Davey Wreden - Why are you making games? - Part 2

excruciating /ɪkˈskruːʃieɪtɪŋ/ : extremely painful or bad
I realized that I've taken you through this long excruciating tale of my life and okay you all get it.
I was very unhappy and everything sucked which is true but there's something here that I think is very important and it has nothing to do with how depressed I got.
The reason I had to face all of these issues is not because Stanley Parable sold a lot of copies.
The biggest thing that made my situation unique is that the reception the Stanley Parable forced all of these things into my life in a very very short period of time.
tackle: to make a determined effort to deal with a difficult problem or situation
For most human beings, these are the kinds of issues that you tackle and unravel over the course of many years or even several decades.
In my case, I had to deal with it all in 9 months and that is the only or the
biggest meaningful difference I believe between me and someone whose work does not like sell well.
trauma /ˈtraʊmə/ : a very frightening and upsetting experience
When it comes to this kind of depression, it was hell because I was dealing with the trauma in ultra fast forward so some of you might have a deeper reason for making games that was very similar to mine but you'll experience it in a very different way because even if you don't have like a hit game or something like that you still have this contract inside of you that tells you why you're really making whatever it is that you're making.
churn out: to produce something quickly and in large amounts
What is the deeper reason for it is, just it was praise and validation for me.
Perhaps for you, it's the need to prove yourself to someone who thinks you won't make it or a self judgment that the only people who are valuable in this world are the people who are churning out creative content all the time or a desire to be a part of a community to belong to a group of people who you can connect with and be inspired by or the fan response.
Do the people who play your game love it and spend hundreds of hours
on it?
You know you get such a rush from that.
Or winning awards or making money, maybe you just want to be able to support yourself financially and of course these are things apply mostly to games.
There many things other things that many of you are doing and maybe you know like me you, you just want people to recognize you personally and tell you that they like your work and so therefore they like you.
There's always something or multiple things, everyone has this, whether you know it or not.
refine: to make a substance pure by taking other substances out of it
You are developing and refining this reason every single day and with every single thing that you create.
This is the contract that I mentioned earlier.
This is the internal voice that has decided what is the most important thing.
Whenever you come to a big decision, your internal contractor will always privilege this one thing above all others.
To you, it doesn't even occur to you as a contract.
You know it just occurs to you as the truth it's possible that you might not even realize that.
Other people's contracts are different than yours but everyone has this this reason and the unfortunate reality is that for almost everyone.
The contract tends to make decisions from from a place of fear, fear that you will never be enough, fear that you will never have enough, fear that you will never be truly truly loved, fear that you will never fit in and whenever the voice of fear gets what it wants, it goes stronger and hotter and it becomes more sure of itself and when it grows big enough and powerful enough, it will eat you alive because you'll no longer be making decisions for yourself.
The only decisions that you will be able to make are those that serve the needs and fit the guidelines of the contract.
Now just to insert a little side note here.
I realized that I didn't do a very good job of explaining why this unconscious voice is really the voice of fear if you didn't quite make that connection with me, that's totally understandable.
adequately: in a way that is enough in quantity, or good enough in quality, for a particular purpose or need
gloss over /ɡlɑːs/: to avoid talking about something unpleasant or embarrasssing by not dealing with it in detail
Unfortunately that single idea, that your unconscious and default state of mind, it tends to be fear-based, is such a massive conversation that we could really only cover it adequately, adequately by having a completely separate talk about it so I have to kind of just gloss over it and ask you to just roll with it for now.
Perhaps in another time, we'll be able to give that conversation the attention that it deserves.
So, back to this idea of a deeper reason.
If it happens that in your creative life, your work is received incredibly well in an incredibly short period of time.
I have good news, you're going to figure out very quickly what your internal contact actually says.
chunk: a thick, solid piece that has been cut or broken off something
However, if you don't have this as as many of you will not, that doesn't mean the contract isn't there, it just means that more likely it will reveal itself to you very slowly in small chunks.
disguise /dɪsˈɡaɪz/ : to change your appearance so that people cannot recognize you
Some of you will experience all the pain that I've described here and more except in tiny pieces over many years disguised as other things.
Always the contract will tell you that the pain is so small and hardly even worth thinking about and it's probably you know a result of some other unrelated thing that you don't even have control over and when the unrelated thing goes away then so will the pain.
