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Good Enough

Welcome Mikey Neumann to WWdN! He’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. Check out more of Mikey’s work on his YouTube show, Movies with Mikey, his podcast with Wil Wheaton, TV Crimes, or just play any of the Borderlands games. He’s the genuine, shiningest best.

I like the word ‘hustle’ quite a lot. Even given the cheery, soft, non-committal nature of the consonants in the word, I like everything it represents about life. I have a lot of hustle. You may even remember me from an article I wrote on The Mary Sue not too long ago, in which I came out as an asexual, and how that pertains to the amount of work I generate. While I wouldn’t classify myself as aromantic (a word my spellcheck wants to change to aromatic,) so, regardless of my lingering musk, I pretty much stay out of the dating pool. Whether time or meeting the right person will change that remains to be seen. But for the current future, my relationships are to my friends and to my work, and all things being equal, oftentimes I create relationships that are one in the same. I create friendships that inevitably lead to working together down the line.

Or destroy said friendships. You know, it’s all a matter of perspective.

That sounds entirely too callous, but hopefully you understand my meaning. I love to entertain people. I’ve been doing it my entire life.

A lot of people ask me in their gentlest hypothetical-person-way, “Michael, how the hell do you find time to make so much stuff with a full-time job?” It’s really quite simple: you either make the time, or you don’t. I’m not attempting to nuzzle the very cockles of the frigid prison I call a heart, but I am illustrating my point as a means to say: you’re good the way you are and I’m good the way I am. I have no pets, no spouse, no children, and ostensibly, I come home every day to an empty house. I really don’t know anyone else that lives their life in such a way. I mean, most people in my position at least get a cat (the lowest maintenance of the pet world, though, certainly the dickishiest /dik-ish-ee-ust/ adj. 1. The categorically-highest level of being a dick one can achieve).

It also doesn’t hurt that I go to work every day to make videogames, many of which people run to as a means to escape when they come home from a job they find less fulfilling by a factor of ten or more. I make videogames. My heart is effulgent when I come home on most days. And yes, before you say it, I am the luckiest motherfucker this side of the [geographical landmark of your choosing that illustrates your point].

This is the turning into the longest not-humble brag of all time.

Sigh.

Okay.

Let’s start over.

Hello, my name is Mikey. All I care about in the world is spreading joy and making your day better than it was before I came into it. It’s an imperfect, and oftentimes, lonely existence that is not unlike “chasing the dragon,” so to speak. I am in a constant state of finding the next high, making the next thing, and pushing myself to the next good enough piece of art, whether music, video, game, or written medium.

And that’s my secret.

Do not be perfect. Perfect will kill you.

One-hundred-percent of my success can be attributed to knowing when to say, “this is good enough,” and move on. Randy Pitchford, my boss, confidant, and friend, taught me about this thing called, “The Asymptote of ‘Good Enough’.” It imagines a graph where the x-axis is time spent and the y-axis is entertainment you can offer an audience (this isn’t exactly his words, I’m paraphrasing in my own.) In the beginning, the effort you put in has an almost sky-rocketing effect on the entertainment you can offer an audience, but as you begin to approach a rough level of polish, the amount an audience can pull from it begins to slow. You can apply this to anything. If I write a joke, there are a non-binary amount of laughs I can pull from a given audience, but there is also a point where I should probably just write more jokes. Do you want to see a standup comic tell The Greatest Joke Ever Told or do you want to see ten-to-twenty really funny jokes? And with one very important twist, I think that’s the crux of everything I do. When writing these ten-to-twenty jokes, come at it from an angle no one will ever expect.

If you’re offering something fresh, you don’t have to be perfect.

I remember the first time I ever made a videogame trailer. It was for Borderlands 1. Now, bear in mind, I had never made a videogame trailer before and, all things being equal, I was incredibly naïve. But, at this time, Borderlands was the underdog. We were this plucky, weird little thing that no one was really talking about. Which was in my (and our) favor. In what I recall was four to five days, I had what you see here:

That is just one of the places that trailer exists, and it has a million views. Hell, I found a Youtube video that was just “borderlands trailer song no heaven” and it had 700,000 views. Looking back at that trailer, all I see is imperfection. That trailer is the asymptote of Hot. Garbage. But so many of the things in that trailer came to define the brand, however inadvertently. The splattered paint, the messaging joking along with an audience, dancing Claptrap, the “Bazillions of guns” thing—it’s sort of amazing how much of this has survived through time.

And, though, it was not the next trailer I made, the Borderlands 2 “Doomsday” trailer was the natural evolution of all of this imperfection. Take everything I learned and crank it up to a bazillion (I see what I did there). The Doomsday trailer was a high watermark for my career as a filmmaker, and yeah, I mean that as it sounds. Part of what I was doing with the Borderlands marketing in my purview in charge of was pretty simple: make a piece of entertainment, don’t just sell the game. If you look out over the grand collection of Borderlands marketing on the internet, our goal was to entertain you, not market your face off. Some people are fans of Borderlands because all they’ve ever seen is the trailers and they got enough entertainment out of them to cosplay the characters, having never played the games. To some, this might somewhat ludicrous, but I think it’s a justification for how much leeway we had as a relatively small independent studio to be creative in how we approached communicating with the customer (thanks in large part to our publisher 2K Games being awesome and entirely too patient with me and how I work). This extended into the Claptrap webshow and various other things, and literally none of this would have been possible without the neck-breaking work from my cherished colleagues Richard Jessup, Brian Thomas, and Mark Petty.

