

That creative zone isn’t as easy to come by today as it was when I was 14. These days, that visit by “the muse” feels a bit like being under a tight deadline. In fact, that’s exactly what it usually is. But I know it can be cultivated. I’ve done it before, although sometimes it takes days of encouraging the subconscious to get there. And for very specific ideas, that may be the requirement. But as a general rule, just getting into ‘the zone’ it shouldn’t have to.

Anyway – I’m working on it (again). Some tricks I’m trying include cutting off the distractions (including hitting up the web for “research” which turns into …. something else), kind of an enforced boredom, sense memory (primarily music, some visual stimulus), self-imposed deadlines, and a little bit of  reminding myself of what it was like to be a kid again.  One day I’d like to be able to answer the question, “Where do your ideas come from?” with a more clear-cut process.

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