What’s the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider:
Video game development is expensive and risky because you’re on two frontiers at once. The tech frontier, trying to do something with hardware that hasn’t been done before, and the game mechanics frontier, perfecting and polishing new forms of interaction that last. So Myst and Tetris and Doom… classics we talk about decades later. A teenager could build a knockoff of any of these in a few weeks now, but back then, they represented risky leaps.
Movies use a technology that’s over a hundred years old, with incremental improvements added all the time. But being the first with the new tech doesn’t win many prizes. Instead, successful movies are a combination of one creator’s vision and the coordinated work of hundreds or thousands of professionals using proven tools and techniques.
And books, five hundred years into the genre, still remain the work of one voice. The partnership with a largely unseen editor and publisher matters, but sooner or later, the author puts the words on paper.
[There are analogies here that go far beyond the strict adherence to the three final products of course. Slack is a videogame, developing real estate, making a record or performing surgery is a movie, and the work of a freelancer is closest to writing a book…]
I’ve done all three, and each is thrilling in its own way. As the available tech advances, each type of project is more accessible than ever. But each still comes with its own rules, risks and upsides.
We get to choose.
Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth.
Perspective fools us into believing that our point of view is primary, but it’s not difficult to imagine a more distant (or closer) one that would change everything.
The service at table 7 might not matter much to the waiter, but it matters a great deal to the elderly couple celebrating a positive medical diagnosis. The greeting you offer to a stranger might seem trivial to you, but it could change the arc of that stranger’s day. And the drama that consumes us in this moment might be forgotten in just a few days…
“Important” always requires a modifier. Important to whom? Compared to what? In what time frame?
It’s all important. And none of it is.
If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art.
Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires participation. Art is a verb.
Decoration is important. Beauty matters. But decoration and beauty are insufficient to create art. Music, images, tastes and words become art when a transformation happens.
“What is the change you seek to make?” The answer to that question can inform our work.
No change, no art.
Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting.
Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with ‘marketer’ in their title simply go to meetings and do tasks after the real work of marketing is already done.
Some tech companies have hundreds of people in their marketing department. Most of them are simply playing catch up, because the engineers are making all the powerful and leveraged marketing decisions.
Who is making the difficult decisions on your team? That’s the person who’s actually in charge of marketing.
Real artists do all the painting themselves, not like Rembrandt
Real artists use brushes, not technology like Cartier-Bresson
Real writers write it out by hand, not like Jack Kerouac
Real musicians record it live, not like Steely Dan
Real singers sing without processing, not like Kanye West and Daft Punk
Real directors do the prep without AI, not like Martin Scorsese
It turns out that real artists have always used technology. What they have in common is intent, responsibility, and the ability to create a feeling in the audience.
“Here, I made this.”
[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]
Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.