You'll get great at ignoring it or explain explaining explaining it away to yourself.
subservience /səbˈsɜːrviəns/ : the fact of being too willing to obey other people
Over many years and over many years, the pain of subservience to your contract will become background noise in your life as much a part of your identity as your name or your skin color.
From time to time it will emerge in slightly larger ways by like pissing off a good friend or by taking on a project that you know is wrong for you or by falling into a life habit that is clearly self-destructive but you won't know why you did those things because it wasn't you making the choice to do that.
It was the contract and the contract is always right, always there, always in charge.
Sooner or later you're going to have to deal with this, sooner or later the thing that you really want that you really prize deep down inside is going
to make its way into your life, in a way that you did not intend, and even though you didn't get to decide whether or not to have this contract.
You do get a choice in how you're going to respond to it, you can start right now, today, by asking yourself what is the real reason that I'm doing what I'm doing, why am I making stuff.
You don't even have to come up with an answer to it because many of you are still in school and you're learning what the hell to actually do with yourself in the first place and maybe it's not even games and here I really do need to urge you to be patient with yourselves when dealing with this stuff.
There are no shortcuts, it actually just takes a long time but the cool part about this is that if you keep asking yourself this question, eventually you
will get a response back from the unconscious part of your mind that knows what your deeper reason really is.
This is actually super cool.
actually /ˈæktʃuəli/
If you ask this question thoughtfully and deliberately and repeatedly without forcing any kind of answer onto it, you'll actually just be given the answers over time.
I realize that I have no way of proving this to you so you kind of kind of just have to take my word for it but it's the oldest trick in the book.
truism /ˈtruːɪzəm/ : a statement that is clearly true and does not therefore add anything interesting or important to a discussion
It's encoded into our collective mythology in broad silly truisms like free your mind and the rest will follow.
Which of course we all ignore because who has any idea how to just free your mind as though it were that simple but I will suggest to you today that freedom if mind is a result of nothing other than just asking this question over and over and over what is the deeper purpose.
It's a practice that you will come back to every single day.
Every single day you will be given many opportunities to just jump to the most obvious, the most fearful, the most unengaged state of mind in small tiny ways that you won't even notice.
viral: used to describe a piece of information, a video, an image, etc. that is sent rapidly over the internet and seen by large numbers of people within a short time
The default unthinking behavior encoded into you by your contract, even me, even while I was writing this talk like I kept having this image popping into my head of like I'm delivering the speech to you and and you know when people are video recording this and I guess it gets put out on the internet and then when it does, it becomes this big viral hit and throughout the video game community I'm recognized for my incredible wisdom and my endless virtue and compassion for the human spirit and no, wait, what if it wasn't just the
gaming community, what if it was like Ted came to me to like give this talk you know, like on their main stage and then what if that goes mainstream and it turns out to be the most popular and inspirational video on their website.
Oh my god I would be so loved.
I would be so adored appreciated.
I would be seen so clearly.
It would be so beautiful.
This is my contract.
It is not me.
It is my default state of mind.
It does not have my health and its interests, nor my relationships, nor actual real wisdom.
Only the one thing, the one thing of which it will never ever have enough.
All that this voice knows how to do is consume and the test is whether I or you every single day when this voice arises whether we can simply meet it with awareness.
To see it for what it is and to continue asking what do I really want .
nourishing /ˈnɜːrɪʃɪŋ/ : allowing a feeling, an idea, etc. to develop or grow stronger
You can break this unconscious default behavior if you come back to it and ask this question over and over, you will discover a relief that is deeper and more lasting and more nourishing than any relief you have ever experienced in your life.
Or, on the other hand, you don't have to.
You can allow the contract to make your decisions for you, you can produce work that is not coming from you but from a voice in your head with a singular and unquestioned point of focus.
You will send art out into the world that is born not from a place of compassion and love and empathy but from a place of fear that you will never be or have enough.
