The Motivation and Creativity Page
For programmers who procrastinate or have writer's block.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Page Table of Contents
Do you have any of the following problems?
- Struggles with self-esteem.
- Perfectionist issues.
- Fear of criticism.
- Lack of creativity or the idea well dried up.
- Got all excited at the beginning, but lost interest.
If any of those problems seem familiar, this page might be able to help. Read the quotes, listen to the videos, check out the links, then see if things start to improve. You might also want to check out my Free Game Ideas page.
How to Boost Your Productivity
A long, long time ago . . . I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while.
Part of the lyrics from the song “American Pie” by Don McLean
The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.
Robert Baden-Powell
We do it because we can, 'cause we know how. We do it whether people remember us or not, in spite of the fact that there's no shiny reward at the end of the day…other than the work itself.
'Angel' from the TV series Angel (S5:E6)
Why should you make games? Do it to give players joy from your unique perspective and to have fun expressing yourself. You win and the players win.
Duane Alan Hahn
To me games have an extremely great and still unrealized potential to influence man. I want to bring joy and excitement to people's lives in my games, while at the same time communicate aspects of this journey of life we are all going through. Games have a larger potential for this than linear movies or any other form of media.
Philip Price from a Halcyon Days interview
I had no special training at all; I am completely self taught. I don't fit the mold of a visual arts designer or a graphic designer. I just had a strong concept about what a game designer is. Someone who designs projects to make people happy. That's a game designer's purpose.
From the book Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers
Even though I enjoyed the challenge of programming, ultimately the motivation was the fans, the gamers themselves. I kept asking myself, "Is that guy enjoying the game?" In those early days we got fan mail all the time.
Bob Whitehead (adapted)
You have to measure your success by the way your audience responds to your games. No matter how small that audience is, it's yours. Your game is part of the lives and the memories of those people in a way that WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 or Windows can never be.
Compute Magazine, October 1992
Game development makes a great hobby. I also think in the future, with engines, tools, and books on game development becoming commonplace, that more artists, writers, and just plain creative people will start to produce more games for people to play simply because they enjoy doing it. For a growing number of people, constructing cool software is like building a neat model airplane; it's just a craft that takes a lot of skill but provides even more enjoyment in return.
Ben Sawyer (adapted)
From The Ultimate Game Developer's Sourcebook (#ad)
Making a game is about having fun, overcoming challenges, being grateful for help from better programmers, and trying to make players happy. If people have a rough day at work or school, they can sit down, play your game and get away from it all for a little while. If we can help players relieve stress and just generally feel better after playing, we've done a good job.
Duane Alan Hahn
There is a difference between conceit and confidence. Conceit is bragging about yourself. Confidence means you believe you can get the job done.
Johnny Unitas
Many people believe that humility is the opposite of pride, when, in fact, it is a point of equilibrium. The opposite of pride is actually a lack of self-esteem. A humble person is totally different from a person who cannot recognize and appreciate himself as part of this world's marvels.
Rabino Nilton Bonder
Sometimes you just need to have the confidence and the belief in the fact that you're going to pull it off and you just keep going forward every day and you don't allow the self-doubt or any doubt or even a shadow of a doubt to enter your mind because you just have to keep going forward.
Barrie M. Osborne (adapted)
The End of All Things documentary on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition) DVD (#ad)
Criticism is information that will help you grow.
Hendrie Weisinger, Ph.D
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
William Gilmore Simms
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard
Concern over criticism clogs creativity.
Duane Alan Hahn
When you're young, you tend to believe what people tell you, and that's dangerous. As you get older, you learn that you're never as good or as bad as they say you are. If you understand this, you win.
George Clooney (adapted)
Too many games are made for the challenge of it, without seeming to care that much about players. Even though players are important, their reactions should only be taken as feedback you can use to make better games. Player comments shouldn't feed your ego or damage your self-esteem.
Duane Alan Hahn
The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.
Edwin H. Land
While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.
