One of the fun things about being in this line of work is that you make a finished product, something you can eventually find on the shelf of a store. In many jobs, you just do “work”, and nothing as tangible as a box with a game in it ever comes out of it. I can’t help but think, when I go to a game store and see one of mine, that this must be how an author feels in a bookstore.

Of course, another consequence of making a finished product is that it is submitted to the scrutiny of reviewers, the same critics who review the greatest games in the world. And this is actually not as painful as you might think. There’s something very satisfying about getting a report card for your work (even if this particular report card gets published on popular sites for the world to see). Sure, I often feel the game was misunderstood and wish I could explain it to the reviewer, but this is the beauty of it. You put it out there and it finds its own way, becomes its own thing. I find it absolutely fascinating to see that some details I obsessed over mean nothing in the end, while at the same time, a feature reduced to 10% of its original intended quality absolutely delights the critics.

This is probably a cliché of the author’s experience, but still a novelty for me.