Other people out there in the world will experience this work that you've made and they'll be persuaded that this is how the world is.
ubiquitous /juːˈbɪkwɪtəs/ : seeming to be everywhere or in several places at the same time; very common
They slowly over time will begin to see the world through the fearful lens that you've offered them, a lens that tells them that they are not good enough or to run from their pain rather than confront it or to be scared of people who are different from them and when we have enough game developers creating video games from this unquestioned and fearful state of mind, when we have trained our audiences to demand games which come from the unquestioned and fearful state of mind, then over several decades, we develop an art form in which by far the most ubiquitous form of expression is that of firing a gun.
ethnically / eθnɪkli/ : typical of a country or culture that is very different from modern Western culture and therefore interesting for people in Western countries
dispensable: not necessary; that can be get rid of
palatable /ˈpælətəbl/ : pleasant or acceptable to somebody
We get a culture where violence is understood and implied to be the central means of problem solving and so enemies must be made in human, ethnically threatening to a white western audience, living beings made dispensable in the hundreds or thousands purely, so that violence can continue to be palatable and marketable.
depict: to describe something in words, or give an impression of something in words or with a picture
intimate /ˈɪntɪmət/ : private and personal, often in a sexual way
humility /hjuːˈmɪləti/ : the quality of not thinking that you are better than other people; the quality of being humble
We get a culture where women are frequently depicted as fragile and in need of rescue and where sex is not represented as an act of intimate humility before another human being but a reward at the end of a series of correct or incorrect gameplay decisions.
unambiguous /ˌʌnæmˈbɪɡjuəs/ : clear in meaning; that can only be understood in one way
repercussion /ˌriːpərˈkʌʃn/ : an indirect and usually bad result of an action or event that may happen some time afterwards
We get a culture where players expect to be made unambiguous heroes whose actions have permanent and lasting impact at all times where the repercussions of one's action are minimized or removed entirely so as
to keep the player immersed in the narrative that you and only you are the single most important human being in the entire universe.
In short, we deny our players their humanity.
For our humanity cannot be seen in the things that we gain.
It is seen in how we respond to not getting what we want.
This is what I hope for the works that you make.
I hope for all of you to create works that allow your players to feel more human but it is so so hard to do when that one voice that one contract is making all of your decisions for you.
This is what is at risk.
If you fail to be conscious about what's going on in your head, this is what you risk doing to yourself and it's what you risk doing to other people, because oh my god, I want you to treat yourselves so well.
I want you to be good to yourselves.
This is surprisingly difficult but you can do it with patience and attention and then when you're being good to yourself,  you tend to be good to other people, you tend to make things that encourage the kind of compassion and empathy that I mentioned earlier.
I really want you all to treat yourselves like you deserve to be treated well.
Because you do.
reiterate /riˈɪtəreɪt/ : to repeat something that you have already said, especially to emphasize it
And I'm gonna finish my talk today by returning to and reiterating on a point that I made earlier which is that in order to do this you have to be patient with yourself.
takeaway: an important fact, point or idea to be remembered from a talk, meeting or event
I know that's not a sexy takeaway but it's maybe the closest thing that I can offer you to a real solution for dealing with your own personal contract.
Ask this question of yourself, ask what is the deeper reason, why you're making games and then be patient and allow the answers to come to you.
gratification: the state of feeling pleasure when something goes well for you or when your desires are satisfied; something that gives you pleasure
crucible: a place or situation in which people or ideas are tested severely, often creating something new or exciting in the process
traverse: to cross an area of land or water
It's the hardest thing to do because it is the very definition of delayed gratification but as you're going to discover over and over again throughout
your lives, the most difficult crucibles to traverse are the ones that offer the most deeply fulfilling rewards on the other end.
On the surface, patience looks invisible.
It looks like you're doing nothing but really what you are doing is choosing not to be driven by the voice of fear.
You're instead choosing to listen to it and hear what it has to say and then say okay cool, thank you, voice in my head and then continue to ask why do I really want, to make what I'm making.
Patience means doing this over and over and over, your entire life.
It's the only way to break from your contract and I promise you that over time you will do exactly that.
You'll develop the strength to choose for yourself and to choose a life where you treat yourself and others well and then when this is your mindset, you will be able to create such beautiful pieces of work.
You'll make games that teach the world to be joyful and compassionate and you'll feel really good about yourself besides.
geologist /dʒiˈɑːlədʒɪst/
I really do wish this upon every single one of you whether you're making video games or something else entirely whether you're a doctor or a geologist or a cashier, I wish you the ability and the patience to be kind to yourself.
In my opinion, it's one of the most important skills that you can develop.
That's all I have to say, thank you very much.