附英文原文内容对照My No. 1 is be honest and it is the No. 1 for me, and I think it's the No. 1
for all artists. I think honesty is what art is. And you know, business
makes it dishonest. So it's a difficult field as an artist to be in,
because, to some degree, the dishonesty of selling something or being a
salesperson can easily taint your work. And you could attempt to manipulate
people into feeling a certain way, playing more, putting more money into the
machine, and it's a dangerous thing.Like if you're an artist, you are a voice
and you've got to find your voice.And in order to do that, you have to know who you are,
and be honest about who you are in order to translate who you are into what
you're doing. That's the major thing that an independent designer has over
a large company. But you can't be brutally honest about this
visionthat you have for a game, if you're in a company of 100
people, like your honesty matters not, you know, It doesn't matter at all. But when you're independent, and you know, you're in a
handful of people team, or even just two people or one, being honest is what
being an artist is about, and it's not only very respectable to see overall,
but it's also, I think it's not done enough in our industry, and I understand
that's because of business.But when you're independent, and you know,
you're in a handful of people team, or even just two people or one, being
honest is what being an artist is about, and it's not only very respectable to see
overall, but it's also, I think it's not done enough in our industry, and I
understand that's because of business. But not being manipulative and condescending with your work
is important. Knowing who you are is important. And allowing your flaws and eccentricities, if you will to
show in your work is honest, that's what makes art special.That's my No. 1. And hopefully, I won't
rattle on like that for every one,because we'll never get through it.Number 2 is realize that you're making art.
You, as an independent, have major advantages over an industry that invests
millions and millions of dollars in products. If they make one misstep and they
fail, you know, the whole company can crumble.If you play your cards right, which is,
hopefully, what I will explain in here, and how to play your cards right, a
failure shouldn't matter. In fact, you should be able to fail forward, and you
should be able to fail and learn and become a better designer overall, which is
an important piece of the puzzle. So I wouldn't change that either.Super Meat BoyNumber 3 - Design from the heart. I don't
see this enough, but if you just look at a lot of the games that didn't just go
viral and become successful. Look at, like the harder hitting constants, like
Spelunky or The Witness or whatever, andyou'll see a piece of that person. You'll see fears of the person who's
writing it. You could see the likes, no matter how weird they are. Adding that,
just adds a little bit of like, "oh that's different", and I'm seeing
that more in their work. And there's just certain things that, you know, it
allows you to understand who you are and allows the audience to understand who
you are. And I think it's important.The Witness No. 4 - take big risks. Experimentation and
risks are the key to growing as an artist. Don't be scared of failure. You
don't have much to lose, and you'll only learn from your mistakes. I mentioned
this before.If you are doing this right, I don't want
to skip too far ahead, but if you're doing this right, and you're just living
poor and you're surviving, and you're able to get the job done, maybe have a
part time job, or multiple part time jobs, and you know, you come home and
spend the night working on your indie project, or whatever else, you shouldn't
be caring so much about failure. You should be caring more about just getting
stuff out, and making sure that it's different, than other stuff that you're
seeing, because once again, the advantages of being an independent means you
can take risks, especially artistically, you know.I can guarantee that the next Grand Theft
Auto is not going to stray from its formula. That would mean suicide, right? I
mean, Nintendo takes those risks. But a lot of times, those risks will never be
taken by a large company.But as an independent, you can do something
way more ballsy than that. You can come out of completely left field and make
something totally new that may be inherently flawed, but the innovation factor
will make up for the flawed aspect. You know, maybe in the future, you'll be
able to take that and design an even better version of whatever it is or maybe
somebody else will. But that's what it's about. You want to be able to take
those kinds of big risks.So I'm not talking about "I'm going to
make an MMO that I spend 7,000 years on", and I'm sure I'll get to that. But
big innovative risks are important, especially when you're doing quick, small
games, which I'm sure I will also get to on here.No. 5, don't bite off more than you can
chew. Don't start an MMO. Your first fifteen games should be very small, little
bite-sized games. Your first fifteen games should be very small, little
bite-sized games. They shouldn't be this grand 3-year project.I think there's a lot more value in small
prototypes, Game Jam games, or just less than a year, you know, I want to say,
3-month projects.You don't want to snowball into this 4, 5,
6, 7-year project. It's going to get worse, and you're going to get in the
situation where you're like, oh, s***, I've been working on this for five
years.I need to add more, because people will
expect more.I've been talking about it for five years.
