On talent, failure, and giving up
by Gil Hova
Note: There’s no huge announcement behind this post. I’m not giving anything up, or experiencing any setbacks. Perhaps failure is on my mind because I’m about to launch a Kickstarter campaign for my first self-published game in a month, and this stuff is on my mind. Maybe I’m just in a reflective mood. Maybe I just ate some bad fruit.
In any event, I’ve been thinking about this for the past few days, and I felt like sharing it here. Nothing more!
If there’s one thing I absolutely believe in, that’s to believe in no absolutes.
Here’s an example. No one likes to fail. Too much failure is a problem. Too much failure disheartens us. There’s a point when you realize the mat of the boxing ring is more comfortable than any other position you could be in at this moment. And all the pep talks in the world won’t get you back onto your feet.
I’ll be honest: The idea that “if you put your mind to it, you can do anything” is complete garbage. No one is good at everything. There are some things in this world that you and I just will never be able to do.
I found a bunch of things I couldn’t do when I was a kid at school. Sports. Foreign language. Singing. I just couldn’t do them at any level of competence, regardless of how much time I put into them. My life became immediately better the moment I gave them up (or in the case of foreign language, the moment I was allowed to give them up, which was when I passed the mandatory state test by one point).
It’s not self-deprecation to realize you can’t do something well enough to be competent. We are all mortals; we all have our limits. Acknowledging them, and working around them, is huge.
If there is something in life that you can’t do, then the sooner you realize you can’t do it, the better. Giving up is not always a bad thing. It doesn’t always mean admitting defeat. For me, it usually means gathering reinforcements.
But, on the other hand…
I’ve seen people discuss “talent” in the past. Like, a person either has an innate talent at something, or they have no ability. I’ve seen people quit new creative endeavors almost immediately after starting them, claiming they were “no good at it”. They figured if they didn’t feel like a natural at first, what’s the point?
One thing that is important to me is failure. This blog was originally named “Fail Better”. Failure is at the core of iterative design. It’s all about failing, and failing quickly. It’s about exploring the ways you fail. It’s about embracing failure, and figuring out why you’re failing. Because if you do that enough times, you find yourself not failing.
I recently cracked open a box of my oldest game designs from 15 years ago, and it stunned me how bad some of those games were. What was I thinking? If I knew how bad those games were back then, would I have continued plugging away at designing games?
If you’re a game designer, and you’re feeling the boxing glove of failure repeatedly striking you in the abdomen, you can take some time to reflect on your life decisions while you’re lying on the mat. It’s part of the process.
If you feel like you’ve had enough, and you’ve given things a fair shake, no one will blame you for staying on the mat.
But don’t decide on that nap too early. Getting up is part of the process too.
Formal Ferret Games 
In the Age of Instant Gratification, people are more likely to quit soon after they start, when they don’t feel instant success.
Talent distribution, in most cases, ought to be in a bell curve, not “ya got it or ya don’t”. But Instant Gratification encourages the either-or belief.
Showing my age, Baltimore third baseman Brooks Robinson used to be the standard for someone who didn’t have a lot of talent, but made himself into an All-Star baseball player. Obviously he had some talent, more than most, but a lot less than his compatriots. I don’t know who would be an example nowadays.
Part of being an adult, though, is recognizing when you don’t have enough talent for a particular discipline. In my ideal world I might be an orchestral composer, or a novelist, but that talent just isn’t there.
It’s funny, I was going to put Frank Zappa as a similar example, but that’s showing my age as well. There were a lot of things that most guitarists/songwriters are expected to do, but he couldn’t. For example, he couldn’t look away from the fretboard when he played. He couldn’t sing and play guitar at the same time. And when he did sing, his vocal range was really small.
No one ever noticed that, because he worked around it so well. He composed his music so that he was never singing and playing guitar simultaneously. His vocal parts were more spoken-word than full-fledged singing. And he hired amazing singers to handle most of his vocal duties, letting him focus (literally) on his guitar.
It helped that he was a very good composer and guitarist, of course, but knowing how to work around his limitations was one thing that made him so good for his time.
As an editorial aside, it’s surprising how poorly Zappa’s music has aged. A lot of younger folks don’t know his stuff, and I honestly can’t blame them. The 70s flair that sounded so modern back then comes off as hokey now. YMMV, of course, but I maintain that his music doesn’t have the cultural cachet it used to.
Link for reference (note how he never sings and plays guitar simultaneously, where he’s looking when he’s playing guitar, and how the whole thing sounds like a cheesy ad to our hip, modern ears): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnDqHppWS_Q
Zappa is a great example. Good points. I’ve made sure my kids know Zappa. My son is an aspiring teenage musician, and took the time to read A Zappa biography.
I watched WHIPLASH the same day you posted this and was taken by the similarities. I don’t want to spoil anything, but that film is about talent, failure, giving up – or not, and the drive to succeed. You should catch it if you can.
This post is particularly timely, with UnPub 5 just three weeks away. One of my game designs is really broken right now, and it’s tempting to shelve it, but you remind me that “failing better” is part of the iterative design process. If I can get some insight into what’s broken about it, I’ll know better what to fix – and, well, that’s what UnPub is all about.
Good article. Makes sense. Just remember to learn from those failures.
Great piece Gil! The community is rooting for you!