Henry C. Link
Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
Thomas Carlyle
You can't hit a home run unless you step up to the plate.
Unknown
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Henry Ford
No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today, that the weight is more than a man can bear.
George Macdonald
Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Leonardo da Vinci
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.
Sydney Smith
Use those talents you have. You will make it. You will give joy to the world. Take this tip from nature: The woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except those who sang best.
Bernard Meltzer
My dad delighted in me, which is an interesting realization. Anything that I would do throughout the week was kind of like when you're at a casino and you get casino chips but it's not real money until you go to the cashier's window. On Sunday, when I'd go home and do laundry, I would tell him about my week. Just to watch him delight turned those chips, if you will, into hard cash. When that was taken away from me, you realize that you have to do things for your own gratification and not for parental acceptance or whatever. You just need and want to do it for yourself.
Mike Myers from Inside the Actors Studio (#ad) (adapted)
You can get all the advice you want and read all the books you want, but what you've got to do is stand at the computer like I did from day one and say, "What can this stupid little thing do?" You've got to try little things out and make a million mistakes. But the great part about a home computer is you can do whatever you want and you aren't going to blow anything up.
Garry Kitchen from an AGH Library article
Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
Jules Renard
First you write down your goal; your second job is to break down your goal into a series of steps, beginning with steps which are absurdly easy.
Fitzhugh Dodson
Many drops make a bucket, many buckets make a pond, many ponds make a lake, and many lakes make an ocean.
Percy Ross
Learn how to program and play lots of games. If you find yourself capable of writing a game, someday you'll be capable of writing a really good game. My dad's a writer, and when you ask him how to learn to write, he says, "write." So basically, do it and keep doing it until you get good.
Fred Haslam
From SimCity 2000: Power, Politics and Planning (#ad) by Nick Dargahi and Michael Bremer
Very few programmers are able to create a big hit on their first or second attempt. It takes time to build the skills required. So start simple (at the bottom), write a game you are capable of doing, and work your way up to the top. After you create one game, take a short break, then make your next game. Each time you'll know a little more than you did before.
Ben Sawyer (adapted)
From The Ultimate Game Developer's Sourcebook (#ad)
- Make it.
- Make it work.
- Make it work reliably.
- Make it work reliably and fast.
There are cases where you design something that looks good on paper and there's only one small part of it that's fun. You have to focus on that and throw the rest away.
Brent Iverson
The best way to move game design forward is simply to develop, design, and construct a game. And make sure you finish it. No matter how bad, how simple, how slow your finished product is, you will learn an immense amount simply by building a game on your own.
Read, experiment, design, develop, play, and most important of all, have fun. In the end, having fun is what games are all about.
Ben Sawyer (adapted)
From The Ultimate Game Developer's Sourcebook (#ad)
Woody Allen said "Eighty percent of success is showing up." That seems to apply to just about everything, including programming. Even if you barely know what you're doing, there is some kind of magic in 'showing up.' All you have to do is work on your program. That simple action can have an almost supernatural effect. Your subconscious mind will bubble like boiling water and amazing things will happen.
Duane Alan Hahn
By first taking a leap of faith toward your goal without worrying about the material means to get there, these material means automatically fall into place.
Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
Conrad Hilton
I wrote my first game on a remote terminal using APL/360 as the language. My first microcomputer game emulated a complete tank war game on a home-brew system I built that had a whopping 4K of memory and a 512-byte operating system. The point is, a good writer need not blame his tools. He'll make do!
K-Power Magazine, June 1984
The concept for PITFALL took less than 10 minutes. The difficult part was sitting at the computer, for over 1,000 hours, and making it happen.
David Crane from a Digital Press quote page
Ideas are cheap. A dime a dozen, as they say. It's the implementation that's important! The trick isn't just to have a computer game idea, but to actually create it!
K-Power Magazine, June 1984
Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.
Charles Caleb Colton
Nothing is new except arrangement.
William J. Durant
Begin with another's to end with your own.