Don't do that. If you're just starting out, and you don't have a bunch of games
under your belt already. Don't attempt to make the next Cave Story, like keep
it super simple, like keep things easy peasy.6, practice. I see even some of the most
skilled designers, including myself, fall into this trap of not allowing
themselves to practice.And when I say practice, making prototypes,
making Game Jam games, making small bite-sized ideas. Even if it's sketching
down ideas to just flesh them out in your head a little bit, it's important to
make lots of little games because not only will you get into the flow of making
games even more, but you'll also be able to reference what's best in those
games.The majority of the games that have become
very successful were all based on Game Jam prototypes and flash games, games
that I made in a few weeks to a few months. If this prototype or if this Game
Jam game is just, oh it's haunting you, and it's the greatest thing ever, you
can go and make that game a full-fledged game later on.But while you're learning or when you get
into a rut, I think it's very important to practice, as much as you possibly
can. And I highly recommend it. Game Jam are where it’s at. There's lots of
them happening all over the place. Just throw yourself into it. Even if you're
not doing it officially, just take whatever the suggestion is, and you just run
with it. You'll learn a lot more by practicing, than by working on a game, the
same game, for years. Don't do that.No. 7 is, make the games you want to make. Yeah.
This is more of like ride the creative wave. There are sometimes where, even I
will get in situations where I'm working on something, and it seemed like a
good idea. And this also goes back to the business and honesty part.And I'll think to myself, people will buy
this. And then I realized I'm myself here, because the more I'm thinking about
that, the more I lean towards just doing something that other people would
want, not what I would want necessarily. And I know that it will suffer,
because I won't put myself as much into it, as it was something that was
personal that I was passionate about.You need to be able to ride that creative
wave through the project or you'll peter out or you'll burn out, or you know,
you'll explode, or it just won't happen. So it's really important to make sure
that whatever you're working on is something that you are super passionate
about and something that you're really, really feeling, so you can ride that
creative wave all the way through the project and not just shoot yourself in
the foot.No. 8 is standout. Man I still don't see a
lot of games that stand out. It's kind of a weird situation, and maybe, I could
be more specific about what that means. Make stuff that catches the eye, not
only visually, but mechanically. Make stuff that isn't like“ this game, but
cats”, isn't like this game, but you know, ninjas or dinosaurs. Try not to do
that.Make stuff that isn't like“ this game, but
cats”, isn't like this game, but you know, ninjas or dinosaurs. Try not to do
that. Try to do something that is unique. And if you are doing that, make sure
that the theme isn't just... So like I'm doing a game of cats, right? But it's
about mutating in selectively breeding cats. So I mean, to me, that stands out.I don't see anything else like that out
there. I try to make everything that I work on stand out. That's just super
important to me. I don't want it... I don't think you could pick up any of the
games that I've ever made, and be like, oh yeah, another company totally could
have made that. It's like, you think any company could have made The Binding of
Isaac, it's like there's absolutely no way. Like and it's not just me that can
do this, anybody can do this.You just got to push out of your creative
bounds, and push out of expectations, and be comfortable with taking risks, and
be comfortable with, you know, making mistakes, making missteps, and do
something ballsy and stand out.The Binding of IsaacNo. 9, think critically. 99% of game design
is critical thinking. It is true. And there's the marriage of like, art and
logic that go together. And it's usually like programmer and an artist. That's
what I do. This is the thing I do.Anyway, you just try to think about every
little thing, think about holes in your current design. Think about holes in
other game’s design. Think about how other games could be improved. Think about
why other games work. You'll learn a lot and you'll retain a lot from that.And I mean, I think it's really good to be
very critical of your own work. So the more critical of everything you are, the
more critical you can be towards your own stuff. As long as you're being honest
about it, you should be able to improve greatly as you go.No. 10, play games. This is one that I've
been in a rut with and I know I should be doing more of. Well, I guess it's,
specifically, video games. if you are making games, you need to be playing
