I was just thinking about losing motivation to play Minecraft and how it feels similar to losing motivation to work on a game. When I think about Counter-Strike, it becomes very clear what the goal is and how to optimize your skills to achieve that goal. Improve your aiming, shoot the enemies, win rounds, climb up in a ranking system. This goal is extremely actionable, many would describe playing Counter-Strike as an activity that almost happens automatically. You don’t have to think to play Counter-Strike, you can just do it.
Minecraft isn’t completely different in that aspect. You know that you have to mine blocks, so you can also do that on auto-pilot. I think it’s fair to say, that Minecraft can be played just like Counter-Strike. It wont have the same meaning, because you don’t have the competition and prestige aspect, but you can definitely play it in a loop and mine more and more resources. That’s why the game has “Mine-” in its name.
But there is another layer of playing sandbox games like Minecraft, which is setting your own goals. Or in other words: creating your own problems to solve. Basically, you have to start playing god. Sounds a bit dramatic, but technically that’s what you are doing. You try to make up your own rules of the universe.
Somehow this feels counter-intuitive. It seems easier to solve problems than to create problems. If god created this world, then we could definitely argue if that means “god creates all problems”. And we, as humans? We are the victims of those problems, constantly trying to solve them.
I think this is part of the reason why it’s easier to get into Counter-Strike, than getting into Minecraft. Cause creating your own problems and also trying to solve them, it feels unnatural. Do you enjoy spraying dirt all over your apartment, just so you can clean it up afterwards? I personally haven’t heard about anybody doing that.
So in order to become a game developer, we have to become a trouble-maker. We have to create problems, instead of trying to solve them. Yet ironically, finding problems to create, is becoming a problem to solve in itself. What problems do players want to solve? This question becomes a problem in itself. But I think it’s a good first step to find motivation again to develop a game. By asking the first big question: “What is the point of playing a game?” or in other words “What problem does playing a game solve?”.
I think this is a weird question, because video games basically don’t solve any problems, they create the problems. What problem would you have without playing Counter-Strike? Of course there are some problems that come to my mind: boredom, loneliness, mental underload. Basically those problems are “non-problems”. You don’t suffer from something happening to you, but from something not happening to you. And this is exactly the problem games solve: that something happens to the player.
And this is the core difference between Counter-Strike and Minecraft. In Counter-Strike you will lose, you will get shot, you will be involved in the battle. But in Minecraft, you can technically wall yourself in, grow infinite food and be safe forever. Basically you can create a situation for yourself in Minecraft, where you are completely safe and nothing is going to happen to you.
So how does that relate to motivation and developing a game? I think there are some observations that we can translate into our work. That we are more likely to be motivated, if something is happening to us. When we are basically forced to take action and to make decisions. Although, I’d argue that “being forced” is questionable, because players voluntarily participate in video games, they are not forced to experience a shooting in Counter-Strike. They want to experience it. But they do not create the situation they get into, they just participate and it and see what’s going to happen.
If the game development process would feel exactly like playing Counter-Strike, it’d be highly addictive and people would spend thousands of hours developing games. But as I commonly noticed, most developers have severe problems with motivation. Often they only develop out of financial pressure or because it is their job. Yet people play Counter-Strike for years without ever getting paid a single penny.
But can work feel like play? Today I wondered why I even divide my day into “work” and “play”. Why can’t I just see my whole life as work? Why do I have to divide my day into time periods where I work or play? Why is there this imaginary line? Most likely we define work as “activities we don’t want to do, but doing them has positive consequences” and play as “activities we want to do, but doing them leads to negative consequences”.
I find it interesting that the idea of always being at work somehow gave me peace of mind. An idea that work isn’t this separate thing anymore and that my whole life is in fact work. That I don’t divide activities into work and play anymore. But everything is a constant motivation to improve my life. And that is probably the common theme in both working and playing. That I do it to improve my life.
