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How to make failure a powerful asset
How indie developers can use the fear of failure to empower themselves.
5 Min Read
Prototype experiment of our first game
This post is also on our website
Futurtechture; our indie game studio will fail.
It will fail quickly and dramatically; it was always going to.
Things will fall apart as we climb our first game development mountain, which stands over us with towering verticality.
Making a videogame can be like juggling in a storm while treading on quicksand;
Panic and you sink, take your eyes off the balls and they collapse and if you stop pushing the wind and rain will bring you to your knees.
This is not coming from a lack of self-esteem but realised as an inevitability; we have chosen to make an unproven game concept for an unproven audience after all. In fact, we have chosen to do this for every game we make...
Failure has a giant grin on her face and she is beckoning us towards her.
I would like to add, although this failure is anticipated it is also...embraced.
"Like everyone else, you want to learn ‘The way to win.’ But never to accept ‘The way to lose.’ To accept defeat, to learn to die, is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes, you must free your ambitious mind and learn ‘The Art of Dying."
Bruce Lee
Futurtechture was conceived through the art of dying;
How can we make games that have not been made before; aesthetically, emotionally or thematically?
How can we minimise financial risk while massively increasing creative risk; with unproven games and audiences with limited resources?
Is it possible to give value to both gamers and non-gamers simultaneously?
And how can we inspire people to design games from their imaginations rather than just their memories?
The answers will be found stumbling in the dark but failure for us is not this all-encompassing black hole. Failure for us is like a small, unintimidating snowflake.
SNOWFLAKES
A snowflake that lands and quickly melts is an insignificant failure, it is forgotten in the moment. But as they repeatedly fall some of these failures start to settle as successes. Now rather than viewing something like; 'marketing your game' as this formidable beast of death, we will break it down into harmless snowflakes;
Can you tweet something?
Yes (snowflake falls)
Did it scare you?
No
Did you get any likes?
well...no (snowflake melted)
Did it break your heart?
A little...I mean no!
Could you do it again?
I suppose, yes (snowflake falls)
Did you get any likes?
Wait, I did! (snowflake settled)
Did you get a retweet?
Yes!! (Snowflake crystallises)
Could you do it again?
YES, IT WAS EASY!!!
This heroic example of posting a single tweet is the catalyst that can be applied to everything in game development; design, marketing, exhibiting, presenting; anything that makes you feel anxious or overwhelmed. It is about embracing micro failures and gathering and compounding them into larger victories.
Now of course you need to focus, study and refine your skills but by being indifferent to failure you will start building momentum; the snowfall will get thicker and with this momentum and massive repetition those small flakes will manifest into a howling blizzard.
Creating this blizzard of activity was not intimidating or hard to do and it will settle as; thick blankets of snow covering the mountain of game development. When your game is finally complete, all of those tiny snowflakes will have prepared you for launch and then as it is released, the snow subsides and...AVALANCHE!
A ferocious barrage of snow (all your hard work) helps propel the launch of your game forward.
Prototype experiment of our first game
Does this guarantee that yours (or our) game launch will be successful?
No, of course not.
Does this mean we won't have the fear of failure at our actual launch?
Again, of course not.
It just means that we do not waste any time fearing failure on the journey to that moment; we use it positively in three simple steps:
Snowflakes-blizzard-Avalanche
When you approach failure with a mind of confidence rather than fear it means there aren't any reasons to doubt yourself, you keep moving forward.
When you are 100% certain that you can mess everything up, feel frustrated or embarrassed, it will not paralyse you.
When you expect that it will be hard and things are not going to work out the way you wanted, there is no need to put any energy into the chaos, you adapt and stay focused with emotional intelligence.
People might tell you that you should quit. Pessimists may insist that what you are trying to do will not work and those who greet your plans with uncomfortable silences are expecting you to fail (it is quite possible that these voices are internal as well).
You do not need to put any energy into the doubters however. You can agree with them, because your context of failure will be different, because you know;
"to accept defeat, to learn to die, is to be liberated from it"
Thank you for reading, please follow Futurtechture and the development of our first game on;
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