Selfish Creativity; Or, Can Making the Game You Want to Play Lead to Success?

Oxo Good Grips Can Opener. Post-it bookmarks. Toy Story. The complete works of Mark Twain.

What do all these things have in common? They are all products their inventors and creators wanted to use, to see, to read.

Software has had a long tradition in the same vein, with programmers scratching their own itch to create influential products such as Linux and the Apache web server, but can successful games really be created from the same impulse?

[Presented at Casual Connect Seattle, July 2012]

Transcript

1. OXO Good Grips Vegetable Peeler
2. The ubiquitous Post-It note
3. Toy Story, the first computer-generated feature film
4. The Dyson DC01 vacuum cleaner
5. And the works of Mark Twain. What do all these things have in common? They’re all products of what I call “selfish creativity”. In other words, these things are all things their inventors and creators wanted to use, to see, to read.
6. selfish adjective concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure And before I go on, I think the word ‘selfish’ gets a bad rap. Being selfish - being the right kind of selfish - can change the world. The thinking is that we are not all unique snowflakes - the chances are that if something appeals to you, then the chances are high that it will appeal to others as well. In fact, this is how HP used to decide what products to make. They may want to get back to that.
7. This is (possibly) Sam and Betsey Farber, preparing dinner, some time in the 80s. Betsey has mild arthritis in her hands, and as a result, it can be difficult and sometimes painful for her to peel potatoes and other vegetables, because the peelers aren’t wide enough for her to get a good grip of. Sam noticed this, and rather then just help out, he decided to design a new type of vegetable peeler that Betsey could use. As it turned out, it was much easier for Sam to hold and use too, so he still had to help out. In the end, Sam built a company around the principle of making everyday living easier with over 800 products. He sold it for $273 million in 1995.
8. On the left is Art Fry, who some of you may recognise or guess is the guy who invented the Post-It note. On the right is Spencer Silver, who accidentally invented the glue that didn’t form a permanent bond. A lot of people know the story of the Post-it pads that everyone collects on their computer monitors, and how the inventors handed them around the office secretaries and receptionists, which is where usage eventually took off.
9. But the story begins before that, with the invention of the Post-it bookmarks, which now look like this. Art was having a problem with his hymn book at church. He was using lots of little scrap bits of paper as bookmarks, but of course they kept falling out since they weren’t secured. At work, he saw a talk by Spencer Silver, about his glue that didn’t stick. Fry requested a sample, and lo, his hymn book problem was solved. Then, he had the idea to apply the glue to larger scraps of paper to leave notes for his boss, and aside from a few false starts in selling the product, the rest is history.
10. This is Sir James Dyson. In 1979, he bought what was supposed to be the top of the range vacuum cleaner - he became frustrated with how quickly it clogged up and lost suction power. So he decided to make a better vacuum cleaner. Some 5,126 prototypes later, he introduced the DC01, complete with see-through dust container, and it became the biggest selling vacuum cleaner in the UK within 22 months.
11. Everyone here loves films, and they just want to make something that they themselves want to see. Brad Bird is the writer and director of some of my favourite films but out of context, this statement seems somewhat conceited. But there’s a difference between making something you want to see versus something you want to make. And the difference is that if you make something you want to see, there’s a good chance you’ll make something other people want to see too. So in fact, to me this is a perfect summation of what selfish creativity is - you love film, you love to make films, so you make the film that you would love to see. For those who don’t know, Brad Bird works at Pixar, and is the director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille.
12. Pixar of course have embarked on an unprecedented run of success, with their 13 movies generating over $5 billion just in box office receipts. It has won a ridiculous number of awards. Even when you include Cars 2, that’s kind of an impressive track record.
13. This is Richard Saul Wurman, the man who invented the TED conference in 1984. Let’s see how he describes his approach to designing the conference schedule:
14. It's not the audience's dinner party. If they want to pay me money and come, fine. If they don't like it, get the f**k out of here! I'll give their money back. It's my dinner party. I am not a smart person. If it's fun for me and interesting to me and understandable to me, other people have historically found it interesting.
15. luxury, not necessity, is the mother of invention Henry Petroski Contrary to what you may have heard, luxury is the mother of invention. But the mother of invention is not necessity, it’s luxury. Things are invented because they make life easier, not because we need them. And if it makes one person’s life easier, then the chances are that it will make many people’s lives easier.
16. I was asked to point out a few examples of this idea in games. It turned out to be harder to find examples than anticipated - at least, examples with evidence. Cranium seems to fit the model - it was invented because Richard Tait wanted a game that would allow him a chance of winning even at things he wasn’t good at. Pretty selfish.
17. This game I can talk about it, as I worked on it when I was at Denki. The origin of the game came from wanting to do something new and interesting with word games - basically creating a word game that we would want to play (that wasn’t Scrabble- esque).
18. I spoke with Daniel Cook from Spry Fox about this idea, and he said “I always start with a core concept that I believe in and love and want to play.” “Though I don't think of it as selfish. You give something you care about to the world. That's pretty awesome.”
19. I finally got around to watching Indie Game: The Movie on the flight over, and Team Meat are talking about how Super Meat Boy is the game they want to play.
20. Unbeknownst to me, it turns out that Brandon Sheffield the editor of Game Developer gave a 5 minute talk at GDC earlier this year on this exact subject. Which I guess sort of proves the theory that we’re not all unique snowflakes. Anyway, he mentioned another couple of games where the specific origin of making the game you want to play haven’t been disputed: Sword and Sworcery.
21. And Minecraft. 6.6 million people wanted to pay to play the same game as notch did.
22. show business mass noun the theatre, films, television, and pop music as a profession or industry Now, clearly I’m not saying “build it and they will come”. I think we all learned long ago that you can’t do anything without an audience, and distribution is clearly an important part of making a success of any product. Many build that distribution themselves, and some find others to help them. Pixar used Disney of course, Cranium used Starbucks.
23. Nor am I saying this is the One True Way of making something. I do believe, however, that if we want to create games with longevity, that last longer than just a few play sessions, that continue to increase the diversity of what games, then this is the best way to do so. I said earlier that we are not all unique and special snowflakes, but it turns out that this process can be a great way of creating unique and special snowflakes.
24. I’m also not saying to ignore what your audience is telling you. Authors have editors. Mark Twain apparently had an audience of 12 people he used to read his stories to. There was one fellow who was picked because he would normally fall asleep - if he stayed awake to listen to the story, Twain knew he had a winner! Pixar use their braintrust to feedback on work in progress movies. The trick is to understand how to use that feedback. Same goes for live data. In the immortal words of David Ogilvy:
25. I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgement; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post, for support rather than for illumination. David Ogilvy Steve Jobs said that it’s not up to the consumer to know what they want. It’s not disrepectful or arrogant to create something you want to play. What’s arrogant, as David Simon, the creator of The Wire, puts it, is delivering something where we don’t hold the audience’s time as being precious. Authors are especially good at defining their work in these terms.
26. Write the book you want to read. Chuck Pahluniak
27. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. J.K. Rowling
28. Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready. Hilary Mantel I think the extra bit here about the perceived audience is critical - you can’t create for an audience you don’t understand.
29. If the stuff you’re writing is not for yourself, it won’t work. Stephen King
30. And of course, Mark Twain. He is one of the most quoted people in history, but my particular favourite is this: “I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.” In other words, he wrote the stories he wanted to read, because no one else had written them. Those people who have the biggest impact, those who make the biggest dent in the universe, are those people creating what they want to use, to read, to see, to be a part of. So my question to you is: what stories will you be forced to tell?
31. ? david@ludometrics.com @dwlt