Defining Awesome

Minecraft should be a huge inspiration for indie game developers. Look how simple it is to make a fun game and good cash from it. Just go to the website and see how shitty it looks like. The site has seamless textures as a background! When was the last time you saw that 1998? Look at the download page or the buying page (just a Paypal link). Everywhere is just random stuff written in a hurry. It reminds me of the first Soldat web pages. Then go play the game. It’s the simplest idea in the world. Building stuff out of cubes (Lego?). Then go again on the website and read on top: 602 servers, 380083 registered, 68753 purchases. Then tell me that you need a big website, money, promotion, nice company name, advanced payment processing, great graphics and other bullshit that you’re using – as an EXCUSE TO NOT JUST make a good game, like Minecraft.

A speech I gave at TEDxWulkan about why it is absolutely necessary to use our emotions to propel our work.

It was a spontaneous event made by the team behind TEDxWarsaw, which is a local license of TED Talks. The theme of the event was “It’s impossible. But doable.” 2 weeks after the Iceland volcano eruption TEDxWulkan was an opportunity to look at Explosive Ideas, Impossible Dreams and Crazy Propositions and how those might actually be accomplished.

The video was made thanks to streamonline.pl and the rest of the speakers can be viewed here http://www.streamonline.pl/tedxwulkan/.

Thanks for watching, for me it was certainly fun to do this.

Ferdinand Porsche: “In the beginning I looked around and, not finding the automobile of my
dreams, decided to build it myself.”

There are two types of people: the ones that accomplish and the ones that do not. The only difference is not talent, genius, luck or some other artsy, vague, psychological, “energetical”, meaningless attribute that these people have. The people that accomplish things DO things. The rest doesn’t actually >>DO<< anything.

It’s as simple as that. If you think you understand this, you don’t. If you don’t agree, I pity you fool. Let me explain with the most simple common for everybody down-to-earth metaphor possible. And forgive me my french.

When you go to the toilet to shit, you go there alone, you sit down and just do it.

BUT with every other thing it isn’t that simple is it??

With your dreams, projects and goals…

…you have to think about it, build up for it, read books about it, watch motivational movies, go to seminars, schools, setup project plans and systems, learn tons of stuff. You have to talk about it with everyone. Blog about it. Twit about. Sketch it. Sign up on multiple forums talking about your project. You make a company. Before that sit for days thinking about a cool name for your company. Think up names for your projects. A cool nick and avatar for yourself. Make a web page. Design how it will look like. Ask friends do they like the colors. Test your new layouts and comments scripts. With going to the bathroom you don’t do all those things? You don’t setup a company first to make a dump.

You don’t talk about it endlessly. You don’t fantasize about what its gonna be after you make it. You don’t count the money that you will earn for crapping. You just go to the toilet and shit. It’s like my physics teacher (Mrs Cz.) used to always say when she failed someone: you have to sit on your ass and work. There is NO OTHER WAY. Never was, never will be. All those great people in history actually did something. I’ve never heard of Leonardo Da Vinci’s website or company. There is nothing else you need to do and also nothing more!

With pooping you don’t procrastinate. You don’t start new shit projects everyday, you don’t go to the toilet and think maybe not this time. You sit on your ass and squeeze those butt cheeks. You don’t shit halfway through with a piece of crap dangling out of your asshole and say this is too much work and quit. You have to make it, if you don’t you’ll blow up and fill the room with an explosion of shit, piss and guts. Sit down and do it. This is the attitude you must obtain if you will ever, EVER want to create and do anything in your life. Go to the toilette and create something. Nobodies gonna do it for you. You have to do your own shit. You don’t find people to help you. You don’t post around forums looking for guys to help you. Your friends don’t want to mess around with your shit. You’re too big for mama to be wiping your dirty ass. You got to do it yourself. Don’t be looking at other toilets maybe they are better. Don’t be learning, going to school to “acquire the necessary skills”. You know how to do it. Your body knows how to shit, it is the only thing that will help you. Worship your body – it knows. Just allow it to do its thing. At least sit down everyday and squeeze a little. The shit will come. You are the shit. Now go out there and do it!