The problem still remains and becomes obvious when success isn’t promised anymore. What if work becomes an “activity we don’t want to do, and also doesn’t have positive consequences”? When you don’t believe your game will make you sufficient income, you will be left with no rational reason anymore to keep working. Actually in nature it would be suicidal to keep working without it providing any resources.
Imagine a post-money society where all your needs are taken care of. No matter how much you work, it will not improve your situation, as you already have enough to eat, shelter, entertainment etc. – This is somewhat the situation NEETs and some rich people already live in. There is no real need to do anything anymore. Actually one of the weird visions I had about a universal basic income, is that it might also come with no more economic opportunities. Your needs will be taken care of on a basic level, yet your chance to have more than the basics will become almost zero. This creates a situation, where motivation is not tied to rewards anymore. And this is part of the modern meaning crisis that will probably intensify over the next 100 years.
But somehow there is still an energy in us, an energy that wants to solve problems and improve our situation. We always want to find ways to improve our situation. And this feeling is probably why video games are becoming so “meaningful” to people. Because it gives us a sense of achievement again, a sense of being in control of improving a situation.
I think this leads to a first harsh truth: That there are already enough games to solve this problem. Without your game, there will be more than enough other games to provide for those desires. You are basically trying to solve a problem that has already been solved. Making a video game in the current year is like trying to solve the problem of fire-making. It’s basically a non-existing problem anymore.
And this is why it’s so hard to get motivated. Because if you aren’t completely ignorant, you cannot avoid the fact, that you are not solving any problems with your work. You are basically wasting time. And I think it’s important to face this fact first: Working on a video game is an absolute waste of time and resources.
I know this sounds dramatic, but I think if we are honest, this is what we are feeling deep down and it’s absolutely the reason why we are not motivated to work on new games. Without a strong sense of solving a problem and providing value that improves our life, we will never truly feel strong motivation to act. This can lead to almost desperate levels of trying to come up with new ideas. A game nobody has ever seen before, an idea that will revolutionize gaming. But if we are honest, this is ridiculous and almost could be described as manic and megalomaniacal.
But what now? Good question. What we need is a real solution for our life. We need more meaning, more reason. We need to: Waste time. We need to give up on rewards. We need to stop separating the idea of work and play. We need to stop working “hours”, instead we need to work all day, always. 24/7 of pure work. Because we need to completely redefine work.
If we don’t redefine work, the only logical conclusion is that our life becomes obsolete. We become an obsolete species that has absolutely no reason to exist. Because we lost all our motivation and meaning in life. We will start to feel like useless eaters, only existing to consume. We will have no reason to move anymore, to socialize anymore, to get out anymore, to work anymore. Unless, we completely redefine what it means to be “productive” or to “waste time”.
Wasting time is basically becoming an outdated concept in modern times. It’s a slow gradual transition, but the massive meaning crisis we are experiencing in first world countries is a clear sign, that it’s a mindset and worldview problem.
By “wasting time”, I don’t even mean playing video games, I mean that even work will become a waste of time, since it wont pay anymore. Developing a video game will become a waste of time, too.
I think this is the only correct angle to tackle the motivation problem. You first have to realize that developing a video game is a waste of time. And how would a waste of time ever motivate you? Unless, it provides something of value to you. But if it’s not money and resources, then what is it.
So the big question is: What value does working on a video game provide to you? And is that value higher than other activities you could be doing? Why would you choose to work on a video game, when you could be playing Counter-Strike? Or when you could go outside? Or you could binge-watch a show? You could scroll through Youtube and watch videos.
There is only one answer: It will only motivate you, if you gain more from it than from doing other “wastes of time”. Maybe we have see it more from a non-materialistic angle. That there is spiritual value in working on a video game. Otherwise: What the hell is the fucking point of doing it?