Baltasar Gracian
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
Dean William R. Inge
Even though it's fun to crawl inside a computer and play with its potential, it's really important to look at other aspects of your life as well. That's where ideas for programs will come from.
Marcia Burrows
K-Power Magazine (April, 1984)
How Stampede, Activision's first country-and-western video game, came about is indicative of how the design process works. "My parents live in a small farming community," Whitehead explains, "The big annual event there is a stampede. At one point, I thought to myself, 'Wouldn't it be great to have some sort of cowboy game?' I decided that yeah it would be great and got to work on it immediately. For awhile I was waking up in the middle of the night saying 'Hey, this might work!' But then the next morning it wouldn't. The actual design for the game didn't hit me until two or three weeks later. Sometimes games come together all at once in your mind, but other times you have to throw the whole idea out and start all over again."
From Video Games Magazine (August, 1982)
If you fall in love with an idea, you won't see the merits of alternative approaches—and will probably miss an opportunity or two. One of life's great pleasures is letting go of a previously cherished idea. Then you're free to look for new ones. What part of your idea are you in love with? What would happen if you kissed it goodbye?
Roger von Oech
Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.
Frank Tyger
People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things.
R. Buckminster Fuller
INTERVIEWER: What kind of skills or philosophy must a game designer have to be successful?
IWATANI: You must understand people's souls (kokoro) and be creative enough to imagine things that can't be thought or imagined by others. You must be compelled to do something a little bit different than the rest of the crowd and enjoy being different. You must also be able to visualize the images that will make up the game, and you shouldn't compromise with the first easy idea that comes to mind. In the last analysis, you must enjoy making people happy. That's the basis of being a good game designer, and leads to great game design.
From the book Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers
While tight with concentration on what is being written, the writer has a thought, an insight, a partially articulate concept. The natural response is to think, "I can't stop what I am writing. I'll remember the idea," and continue writing. The writer is wrong. He will not remember it. The thought, the insight, the concept will disappear. It may return, but you will not need it then, or recall when it might have been appropriate.
Insights and perceptions pass through the mind like fleet fireflies. Lit for an instant, then gone back into the dark. They are precious, irreplaceable. Stop what you are writing and write them into a notebook, onto a napkin, a scrap of paper. ANYWHERE. They are more important than what you are writing now. What you are writing now is there. It is visible, tangible. You will not lose the mood, the flow, the roll.
From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction (#ad) by Leonard Bishop
Write it, even if you think it's terrible. Don't prevent yourself from jotting down a word, phrase, or paragraph just because it "isn't quite right" or "it won't work." Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but it's better to write it down, you can always edit later. And you don't want to stop yourself before you even get started! The point isn't to use everything you write. You can't be expected to pop out perfect prose your first time out! Write now, edit later.
Cristine Grace (adapted)
Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.
George Kneller
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Erich Fromm
Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
Mary Lou Cook
He who never walks except where he sees other men's tracks will make no discoveries.
Unknown
They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.
Antonio Porchia
The zero-sum game: that's the way it is if you're a competitive person and you see capitalism in that way. Zero-sum game implies winners and losers which I don't agree with. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, it all comes back to zero (minus eight, plus eight). But I don't agree with that because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films can help other films to be open. There's a different psychology at work. If you're overly competitive, you'll be exclusionary and say it's a zero-sum game (I must get eight and he must lose eight). Gekko simplifies it down to a painting. He says he bought this painting or this building for X and he sold it for Y and he made that profit and he assumes that somebody else got beat, but that's not necessarily true. You don't always lose.
Oliver Stone (adapted)
Director's commentary from his Wall Street (#ad) DVD (2000)
A good game has to have a fun core, which is a one-sentence description of why it's fun.
Compute Magazine, January 1992
'The player is paramount' is a phrase all game developers should remember. Great game designers have a certain amount of love or respect for their players. If you're not helping your players feel happy and fulfilled in some way then you shouldn't be making games at all. Don't make games just to express yourself. Don't make games just to impress other game designers. Think about the players too. Make games that are fun, games that satisfy, games that make your players feel like you care.