And apologies if any of that felt like I was trying to market Borderlands to you. That was not my intent. I just thought that the trailer illustrated what I’m talking about.

Be creative.

Be valuable.

Spread joy for no other reason than to spread it.

Leave the world a better place than the one you woke up into this morning.

You can see this in every aspect of my work, in every medium, in every step I take in my walk through life. Be joyous and bring joy to others because, I’m gonna be honest here, I too struggle with depression a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I think it’s pretty common among creatives and for me, making stuff really gets me out of that funk.

When I started the podcast with Wil (in between hyperventilating that this was a real thing,) it was a step in a different direction. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of the opposite of my movie show, because a) we are tearing things down and b) it’s so much less constructed than what I’m used to making. So I did the obvious thing: when editing it, I put the construction back into it, I put the me back into it, and the negativity in the show was at the expense of ourselves, not the shows. We’re actually big fans of (the majority) of the shows we’re talking about (the Family Ties episode was mostly just a discussion about how great the show is,) and if you can’t hear the sheer joy we have in talking and joking with other, you should pencil in an appointment with the ear doctor. Every little thing that didn’t quite sit comfortable with me, I found a way to turn into a strength for the podcast. There’s no secret that Wil Wheaton is a man who loves his swear words. Being totally honest, sometimes that felt like we were punching down a little bit, so I did what any logical human being would do: I bought the entire Hannah Barbara sound effects library and I started to bleep him with zonks, sproings, and bloops from Magilla Gorilla, Wacky Races, Sealab 2020, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, etc. Suddenly, everything was beautiful. Suddenly, every thing was stupid and hilarious. Suddenly, I started swearing like a sailor, because every time we did, it was an engorged disaster of aural pleasure.

After we did the last episode, something kind of clicked for me. Obviously, we’re both busy so it’s not as frequent as both of us would like, but I realized, we make the show when we need it. It’s a crutch I rely on in my life if I’m feeling a little down, or he’s feeling a little down. One of us will post on Basecamp, like, hey, it’s about time for another episode, isn’t it? Wil told me early on, “I don’t care if the only people listening to this show are you and me,” and I remember being like, “I hope that’s not the case.” I only just last month understood what that really meant. If there’s a weight on my shoulders that I just can’t shake, I tell you what, taking a big frosty dump on Baywatch Nights will clear that right up. I’m making this show to give joy to me. Now, obviously not everyone can take care of themselves mentally by making a podcast with Wil, but I think everyone has the capacity to love themselves by making something they care about and not giving a single iota of a shit if anyone else loves it too.

Isn’t that what, deep down, what we all want: the capacity to be self-reliant and poised stringently enough to afford ourselves the mental stability to carry on?

That’s why I hustle.

That’s why I am always moving forward, creating things just good enough to move on to the next thing and keep going; keep fighting, keep conquering the hills in the battles that plague us on a daily basis. You, person reading this right now, are mightier than you think. You, friend that I may not have met yet, are good enough.

Because who wants to be perfect?

I sure don’t.

I’m On A Continent (2016 Version)

Welcome our guest authors to WWdN! They’re sharing special guest posts with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. They’re the genuine best.

The bad news, for those of us not on a boat — a specific, particular boat — is that Wil Wheaton is on a specific, particular boat for the next week and we are not.

The good news, for those of here within sight and reach of Wil Wheaton dot Net (WWdN), is that Wil Wheaton saw it fit to name a sterling roster of guest writers to share unique material with us all this week. I won’t spoil who’s coming by and when, but trust me: We’re in a for a whole slew of treats.

My name is Will (note the second L) Hindmarch. I’m around just to help this week as an array of great artists and authors share their works with us. Please welcome these guests with the generous camaraderie that WWdN is known for and maybe click a few links in their intros when the time comes? You’re going to find a lot to like through the magic technology of hyperlinks, methinks.

We — you, me, all of us — here in Wil Wheaton’s lingering aura, have one, prime directive this week: Don’t be a dick.

Okay? Ready? Here goes.

I’m on a boat (2016 version)

I’m about to spend the next seven days and twenty-two romantic nights on a boat with about a thousand nerds, and another thousand muggles who won’t know what the hell is going on all around them.

947760While I’m gone, I don’t plan to get online at all, because boat internet is expensive and slow, and taking a week off from being online is probably good for my mental health. If I’m lucky, I’ll come home with a finished draft of at least one story.

But while I’m away, I’ve lined up some really fantastic guest bloggers to write stuff and share creative things here. It’s probably the best team of interesting people I’ve ever been able to convince to come write here, and I’m really excited to get back from my trip and read what they’ve written.

So please welcome them when they introduce themselves, and don’t forget to be awesome while I’m gone (and all the time, really).