My mind just drifted, thinking about resources and how e.g. an abundance in tomatoes doesn’t automatically lead to an abundance in taste experiences. The higher level of providing value is the transformative aspect. Instead of farming more tomatoes, you have to turn the tomatoes into recipes. And doing this can become a science in itself. There is a need for rich experiences. Otherwise this world would be nothing but a place of survival until death. There is hardly any culture in basic survival, barely any meaning.
But what if you already cooked a tomato sauce that is a rich experience? What’s left to do now? To just cook it every day, doing your “work”? What comes after that? Isn’t that the existential problem we are all facing? The “what comes next?”. But this sounds like a good conclusion: We are trying to solve “what comes next”.
It seems like a good use of my time to spend all day and all night to figure out this question. I picked game development and want to figure out what comes next. To avoid stagnation, to avoid reality from becoming stale and predictable. But of course this means that some basic game development, where you make another platformer or clone, just won’t cut it. It’s not about spending time in your game engine and programming new clones all day. It’s not about exercising your programming skills to become the best. It’s not even about making the best game, it’s about creating soul. About new flavors, new experiences. Isn’t that also what makes space travel so interesting? Exploring new solar systems and planets? Maybe even finding life in space and finding alien cultures? It all gets you in a mood that extents the space of experience.
So my personal conclusion from writing all of this, is that I want to explore. I’m a game explorer, out in space, searching for the unknown, the “new”. That is my passion, that is my motivation. It’s not about getting games done and being “productive”, it’s about exploring what is possible. Maybe this is why gaming feels less original nowadays to many people. Maybe it’s become game developers don’t explore enough and only see game development as some kind of “task to finish”. “Here is how to make a platformer, now do it”. This type of stale mindset cannot lead to innovation. Productivity might be the actual “waste of time”, because it lacks any meaning. It lacks excitement.
If you think about it, the word “productivity” comes from “production”. It is a very industrial word and it definitely is a useful term to measure how many cars you can produce per day. You can improve productivity to double your production. But is that the point of art? Is that the point of developing games? To get more done? How do you even measure that? Does a game even improve by adding more features and adding them faster? That’s like saying adding more spices to the tomato sauce makes it better. But that is not how recipes work.
I personally feel a strong motivation to explore more, to figure out “what comes next” in game development. But I’m truly not excited over executing tasks that have been done endless times before. I’m not excited about “getting a game done”. I’m not excited about having a “productive mindset”. I’m excited about discovery, exploration, deep thinking, research and new ideas. I can actually feel something writing this down. It feels way more meaningful than just trying to look busy so you get a paycheck. And yeah, what happens if you don’t get a paycheck? You get an extreme motivational crisis, some even say they become depressed.
So, what to do? Stop trying to make a game, it’s meaningless. Try to figure out “what comes next”. Start your spaceship and go on a journey, if you discover something, report back to humanity. This is what people will get excited about. And more important: You will feel excited. Because instead of making your inner “boss” happy that you looked busy all day, you finally start to have some fun. Become the mad scientist who tries to bring life to a dead body like Frankenstein. Isn’t that exciting? Bringing the dead to life? Or talking to the dead? Or figuring out what’s on the edge of the universe?
So, if you don’t feel motivated to work on a game anymore, then stop treating it as a job. Stop trying to be productive. And finally make it a discovery expedition. And maybe this is what game development can provide to you, when you got tired of playing games and watching videos: A sense of exploration. Maybe it becomes a symbiosis of consuming and creating, where both activities play into the explorative journey. So we don’t have to divide everything into “good” and “bad” habits again, not drawing a line between work and play anymore.
The only way to lose this sense of exploration is playing the same games over and over and over again. Yeah, you might become “productive” at playing Counter-Strike, meaning you will score more kills and win more matches and get more prize money. But will it provide the same meaning as exploring the universe? Or exploring the “inner universe”? Things that are possible to create, yet nobody has done it yet, because nobody has discovered it? As I write this, I get really excited about this discovery/exploration mindset and I’m curious to see where it’ll lead me.