Duane Alan Hahn
Keep the rules of the game simple. Ideally, first-time players should understand and enjoy the game without instructions.
Mark Cerney
Next Generation Magazine, January 1997
Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
Charles Mingus
The really blisteringly original games are incredibly simple.
Compute Magazine, January 1992
People want to go back to a simpler time where you walked up, read two lines of instructions, and knew the game. People want clean, simple challenges, and are tired of the 45-move joystick/button combinations it takes to do a roundhouse kick.
Curt Vendel from Weekly Wire
Pinball is a good example of what makes a great game—a mixture of luck and skill. That's a very critical aspect. In the long run a more-skilled player will do better, but in the short run anyone should be able to win. There should be some randomness, which offer challenges over the game. When you get to games like Pac-Man or Mortal Kombat where there's a documentable sequence that you can execute to succeed, to me that's totally antithetical to what a game should be.
Howard Scott Warshaw from a Digital Press interview
One of my best tricks is to make every damn possible thing random. If something repeats (for example if your character looks left and right) don't make it ping-pong in perfect timing like a metronome. Always slip in randomness so that something that does repeat never looks the same twice. Nothing in your game should move to a "beat."
Dave Perry
Next Generation Magazine, January 1997
I used the random object placement in level 3 for variety. I didn't want it to be like a puzzle, where once you've solved it, it's not very interesting to do it again, and I wanted to avoid that. The bat was also added as a confusion factor, to move objects around a bit, so that the game wasn't too predictable. (I did make a mistake in my random object placement code, and there is a 1 in 18 chance that the yellow key will start out in the yellow castle, making the game unwinnable. This only happens in level 3.)
As you may gather from the above, I think that randomness in a game is very strong medicine, and must be very carefully controlled.
Warren Robinett from a Good Deal Games interview
Don't ever take control away from the joypad/keyboard unless you really want to piss off the player. When you press jump, make him jump. Fight animators or anyone else who tries to get you to do anything else. Instant response is key.
Dave Perry (Adapted)
Next Generation Magazine, January 1997
It is said that our leisure activities no longer give us a break from the alienating qualities of the work we do; instead, they have come to resemble that work.
The chief reason our recreation is like our work is that it has become more competitive. Sports, for example, have always been competitive and never really qualified as play in the first place. Although it's not generally acknowledged, most definitions of play do seem to exclude competitive activities.
In an experiment with five-and six-year olds, Janice Nelson and her associates found that "success as well as failure in competition produced consistent increases in aggression, as compared with the effects of noncompetitive play," although failure made the children more aggressive. Another study discovered that boys who won a subsequent competition were more aggressive than those who failed. Even winning is not enough to eradicate the frustrating elements of competition. The hostile act of competition, on the playing field and in other contexts, for both participants and spectators, leads us to become more aggressive.
Any activity whose goal is victory cannot be play, if you are trying to win, you are not engaged in true play.
Adapted from No Contest: The Case Against Competition (#ad) by Alfie Kohn
Play is supposed to be the opposite of work, but most video games are just jobs with a little bit of fun thrown in. These games can leave players feeling abused, frustrated, and overly aggressive. What your players need is freedom from competition and aggravation. Give your players a place to play where they don't have to win anything. Let them have fun without having to follow a bunch of rules. Give your players a chance to overcome challenges that have many solutions. Your game can either irritate or alleviate. Which would you rather do? If you want to add to the happiness of your players, give them freedom.
Duane Alan Hahn
For science fiction, you establish a framework; you establish the rules. Now you have to be honest in those rules. You can't just do anything you want to because it's science fiction. Otherwise it doesn't become particularly believable.
Joe Jennings (Production Designer) from the Designing Khan featurette on the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - The Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition) DVD (#ad)
Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.
Florence Scovel Shinn
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
Leonardo da Vinci
The last 10% of game design is really what separates the good games from the great games. It's what I call the clean-up phase of game design. Here's where you make sure all the elements look great. The game should look good, feel good, sound good, play good.