games. You need to know where the bar is. You need to know where expectations
are. You need to be able to exceed expectations, and raise the bar.People misunderstand, they think that this
bar is just like impossible feat, that's been put there by, a
multimillion-dollar studio. Well, that's not true. Like you just go around the
bar and go up. There're ways around this playing field, and you can do that by,
you know, making something, somebody doesn't know that they want, making
something that you like.And the only way to really understand where
the bars are, understand where expectations lie, and also, fuel your own
creative juices, play games. I don't know how many times I played. I've
actually read something about a game, that sounded really cool, and it was not
remotely that, and I'm like, I've gotta make that idea, that I had that I
thought that other game was, because that sounds cool, and that in itself is, I
think, super inspiring. I personally have been playing more board games, and
more recently, pinball machines than video games these days. I don't know what
that is. I don't know if it's just. I'm sure it's just a rut.I'm in with video games these days, and I'm
sure other people, are right there with me, but it doesn't have to be video
games. It could be anything game related. It could be D&D. I mean, I play
D&D, Magic: The Gathering, pinball machines and board games forever.I wish I could play more video games, but
for whatever reason, I'm not doing that right now outside of my own. But I
should. And I'm guilty of it. and I will admit I don't know where the bar is. Am
I going to crash and burn? Hope not.Dissect existing formulas is No. 11. All
game genres have formulas. This is a really good one that I think that a lot of
independent designers are doing very well these days. I think you can see a lot
in a lot of successful games, like Slay the Spire, I mean, any kind of deck
building games. That's a dissected formula of Magic: The Gathering, like it's a
draft formula. There are so many rogue-like formulas that have been dissected
and rejiggered, back into Spelunky and Binding of Isaac, and you know, 1,000
others.Dissecting existing formulas is very
important as a designer, because you could make “Football 2.” It is feasible,
you just have to take Football 1, and turn it into a rogue like. You know what
I mean? Yes. You can dissect the genres, mash genres together, and you can kind
of figure out why the formulas work and how they could work together, what you
would do to innovate off an existing genre.You know that it's hard to find a new genre,
right? But the only way we're going to get there is by leapfrogging off
existing genres. You know, you strip something apart, you take the rules. You
take rules away, you add some rules, you know. It becomes a different game.So dissecting existing formulas is not only
good for cool game design, for prototyping and for whatever else, but it also
stimulates your mind. It keeps you on your toes. It lets you understand, why
things work and why things don't. So it should be done, and I recommend it.The End is NighNo. 12 is, grow up. What did I mean by
this? What did I mean by this? It says “chances are you're not a kid anymore,
so start making more adult games.” I think for the most part, this is
happening. I think a lot of people are making games for adults and not so much
just kids.I think, for that, this climate has changed
a lot in the past 13 years and I think there's a wide range of games for
everybody for all ages, probably, more adult games than there were then. So
yeah, but I still recommend it. I would still love to see, you know, more
Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombies.No. 13 is, go outside. This is important. I
think I even said it was. It says the world outside your room is important. Do
not stay inside and work all day.Don't. It's horribly unhealthy. Mentally,
it will send you into a total downward spiral and depression, and creatively,
it will stunt you. You know, you need to experience life outside of this. Going
outside, forcing yourself outside, as I should say, to do other things and
experience life is not only healthy, but it will inspire you, it will make you
realize something.Like basically, what people say about, you
know, when you're trying to figure out something out - get up, walk around.
It's that sort of thing, too. Like go walk, go take a walk outside, go interact
with random people, you know. Go hang out with your friends, just anything
that's not sitting at a computer, because you're not going to find the answer
behind there. You know, the idea is not going to come to you, you know, popping
veins out of your forehead, staring at a computer screen all day. You got to go
out there, relax, have fun, get away from work in order for work to come to you
sometimes.14 is stay balanced. Many designers are
prone to depression and mental disorders. Take care of your brain and yourself.
