The Creative Process #44 - The Self-Made Binds

The joke goes: "Computer science is the study of self-made problems." My personal approach to creativity follows a similar philosophy. Total creative freedom is horrendous – from the agony of the empty page to the flaming wreckage of a film made by a director who could not be told "No". While obstacles, structure and requirements are a friction to creative output, they can yield more interesting solutions than pieces without that friction. Some creators find a set of constraints that they are happy to work in, and turn that into a well-oiled chute of content. I think I have a lot more to explore, so I want to keep trying new constraints for myself and see what fits and what produces the best outcomes.

I'm currently in the early stages of selecting a major project to dedicate myself to. I've got a few options and they all have their benefits and drawbacks. I've tried pitching them all to various people to help me choose, and either none of them particularly excites them, or all of them do, which is roughly the same result for me. People have liked the titles at least, so I don't need to work on that.

I want to discuss the constraints I've imposed on these projects so you can see how I'm exploring the space.

The Submariner and Void Space Pirate Radio

A quick reminder of these projects:

• The Submariner is a long submarine journey back home to your lover after spending time on a remote island. You're mostly confined to the submarine, but learn about the craft, its captain, crew and other passengers through dynamic, systemic interactions.
• In Void Space Pirate Radio you wake up midway through a long interstellar journey while the rest of the crew is in hyper-sleep. Your duty is to wake up in case of emergency, and here you have one: the ship is damaged and stranded very far from anywhere recognisable. You have to make choices alone that will mean life or death for the entire ship.

Submarines are the spaceships of the ocean, so there is a lot to be shared between these two projects. Both projects are intended to be interactive fiction, and feel like they need an engine more complicated than Twine, but less complicated than a parser. I imagine something storylet-based like Fallen London, but in a way that I might need to make the system from scratch.

I'm currently deep into a technical project at work, so hoisting another technical project at home feels risky. This is an arbitrary constraint, but one I know is important for mental and project health.

Emerson Sprylock Adventures

This project grew out of my love for the Lone Wolf adventure gamebook series by Joe Dever. I'd like to make my own fantasy gamebooks with a consistent main character.

I wouldn't make the same sort of books as Dever, though. As an RPG player I'm thoroughly tired of war as a narrative driver. I understand that it makes it easy to drop into action, but I just find it so boring and superficial. I want to explore fantasy that does something more.

Emerson Sprylock as a character is somewhere between Henry Cavill's Sherlock Holmes from the Enola Holmes movies and Lupin III. A crafty man, agile of mind and body. Perhaps slippery with his morals, but thoroughly fair.

Importantly, Emerson wants to be a self-made man. Contrast with Lone Wolf who is a blank slate that the gods and elite men have deemed The Chosen One. Emerson wants none of that. I'm tickled by the idea of Emerson first fighting to meet the potential he hopes he has, and once he's there he needs to fight everyone else's expectation that he can be the champion of their particular cause. Emerson refuses their call to action and vehemently denies their belief in destiny altogether. Refusing the blessings and dodging the machinations of the Gods seems like a hilarious and bountiful source of character.

To that end, I want Emerson's adventures to be clever and tricky. I'd rather the player out-think an enemy than out-biff them. I struggle to see how to adapt this to the gamebook format, although replayability helps this idea immensely by making you smart by experience that you pretend is reflex. I have endless ideas for heists and rivals and subterfuge and adventure.

Other than my inexperience at the gamebook format, my main issue is the constraints imposed on the player-character connection for adventures mostly about outwitting foes. Gamebook characters are inherently reactive, and you want to at least pretend Emerson is a few steps ahead of the game. It would be a complex game of setting up expectations and subverting them, in a branching narrative no less. It seems hard, so I probably should do it.

The Death of Alan Watts

How do you solve a murder mystery when there's no murder?
This project has you as a San Francisco cop in the early 1970s who has been lumped with investigating the mildly odd and sudden death of local guru, rascal and minor celebrity Alan Watts. This was a real person whose death had some peculiar angles to it; for example, he was cremated on the beach by local Buddhists the very morning of his passing, before an independent medical examination was done. In any other story this would be ripe fodder for a conspiracy, but it's not where I want to go.