What’s that your saying? You don’t have a choice because you MUST poo poo hence you do it effortlessly? Well let me tell you this Mr Shitty Pants. You don’t HAVE to do anything. You can go right now to a river or just grab a big enough rock and kill yourself. It’s a choice.  So if you decide to live then the fact is that you MUST accomplish your dreams. There is no other way. If you don’t do it you will lead a god forsaken bitter life and eventually die as a sad lonely fucked up old loser. You know those stupid assholes that piss you off all day? Internet trolls, forum nerds, critics, angry car drivers, old bitter drunkards. Those are all people that failed. They failed at making their dreams, thus failed at life. If you are a worthless scum with no guts to simply work hard then I have no pity for you. Die as the stupid son of a bitch you are. Otherwise if you have at least a bit of dignity, stand up, don’t shit yourself in the pants. At least take them off and sit on the toilet. I’m not even asking you to wipe after. It’s not time to think about fame and success. It’s time to squeeze your big brown asshole and create!

THIS IS HOW THINGS GET DONE!!!

Listen to Arnold! I’ve been doing this for hours daily for years since I started making games.

When starting to create a game my whole philosophy is to get a gostek running and shooting as fast as possible. I’ve worked this way from day 1 which was more than 15 years ago. This is the single most important principle to get things going and to see where you are at. It’s almost a speed contest for me, I want to finally have a dude walking around and not have to think about all the things I will have to do.

What people do wrong:

- start a web page before having a gostek running
- announce the game before having a gostek running
- making the game menus before having a gostek running
- making a complete engine before having a gostek running
- optimizing code before having a gostek running
- endlessly changing game and code design before having a gostek running
- talking about your game before having a gostek running
- having a gostek shoot before he runs
- making an icon for the game before having a gostek running

I ran out of ideas, but I think you get my point.

Oh… what’s a ‘gostek’? Its slang for ‘dude’ in polish.

On a recent trip to China when I was wondering in the hills I found a cave. Out of curiosity I went inside. On further inspection it happened that the cave contained some ancient scrolls from a very old Ancient Chinese Master. I decided to share them with you. Here are some translations:

The art of code is of vital importance to the Programmer.
It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.

If you know the code and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred compiles. If you know yourself but not the code, for every successful compile gained you will also suffer an unsuccessful compile. If you know neither the code nor yourself, you will succumb in every compile.

Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the programmer works out his victory in relation to the code he is facing.
Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in coding there are no constant conditions.

An ancient Chinese song in the key of Em

I stand alone and gaze upon the code
White space is all that’s left after the compile
And now I’m searching a new way to defeat the bug
Bloodshed I’ve seen enough of death and pain

I will code, they will hunt me in vain
I will hide, they’ll be searching
I’ll regroup, feign retreat they’ll pursue
Coup de grace I will win but never fight

That’s the Art of Code

All coding is based on deception.

Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest.
In coding and debugging be like fire, is immovability like a mountain.
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you code, code like a thunderbolt.  

Oh man I’m in love with this guy. I started reading these conversations again and decided to continue my commentaries.
These are conversations with Nintendo’s boss Satoru Iwata, about his management philosophies and about Mr. Miyamato’s (Mario, Donkey Kong) game design philosophies which he studies frequently. 

Part 1 about great ideas – http://mm.soldat.pl/?p=79

Part 2 about looking over someone elses shoulder – http://mm.soldat.pl/?p=81

Part 3 about a special perspective

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There’s a lot more to this but I don’t have time to write more. For now this list is enough and I hope it helps many people. Remember that if you direct your attention enough on anything for a long period of time it will happen. So here are a few things that I’ve learned during my years as a game developer. This is especially useful if you’re not really trying to do something of value, have a different agenda or simply fear success. Enjoy. read more »

This is one of those things, that might be the longest thing you’ve ever read on the Internet, but also might be of most value. So please continue.

There is a sick assumption going on in our culture that we are somehow a separate unit or body and that we are in control of it. This is deeply perverse and the symptoms of this kind of thinking are thoughts like: I have, I must, I should – I have to survive, I must do something, I should be somebody. This of course causes stress, anxiety and general disorder of life and discontentment.

I had no idea about this for most of my life but now I know and it makes a whole lot of difference. Let me tell you about a particular type of enlightenment I had about 2 years ago. This might explain the first sentence I wrote here, that we are not a unit and not directly in control.
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