Yeah. I think this is more true now than it ever has been. We have lost so many
designers over the years and it's important to talk to people. Talk to people. Know
your limits.And going outside, hang out with your
friends, making friends, forcing yourself to make friends, forcing yourself to
talk to people, forcing yourself to not just be typing, you know, those kinds
of social interactions, may seem like they're filling that bar up, but they're
not. You've got to actually interact with real people in real life in order to
fill it back up. And you know, there's no harm in talking to somebody. If you
need to talk to somebody, and there's no harm in taking medication if you need
it, or shame, I should say. I wish more people did.No. 15 is stay grounded. No matter how good
you think you are, there will always be somebody better. Be humble. I think
people get this now. There are so many, what is it like, on the average, 32
games come out on Steam every day? Yeah. I think everybody is staying grounded
at this point. Everybody's getting a piece of that humble pie. Yeah, but it's
good, not to get ahead of yourself. But I don't think many people are doing
that now.Back in 2009, when there were like, 28 of
us, it was easy for somebody to get a big ego and think they were the shit and
they could do no wrong. But you know, in case you're that type of person, just
realize there's always somebody better, and you will hurt yourself more. Assuming
that you know better than whoever you're talking to, because you probably have
something to learn from whoever you're speaking to, no matter who they are and
what their background is.No. 16 is, be open to feedback. This is a
big one, and this is something that is, you know, I think is just the almost
stereotype of a game designer's folly at this point in time.Back in the day on Newgrounds, I used to
upload a video game and it would just say, "You suck. You suck" over
and over. The game sucks. Control sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. And
you'd read through it all. And eventually, you'd get to the point. There was a
point to “your game sucks, and it was
there, you know, it didn't control too well. And it's like, oh. It's like I
could just write this all off as like “you guys are jealous assholes who wish
you could be making this game." Or “you don't know what you're talking
about, you don't have the experience I do."But the reality was, I knew that if there's
a negative comment and there's another negative comment and there's something
between those two that has something to do with controls that maybe I should be
doing something, maybe I should be looking at what I'm doing and trying to read
between the lines, and figure out exactly what is being said.Super Meat BoyI'll give you a tip. This is a protip here
that I learned over the years, and this is a technique that John Blow also
uses.If you are not prototyping, if you are
testing your game on a group of people, do not say you want feedback, though. Don't
tell them you want feedback. What you do is you watch them play your game and
you say nothing. You watch it with your notepad and you see what they don't
understand and you figure out why.If at the end, they want to say something
or you want to ask specific questions about what didn’t you understand about
that, how come you didn't do that, what didn’t you do. The moment you do ask
for feedback, somebody's going to always feel like they need to. It's a
request, right? So they're going to find something, they're going to move to
it, and they're just going to say it.My recommendation is not to do that. I
think it's a foolproof plan. Sit somebody in front of your game, let them play
it, and then just watch. Do that with as many people as you possibly can. You
will learn an astounding amount about your game and why it doesn't work and how
to improve. I do it weekly currently with Mew-Genics. It has been so helpful.Mew-Genics NO.17 Work with people. People are nice. People
are good at things that you aren't. Working with others is important. There's a
lot of designers out there who want to do it all. Don't. You know, there's no
reason to. It's also less lonely when you're working with somebody else. You
can commiserate together. It's a cool little fun, friendly interaction to have.