Guest Post by Will Hindmarch: Here’s to Wil Wheaton

Will Hindmarch just posted a thing here on WWdN earlier today and the bio on that post is pretty much still accurate.

On behalf of Stephen, Ryan, and Shane, I’d like to thank Wil Wheaton for having us at the blog this week. None of us wrote as much as we meant to (we have our reasons), but we got to talk on email about all the things that can get in the way of writing. Cheers, friends.

At the same time, thank you, WWdN readers, for sharing your time with us this week. We appreciate it.

And, Wil? When next I’m in LA, can I ring the RFB bell?

Guest Post by Will Hindmarch: Inspiration

Will Hindmarch is a freelance writer, game designer, and narrative designer. He co-founded Gameplaywright Press, assistant directs the Shared Worlds writing camp, and is a producer of Story Club South Side in Chicago.

Here’s the task they before me: Run a casual D&D game over one lunch break per week. A mere 60-70 minutes of play per week with a cast of more than ten player characters rotating in and out? Teach the new edition of the game and a world to explore in that limited time? Make an experience that’s coherent and compelling even for players who might take a few weeks off between sessions?

Sounds like a fun challenge!

The game is set in a fantastical city that was under quarantine for a strange disease. But sometime during its period of isolation … everyone inside the city disappeared. As a result, there are just two humans left in the world: a barbarian and a paladin, both of them PCs.

What makes this one difficult—and I’m a little surprised by this—isn’t crafting a compelling a world for casual and intermittent players; I’ve done that lots. It isn’t managing the dramaturgy for ten PCs; I’ve done that before. It isn’t even conveying the world through brief bits of text to minimize the game’s footprint on the lives of the players; that’s an inspiring challenge. No, it turns out the trick is juggling my own inspirations.

This is something I struggle with sometimes. I pretty carefully control what sort of inputs I take in—what shows I watch and when, what books I read and when, what games I play and when—not only to manage my time, but to influence what influences me. When I was writing my story about the white deer, for PleasureTown, for example, I put together an atmospheric playlist and read some Walt Whitman to get me in the right sort of place. (I also mined a bunch of details from my own childhood.)

When I’m writing about the faux-Elizabethan political intrigue in the City on the Saturnine for my stealth-adventure RPG, called Dark, I try to take in a diverse array of material but I also worry about sparking ideas that I won’t be able to work on for months. If I can’t put space-alien horrors into my fantastical Renaissance, I try not to consume much about space aliens.

Or I tried.

Too many great stories, too many glittering inspirations, move in my peripheral vision, all the time! How can I watch True Detective or Automata when they’ll make me want to work on projects that aren’t scheduled until later in the year? I don’t want good ideas being misspent on the wrong projects!

That right there is where I am a moron. As if creating something good diminishes some other thing that is good. What is that?

For me, at least, the truth is that inspiration and action are all about the collision of ideas in unexpected intersections. Withholding a good idea—”saving” it—is so often folly. Ideas aren’t worth much. Work has value. The writing has value. The application and implementation of an idea—that’s what’s valuable.

If I apply some influential idea to a project and it doesn’t stick, I’ve still got the idea.

If I apply an influential idea to a project and it doesn’t do everything I wanted, but it does something, that’s a kind of progress on the project, and I’ve still got the idea.

If I apply an influential idea to a project and it changes the project, that’s either an enrichment or an option to keep or reject—which is my job as the writer. And I’ve still got the idea.

Ideas aren’t currency. They aren’t electricity. They’re knowledge. They’re like lessons. We don’t spend a lesson to act on it. That’s why lessons are precious.

Ideas get conjured at the crossroads of information, where two notions collide and inspire, throwing light and shadows on the nearby buildings, and in the aftermath … there’s no wreckage. The notions survive and their fusion creates a new idea. That’s the whole point! This is a creative process … not a destructive one.

I’ve always kept notebooks. Lots of notebooks. Each major project gets its own book and certain themes of potential projects—games, novels, scripts—get notebooks, too. That’s where ideas live.

To my surprise, what sparked my realization and reminded me how to manage the influences on my own imagination, was taking an hour off to play some Destiny. The grand, enthusiastic melange of epic fantasy and sci-fi in the Destiny universe  reminded me that my job isn’t to recreate any one genre by following customs and redecorating a well-trod space, but to make the thing I’m making as good as it can be.

Destiny’s little doses of lore—either in the Grimoire or in the text of bounties and quests and items—combine to convey a robust and wonderfully strange world. We’re still early in the life of Destiny’s story, I’m sure, yet those bite-sized doses of fictional data fascinate me. (Destiny depicts a world that I am this close to writing fanfic for—something about the way dust drifts through the city beneath the Traveler, the glint of metal on the lunar surface, the hints of everyday heroism—so write me, Bungie, if you want great fiction set in the Destiny galaxy.)

In my case, my goal is to make each 60-minute D&D session an exciting episode of play. That comes first.  And that means the players and their characters are the priority. I knew all that … but I’d also sort of forgotten it, you know? My desire to impress these players got in the way of how much I love to inspire them.