Garry Kitchen
Garry Kitchen's GameMaker Manual
Even if your first game doesn't turn out the way you'd like, it can give you ideas for other games.
Christopher Chance
K-Power Magazine, April 1984
Did you know that Trump's rushed experimental rona jab has less than one percent overall benefit? It also has many possible horrible side effects. Some brainwashed rona jab cultists claim that there are no victims of the jab, but person after person will post what the jab did to them, a friend, or a family member on web sites such as Facebook and Twitter and they'll be lucky if they don't get banned soon after. Posting the truth is “misinformation” don't you know. Awakened sheep might turn into lions, so powerful people will do just about anything to keep the sheep from waking up.
Check out these videos:
What is causing the mysterious self-assembling non-organic clots?
If You Got the COVID Shot and Aren't Injured, This May Be Why
Take a look at my page called The H Word and Beyond. You might also want to look at my page called Zinc and Quercetin. My sister and I have been taking those two supplements since summer of 2020 in the hopes that they would scare away the flu and other viruses (or at least make them less severe).
Some people appear to have a mental illness because they have a vitamin B deficiency. For example, the wife of a guy I used to chat with online had severe mood swings which seemed to be caused by food allergies or intolerances. She would became irrational, obnoxious, throw tantrums, and generally act like she had a mental illness. The horrid behavior stopped after she started taking a vitamin B complex. I've been taking Jarrow B-Right (#ad) for many years. It makes me much easier to live with.
Unfermented soy is bad! “When she stopped eating soy, the mental problems went away.” Fermented soy doesn't bother me, but the various versions of unfermented soy (soy flour, soybean oil, and so on) that are used in all kinds of products these days causes a negative mental health reaction in me that a vitamin B complex can't tame. The sinister encroachment of soy has made the careful reading of ingredients a necessity.
If you are overweight, have type II diabetes, or are worried about the condition of your heart, check out the videos by Ken D Berry, William Davis, and Ivor Cummins. It seems that most people should avoid wheat, not just those who have a wheat allergy or celiac disease. Check out these books: Undoctored (#ad), Wheat Belly (#ad), and Eat Rich, Live Long (#ad).
Negative ions are good for us. You might want to avoid positive ion generators and ozone generators. A plain old air cleaner is better than nothing, but one that produces negative ions makes the air in a room fresher and easier for me to breathe. It also helps to brighten my mood.
Never litter. Toss it in the trash or take it home. Do not throw it on the ground. Also remember that good people clean up after themselves at home, out in public, at a campsite and so on. Leave it better than you found it.
Climate Change Cash Grab = Bad
Seems like more people than ever finally care about water, land, and air pollution, but the climate change cash grab scam is designed to put more of your money into the bank accounts of greedy politicians. Those power-hungry schemers try to trick us with bad data and lies about overpopulation while pretending to be caring do-gooders. Trying to eliminate pollution is a good thing, but the carbon footprint of the average law-abiding human right now is actually making the planet greener instead of killing it.
Eliminating farms and ranches, eating bugs, getting locked down in 15-minute cities, owning nothing, using digital currency (with expiration dates) that is tied to your social credit score, and paying higher taxes will not make things better and “save the Earth.” All that stuff is part of an agenda that has nothing to do with making the world a better place for the average person. It's all about control, depopulation, and making things better for the ultra-rich. They just want enough peasants left alive to keep things running smoothly.
Watch these two YouTube videos for more information:
Charlie Robinson had some good advice about waking up normies (see the link to the video below). He said instead of verbally unloading or being nasty or acting like a bully, ask the person a question. Being nice and asking a question will help the person actually think about the subject.
Interesting videos:
Charlie Robinson Talks About the Best Way to Wake Up Normies
Disclaimer
View this page and any external web sites at your own risk. I am not responsible for any possible spiritual, emotional, physical, financial or any other damage to you, your friends, family, ancestors, or descendants in the past, present, or future, living or dead, in this dimension or any other.