And you will learn from the experiences of the other person what they bring to
the table.It's a cool little fun, friendly interaction
to have. And you will learn from the experiences of the other person what they
bring to the table. And I highly recommend you do that. I think most people
will work together these days, though. I think that was definitely like more of
an old-school, I want to do it all myself type.No. 18 is network. Talk to other designers,
talk to fans, talk to media about what you're doing. You might gain some
perspective on how others view your work.Like some of the most significant
opportunities I've ever had in my life came from just the fact that I was nice
to somebody else. It's like, oh. Or like, okay, perfect example. Cliff
Bleszinski, Bought one of my CDs once, it was a compilation disk of all of my
work in like 2007, 2008. He bought it. And I think he just mentioned it in an
interview or something, and I was like, what？And I was like, okay. This guy knows who I
am. I can talk to him. And I emailed him. And I was like, thank you so much
for, you know, mentioning my work and it’s so awesome that you bought my CD. If
you know anybody, I'd love to make a console game. If you know anybody at any
company, that would be down with an indie game and whatever else, feel free to
share. And he's like, oh yeah, I know this guy who knows you and I think he'd
love to work with you.So it was just that little bit and piece,
just these crossing paths and whatever else, and you'd be surprised. And if I
never reached out to Cliff after he had mentioned that, there would have been
no opportunity there. But the fact that I did, you know, was hugely significant
in my future. So you'd be surprised, just talk to people as much as possible,
and then it also goes into this.No. 19, which is be excited about your
work. When you're talking to the media, when you're talking to anybody, other
designers and whatever else, if you can't have a smile on your face when you
are explaining what your game is and how cool it is, I'm not going to want to
play your game.Like you should be the most excited. It
should fill you with joy to be like, Oh my god, this game that I'm working on
right now, yes, it's grueling. Oh, my god, I'm working my ass off. It's killing
me, but I love it. I can't stop playing it. I can't stop talking about it. You
can't expect other people to be excited about something you're not excited
about.And I know a lot of people who are just
like, either they're embarrassed, because they don't want to be, you know, they
feel like it's self-serving, to be excited about something that they're working
on and talk about it in high regard or maybe they're just like over it and it
feels like work.But I think being excited about your work,
especially when talking to the press or other designers, you got to show that
you care. And being excited about your work is important. I guess it goes hand-in-hand with actually,
being excited about your work which, you know, I think at this point, I've kind
of pushed you down to this point. You should be only working on the games that
you're excited to work about.If you're independent, you should not be
just working. It should be something that you love. It should be something that
you are excited about. It should be something that you are excited about. I
look forward to waking up and coming down here and working on Mew-Genics. It's
the truth. I love working on it, and I'm excited about what I'm working on
tomorrow. That's cool. You should be, too, and you should try to find the
things that you're that excited about, that you want to wake up, that haunt you
at night, keep you up, you got to write stuff down, so you can remember the
next morning or whatever.Join communities is No. 20. I am sure that
there're many communities out there. Back in the day, there were handful of
them. I don't know what they are anymore. I'm not the guy to ask. I'm old. I'm
old and they don't want me around anymore.But back in the day, the communities that
was, you know, TIGSource and Newgrounds.com were two communities that I
frequented, and I think that they were, they give you, they make you feel like
you're not doing something for no reason. You know, they make you feel like,
you know, you're part of this collective. You get to bounce ideas off each
other, and you get to network, you get to make friends. you get to make
colleagues, you know, you get to be excited about your work and talk about it. And
dissect the formulas that they have placed out into their community. It all
goes hand in hand. You need to go into these communities and say, hey, look at
this dumb crap I'm working on. I'm really excited about it.FingeredNo. 21 is learn a little about business. Business
sucks. It does. It sucks. Now, I'm sure there's some people out there who are
excited about business and just love the idea of just making money. And that's
it. That's the end game for all this stuff. But a lot of people, myself
included, the business aspect of things sucks. And I was always forced into
this position，whenever I was working with somebody
else, because I guess I was the more social.I don't know. But it's important to know a
little about business, so you don't get fooled, because people will fool you. It's
the truth. They will totally screw you over and you won't know what's going on.
