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Most Advice Isn’t Just Useless, It’s Dangerous
When people tell you there’s something wrong, they’re often right. But when they tell you how to make it right, they’re almost always wrong.
I’m six months into building a video game. It’s an amazing challenge. It requires you to fire up all of your two-and-a-half cylinders and really floor that cabbage of a brain you’ve been blessed with. It tests you with all the right hurdles — as a creator, as a technician, and as someone who can stick with a project for more than a week.
It’s all a dopamine rush until the moment I have to show it to somebody. They don’t go “wow” or “yuck.” They go “meh.” It’s a subdued “meh” — the “meh” of a well-mannered but disappointed child on a Christmas morning. Well, I’m sorry. I’ve literally just spent three full days trying to make it so that when I shoot you you actually take damage. That must warrant more than a “meh.”
Then you — the mindful, proactive creator — ask for the criticism, just like they taught you. And then you bite the bullet and listen to all the things that “just feel weird bro idk.”
Now this here is the precise point where the line of communication needs to be cut off, mercilessly. If not in the actual conversation, at least in your brain. Just…
