The Stoke of Genius

Another idea I'm haunted by is the stroke of genius, the feeling that there is a wholly unique approach to games that is waiting out there to be happened upon, some utterly elegant, appealing idea, that is just out of reach. I get so excited about looking for it sometimes, but so far I've come up empty.

On a few occaisions, I've had the experience where I'm sleeping, and in my dreams something really good will happen, maybe I'll come into some great sum of money. And while I'm still dreaming, it occurs to me in this vague way that I can't "keep" the money, that its not real. I'm filled this vague, deep sense of loss that I suspect can only be felt by the sleeping mind, my dream's existential crisis, I suppose. And after that flash of recognition, fevered dream logic frantically bargains with reality, thinking there must be some way, and then the whole thing folds in on itself and I wake up, always a tiny bit disappointed that my boon didn't find its way through with me. Its sort of like that when I think way outside convention, looking for that overlooked gem of an idea: this excitement, and then sense of something slipping through my fingers.

I have a game that I respect a lot, and its not really one you'd necessarily expect. Apples to Apples is not a perfect game, and its something of a crutch when the group gets big, and we've played it to death, and the gameplay is shallow in various ways and so on. But it is such a simple idea, it is so utterly clean, and it has no precedent that I'm aware of in games. Its such a pure example of emergent gameplay, where the actual mechanics are absolutely tiny, but the discussions and repercussions of each choice are where the fun lives.

On some level, maybe I get frustrated trying to carve out a game the right way, which is really difficult, and I just hope for that flash of inspiration to free me from my "lack of having even a single game design I'm really happy with under my belt". Its like summing the numbers from one to one-thousand by hand, knowing in the back of your mind that there must be a formula that will let you find the answer in 15 seconds.

And I don't even want commercial success, just something satisfying. I think maybe the answer at the tip of my brain still has something to do with drawing, or maybe it was physical-levels, or maybe... but its always too quick to grab, too smooth to hold, as Kevin Drew says, tbtf, and so on until morning.