Hi! My name is Laura and I look like this:
That is because in a future not so far away, I hope to live a life I never ever ever need a holiday from, funded by
Heart. Papers. Border.
An intricate yet utterly optimistic strategy game about nationality, borders and our freedom to travel.
I want this so much that I convinced my husband to learn how to code and dedicate all his time to this project. He says he loves the game idea, but he might be blinded by my madness. That’s OK; we are faking it. And we will fake it until we make it. Here is how:
Fake it physically
There is no such thing as screaming about your game too early and in any conceivable way possible. If you don’t believe me, you can turn to John Graham for the exact same advice. This guy made Wolfire Games and Humble Bundle so I value his words. However, that does not mean you absolutely have to post the worst, ugliest, mind boggling things that usually happen during gamedev. You can fake it instead. For example, you can edit your screenshots. Here is some advice from Valve itself regarding this. Remember, EVERYTHING you post about your game IS marketing and IS an awareness building and selling tool.
Fake it verbally
Armin of Goat Simulator fame has an excellent way to illustrate how eager people generally are to read feature lists and patch update notes.
Even though gamedev speech can seem cool to gamedevs, it sounds a little worse than Chinese to any other people. So, don’t use it. Describe what your game will end up being instead, in layman terms, like speaking to your mother, or your little brother or your doctor. Just describe your dream, even if you are not sure when or if you will make it.
Fake it mentally
This one is a favourite of mine.
There may be lots of facets in your life barely or completely out of your control. There’s only one you totally own, and that’s your ability to DREAM.
So dream. Picture how pretty your game will be when its launched. Imagine how viral it will go and how you’ll wake up one morning and realise you are rich. Plan how benevolently you will spend all that money, how you will build the best game studio ever, how you will pay your artist 100 times the amount he needed to help you, dream the most extravagant, hilarious, impossible dreams you can! And if you dream extravagantly enough, you’ll drive yourself towards that for real.
Just as long as you know how to differentiate between dreams and reality, you can and should use your dreams to move towards your goals in real life.
