Fear or Faith? What motivates you to do what you do?
When you sit down to work, do you feel confident in yourself and assured that you will eventually create something that you and others will appreciate? Or do you feel intimidated at the prospect of all the external forces that will eventually judge you and your work?
I’ve been dwelling on this difference for some time, because I alternate between experiencing both of these powerful motivators.
Continued after the break…
Faith is what gives us the ability to persevere through difficult situations. One of the reasons humans are around today is because we have the ability to effectively ignore all the potential things that could harm us. When we can suspend our doubts about our own abilities, we find it easier to pick up the pen and continue drawing or place our fingers back on the keyboard to keep programming.
The problem with faith is that it’s blind to skepticism. If one moves too far in the direction of faith, they may become conceited, self-absorbed and unwilling to take criticism. Without the ability to have humility about one’s views, it becomes very difficult to learn anything new.
Fear is what drives us to question everything we do. One of the reasons humans are alive today is because we have instinctual fears that help us avoid the many dangerous situations that might have wiped us out.
When we’re coasting along blindly, assuming everything will go well with our project, the occasional very negative testing feedback can send chills down our spines and force us to reconsider naive design choices.
My fascination with emotional context in games is very much tied into my interest in the emotional context of game development. I find, when creating a game that I care about, that I experience both great peaks of joy, exalting the thrill of creating – and deep valleys of self-loathing, regret and paranoia, fearing that I may be misleading myself.
While talking to James and Lisanne of Blink-Works (who created the video profile mentioned here last week) I realized that although they created a series of videos that have been universally praised for their production values and storytelling, they had experienced serious internal doubts about the quality of their work during its creation. I think this is an experience that most of us share – when we work on something for a long time, we start to hate it. And we start to fear that it’s not as good as we thought it was.
It is true that we would never get anything done if we didn’t believe in ourselves to some degree. It is also true that we would all be pretentious hacks if we believed ourselves to always be perfectly suited for every task.
Is it possible to strike a comfortable balance between these two extremes?
Personally, I feel I’ve been getting closer to some kind of median. Highly mean-spirited (often comical) criticism of my work does not illicit an emotional response from me beyond amusement. Valuable critical assessments, whether negative or positive, don’t seem to play with my feelings as much as they used to. I hope that I’m getting better at separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of negative feedback.
One of the things that helped me in this regard is realizing that there is no objective measure of the quality of a particular game. Sure, we have Metacritic, forums, blogs, user rankings… but each of these is limited to telling us average of the subjective opinions of a certain group of people. Within that group there may well be individuals who absolutely love the game in question and others that abhor it.
This makes me curious of what creators think of their own completed work, and how it compares to what they felt while they were making it. Did Miyamoto ever wonder what would happen if Donkey Kong flopped?
Perhaps the greatest fear of all is our own demise. We’re all born with a countdown, the remaining time with which we try to make something of our brief lives here on this planet. This constantly ticking clock is what drives us to complete things – without it, we would be much less likely to produce completed works. It also ensures that nothing will ever be perfect. We will not have the time necessary to make every pixel align in just the right way. And we will not have the time to survey everyone to determine if a majority enjoy our output.
All these fears, doubts, hopes and – ultimately – shortcomings are what make art what it is. It is a temporary bit of chaos caught on canvas. It is a personal expression of our experiences as human beings. And it is inevitably a statement on our brief existence.
What do we want to say in the time that we have?
What dreams do we want to leave behind when we’re gone?
Andrew Wooldridge wrote a Comment on December 12, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I think faith may help you overcome fear, and is very helpful, but there is also something that I’ve not been able to condense into a single word which is this drive to create. I see some people who have it in such a great measure that no degree of fear or lack of faith prevents them from creating. Without this drive to “make something” or “bring something into being” then no degree of faith or fear will make a difference. For me the factor that more prevents me from creating is “time”. There is always something more important to do than sit down at the computer and work on my game, and that scarcity of time is more frustrating than any amount of negative feedback or fear of failure.
I think that once you get a few games, books, songs, whatever you want to create out there, you begin to get a sense of your own “voice” and that is what gives you more confidence – and why I believe you are more able to accept negative feedback or reign in blind faith, because you are constantly checking what you are currently doing with that “voice”.
I always find it interesting to hear about really creative people when they talk about where they get their ideas. Many of them feel that those ideas already existed in some other plane of existance somehow, and that – instead of being creators, they are merely the means by which some amazing idea decided to make itself manifest. Do you ever get that feeling?
The drive to create is such a huge factor in my life that for me, the tension is always between having enough time/energy and this drive to create. Fear and Faith are somewhat secondary. Perhaps it’s almost like Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. I’m “lower down” on this hierarchy since I lack time. Whereas your set of “needs” are at a higher level because your need for time is satisfied. Perhaps if somehow I were given all the time I needed to create, I would begin to see the tension of fear and faith that you describe.
Greg wrote a Comment on December 12, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Nice rant. It’s comforting to hear that you go through this as well. Just yesterday I was working on a concept piece and I was so down on it. I guess you could say the fear had me. I kept thinking “man, what if they hate this? or they laugh at me? I suck.”