You will get the shittiest deal and they will laugh behind your back as they
leave.So it's good to know what's going on. You
want to know what the average percentage is that you should be getting from,
you know, x, y, z. You want to know of this retail deal: Am I getting a
percentage of net? Am I getting a percentage of gross, you know? Is this after
this? And you know, how much money is coming out before I get paid?And I learned. I got screwed over a few
times. I learned from that. But it would have been nice to have somebody tell
me, like make sure you get that money upfront, because you're never going to
see a dime. You know, because 20% sounds like a lot, except you're never going
to get it, because the overhead is a made-up number that goes on forever.No. 22 is don't worry about being poor. This
might have changed a bit, because people are more poor now than they were
before. I grew up poor. I was very poor until 2010, poverty line. Make ends
meet, you know. Don't worry about being this money-making situation. Be okay
with the fact that you're going to just, hopefully, just get by.Few people are going to buy your game. Don't
invest everything in this one thing that you're doing, because, you know,
there's a high probability, It's just not going to pay off in the way that you
assume. So I guess what I'm saying is if you're doing this independent artist
life, you're probably going to be working another job. You probably may be
doing part time work. Probably, maybe you're doing some side work, like
programming work for other people, or art.You know, I did a bunch of illustrations
and stuff, commissions and stuff like that. I did that all the way until 2010,
until Super Meat Boy came out. That's what I was doing to supplement my income.
And then I was being poor and working on projects obsessively all night long
with the rest of the time, whatever rest of the time I had, ignoring my wife.Don't worry about it. You will figure it
out. Don't make this game that you're working on be this thing that's like your
first and foremost financial. you know, this is the game that's going to make
me all this money and it's going to be super profitable, because it's not. But
if you made like 10, 15 of these, and you made a name for yourself, and you
built this fanbase over time, you will see money. It took me ten years to make
money off of my work. Period.And if you stick it out and keep doing what
you're doing, and you make a name for yourself, and you stand out and you
network, you are excited about your work, and you join the communities, and
you're honest and you make good games, because you're so critical of your own
work, and you're so analytical about everything, eventually, you will make
something great. And hopefully, that thing will make some money, and then
you'll fund your next project, hopefully, be even greater. And you just kind of
go from there.But don't worry about it now. Don't worry
about being poor, because you're going to be poor. You know, you're an artist. It
just goes with this territory.
And then there's No. 23, which is try to
make some money. You know, you don't want to be poor forever. You don't want to
be super poor. You don't want to have your internet cut out. You don't want
that. So you need to make some amount of money.I knew the person who made Celeste, and I
will brag about this. And they said, I don't know. I feel worried about the
money. Well, you have to make some money. I will help you get a sponsorship. I'll
hook you up the right person and I'll get you sponsorship and then they made a
game called MoneySeize, which was on topic to make you know, about making
money, and then Give up, Robot. And Give up Robot 2 and all those things got
sponsored, and eventually, funded, you know, TowerFall and Celeste in the
future.You've got to try to hustle a little bit. It
goes with the learning a little bit about business. But you need to make some
amount of money. You know, selling your workcan be weird, difficult, but you have to do something to make some
amount of money off your work.CelesteNo. 24, which is the final, the final of
the manifesto is have fun. If you're not having fun, then quit. You only live
once. There's no reason to keep doing something if it doesn't make you happy. And
it is 100% true and I stand by it.That was, I think, when I put this stuff,
that was the one that people hated the most, because I think they were so
unhappy. It's just like not having fun, because they hate what they're doing,
and it's not to say that. It's just like not having fun, because they hate what
they're doing, and it's not to say that. So at a certain point in your project,
it's going to feel like work. I go through these, you know, hills and valleys
of like, oh, this is so great. And then it's just like, oh, now it's just work
to get back up this hill again. Oh, it's great, and then it's, you know, that's
going to happen.And I'm not talking about that. It's like,
sometimes, working isn't that fun at all. But if you feel like you're
begrudgingly working, if you feel like, it's like, oh yeah, I got to come up
with another game,so I can make another dollar. You know, I got to figure out
what it is, and, oh, like, you know, I'm going to sit down and work and blah,
blah. Like you're not doing something that you enjoy and you shouldn't be,
especially as an artist.If you're feeling that drag, and it's not
making you happy, you got to try something else, you know. You don't have to
leave the industry, but you got to try something different, because you're just
going to drop into a pit. And then having fun making games will make your game
better and it is 100% fact. You know, it will show, you have fun making that
game will show in your game.And that's it. That's my 24 tips, my dos
and don'ts manifesto for independent game designers and artists. And for the
most part, I think, it pretty much stands up. I could probably shorten this
down to 10 bullet points, but that's it.