Alan Watts is an intriguing man – part Zen guru, part academic, part showman. He teaches truth not through dry sermons, but via enchanting discussions full of life and humour. His private life (such that it was) was shocking for those following his rascal philosopher act. He was a womaniser and an alcoholic. He experimented with drugs and intersected with a lot of counter-culture celebrities.

His death has been captured biographically by various friends, relatives, philosophers and poets. I've been enjoying reading about his life and death, and all the conundrums therein. Death was an important philosophical topic for Watts, and the reality of it would hit the people around him in very different ways. I want to use those to explore the ideas of death, life, belief, relationships, legacy and all that jazz.

To bring it back to the game, I essentially have a murder mystery without a murder. Sure, you can frame it like any detective game and interview witnesses, explore locations and consider evidence, but how do you finish it? How does a player move towards and reach a conclusion? What's the game loop? How can I engage a player with the ideas? What is the point of the player?

The historical and philosophical context comes with a whole bundle of constraints, some of which I'm keen to embrace. Historical accuracy is very tough to deal with, and ultimately does not make engaging narrative, so I'm bent towards fictionalising details for convenience. Overall the complexity of the project hits me in that these constraints impose huge challenges, and the freedoms impose similar huge challenges. The hard version of this is far more intriguing than going the easy way, but then the project is, well, hard.

Canopic Jar

The day has come and the pharaoh has died. His cult begin the sacred rituals of preparing his body and soul for the afterlife. Except that an unfortunate accident takes out the entire senior priesthood, leaving you – the lazy, hapless acolyte – to complete the ritual.

I imagine this game as body horror farce/slapstick. The mummification process is rather gnarly, especially for someone untrained, and is thus ripe for comedy.

Comedy is hard, especially in a game if the player has a lot of agency. Since the ritual is very fiddly and mechanical, I feel like this suits some form of parser game. So this is about the hardest form of comedy.

The one saving grace of this project is I think it's got a very limited scope. A single room, a single setup, not too many dynamics... It might be a nice EctoComp entry.

In a similar-but-different way to The Death of Alan Watts, the historical reading I've been doing is fascinating, but almost too restrictive if I am faithful to reality. Which pharaoh? What era? What technology was available? What traditions were being followed?

The size and format of this project lend it to a major goal for my new projects: beta-test as much as possible. I can't set up a skeletal gameplay loop, because the rising chaos is the point of the game, so you more-or-less need the entire thing done before you can show anyone. But once it's ready, it needs to be tested within an inch of its life.

Apart from the question of historical verisimilitude, this project has the least number of self-imposed creative constraints. Which is good, because comedy is hard enough.

Self-Bindings

A consistent component of these projects is I want to try things that are different, difficult and outside of my comfort level. It reminds me of the gym routines my trainer gives me — my gut reaction is that this set is probably beyond my abilities, but with the right discipline and form, it is not only possible but ends up being essential for me later on.

I've also been thinking about these newsletters and the ideas of change and structure. For the most part I know the majority of readers, so it feels like an elaborate way to chat to my friends to a deadline. The discipline of writing something every month has been very beneficial, but I feels like after guiding three major projects to completion, its current incarnation might have run its course.

I want to make really good interactive fiction, and I think I might be able to. Talking about my projects – especially at this nascent stage – is probably not going to improve them markedly. To train my skills, it might be worthwhile looking at the masters of the craft and see what I can learn from that. While my projects are tough, you get better at lifting weights if you improve your form.

I've put together a syllabus of IF games that I think I can learn from. Playing these and writing down my learned lessons would be helpful for me. It might even be interesting for others to watch or play along.

This month I'll forge this new path whilst working on my projects in the background. The next edition will be the first of this experiment. Keep an eye out for it. I'm happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.