I think ultimately it’s indicative of having a productive balance of confidence and humility. I started out wildly fluctuating between the two with great highs and lows but I think it’s important to keep that balance in order to not become some huge over-confident asshole. An “i’m right, you’re wrong” kind of artist. If I got to that point, I’d stop learning and growing as an artist… I think.
Of course, if fear wins out, then I would have never started in the first place, or at least never showed anyone my drawings/work/games. The roller coaster is a useful pain, and I think recognizing it like you’ve done here will curb the highs and lows.
Another issue, with fear/faith. I’ve found it’s increasingly more and more important to surround myself with people that believe in me and my dream. That’s actually kind of a tall order sometimes since shit can get really really rough. The people that love you don’t want to see you suffer financially/socially etc., so it becomes a question if they can cast their own fears off in favor of The Dream.
As for the last question… I want to clarify the muddy, complex issues we go through in hopes of giving people a different way to think about their life.
Alec Holowka wrote a Comment on December 12, 2009 at 12:37 pm
1: Great points!
If you’re working on school or at a job and creating stuff in your free time, then yeah I think it helps you focus more on what is “fun/good/positive” about what you’re doing. If you’re basing your entire livelihood on your ability to make stuff that other people will enjoy, it does start to feel more like work and I think you become more self-critical than you would otherwise. You have to be able to understand what other people see when they experience your stuff, and that can be hard sometimes.
But a lot of this also depends on the individual personalities involved. In my case, I tend to get very down about the things I’m working on every so often. A number of my indie game dev friends do this to – but others hardly ever. In spite of it all, somehow we end up finishing things and releasing them. I agree with you about the concept of a strong “desire to create”. I’m not sure if it can be broken into components, or if its a component in and of itself. (maybe both are true?)
In terms of getting inspiration from other planes of existence, based on (my limited understanding of) how our brains work – we all make things by mixing other things we’ve experienced together and passing it through our own internal quality filters. So in that sense, yeah I don’t know that we really invent things so much as discover them.
Andrew Crowell wrote a Comment on December 12, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I think you managed to quite nicely summarize most of the situation people feel when creating things. In my case, the problem is constant and I rarely get past the first “down” period (or if I do, usually time will be gobbled up by work right when I’m about to get back into things). I will be really excited and happy about an idea for about three weeks, and then I will lose interest or hit some sort of design/fun barrier and get discouraged.
During these moments of discouragement I tend to cling to friends who are good at reassuring me a lot of the time that I just need to press on. But there’s the odd time I am sort of feel completely lame, where every idea that comes out seems like it falls short.
I’ve yet to finish anything lengthy because of my inability to focus and have commitment instead of just ambition over long periods of time, I suppose.
I am also still finishing off my Computer Science degree, so I’ve constantly had problems with juggling work, life and fun. Classes pretty consumed all my free time, distracted me, or drained my creativity. In a lot of cases, I’d start/resume a game project when I wasn’t busy, but then a couple days later I’d get swamped with work. And sometimes it’d be like… two weeks later before I even had time to think about non-school things.
I always think the successful indie devs must have like ungodly time management skills, because how else do you manage to juggle life’s demands and still constantly make time to create awesome things, AND force yourself to deliver?
John Evans wrote a Comment on December 12, 2009 at 3:29 pm
When I’m working on a project, I usually come to a point where I get depressed and think I’ll never finish it.
However, after the second or third time I recognized it as part of the creative process. So, now I just ignore it as much as I can. It’s getting easier.
I don’t necessarily understand it, but I can predict it and compensate for it.
Josh Whelchel wrote a Comment on December 13, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Alec, good discussion!
I find that when I’m working on something the point comes where I have to decide if I want to keep at it or put it away because it’s simply not up to par. I have a much bigger fear of not saying anything at all, so I force myself to try to put things out there and at least get them done.
With my music, this comes out oddly – I have either my mainstream music and game music that I think, whatever, if people like it they will, if not than okay, but I’m helping something here – and I don’t really mind if it’s a message -I- want to say or not. I know that simply by creating it it’s got my voice inherently, and its being heard. My art music (what I write for school), I am MUCH more selective about, and it needs to be perfected. Who knows if it’ll ever even get out there, but I make that for myself and myself alone, and only unleash it when it is perfect to my standards.
To summarize, I try not to be an ABSOLUTE perfectionist snob to the point where something would never get done (this does not mean I settle, let me make that point clear) – but if it’s something I consider more artistic in nature and something with more value to me, I want it to be absolutely polished.
Fear is something you have to learn to get beyond – it’s really all about putting yourself out there and being confident in what you do. In music, this means I write what I like to hear, and that gives me confidence that other people will like it, so I have no problem sharing it. You just have to believe in yourself, and if you need faith to do that than by all means have the faith (I know I certainly need faith to get by sometimes).
~fin~
sap wrote a Comment on December 13, 2009 at 5:32 pm
You need to say, I really loved those games.
samantha wrote a Comment on December 14, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Praise on one project propels me in other projects that need more work. But sometimes too many opinions spoil the broth.