I had one thought forming while reading this piece, then read to Carmack's quote in the footnote which encapsulated it. I learned how to program modding games as a teenager, and as an adult now looking back on it, I realize how rough and ready the game engines were in 1996-1998, and how that rough and ready state, combined with my teenager's imbalance between time and money, led to a bunch of what Graham is calling early work where my bad 3d modeling skills, terrible art sense, and ability to sling values around in text files and use tools that other community members made, allowed me to make an entire faction for Total Annihilation that was clearly lower quality than the originals, but really not that much worse. Contrast that to about 2017 when I looked into what it would take to make a very small mod for XCOM, and boy oh boy, so much more work. What advantages I gained from being in that place at that time...
This is an important and often overlooked aspect to creativity.
When people get into some thing, they naturally compare themselves to the people out there that are best at that thing. In Ye Olden days before the Internet and social media meant literally the world's best examples of every single thing were right at your fingertips, the "best" often meant "the best in your town" and the level of difference between your novice skill and that was not so great as to be disheartening.
But now, the first day you ever decide to fry an egg, you can watch Gordon Ramsey and Jacques Pépin do it and watch your soul die with the realization that you'll never reach that level. Or you pick up a guitar, then go to YouTube and see some kid who's been practicing twelve hours a day since infancy and lose all hope.
A somewhat perverse trick to combat that is what I think of as low ceilings. If the thing you get into has some limit to how good you can be at it, then the difference between you and the world's best isn't so great that it kills your motivation. I'm an ex-game developer, and I've seen how many people really love PICO-8 and other deliberately constrained game making environments. I think a big part of that is because when you're making a PICO-8 game, you aren't comparing yourself to the world's best games, but just to the best PICO-8 games. Those can be surprisingly impressive too, but they don't feel so unattainably distant from your own first steps.
If you don't want to choose a medium that is instrinsically limited, another approach is to find a scene. Find a group of like-minded individuals at roughly the same skill level as you. Enough better than you to inspire you, but not so far that you don't feel you could ever reach their level. Immerse yourself in that group, an you'll naturally compare yourself to them and not the world at large.
Back when I used to be in a band, we played shows in small venues with other local bands. I knew we were never going to be the next Oasis or Tom Petty, but "Orlando's third-best rock band" was close enough within reach to be worth striving for, and it really helped keep me going.
> Or you pick up a guitar, then go to YouTube and see some kid who's been practicing twelve hours a day since infancy and lose all hope.
on the flip side, most skills seem to respond asymptotically to practice/effort (rapid progress at the beginning, diminishing returns near the top). the very best guitar players in the world are not radically more technically proficient than the classical/jazz guitarists at your local conservatory. you can see this in esports a lot. players come out of the woodwork all the time who have trained hard and smart at a game for two or three years and dethrone people who have literally been playing since they were eight.
being the world's best X is usually more about gaining proficiency in adjacent skills Y and Z and having a bit of luck than it is about being lightyears ahead of everyone else at X itself. this is how roger federer dominated tennis for so long. he wasn't the world's best at any one stroke, but each one of his strokes was among the best, and he invested heavily in a style of play that was uncommon on the tour at that time.
>> Or you pick up a guitar, then go to YouTube and see some kid who's been practicing twelve hours a day since infancy and lose all hope.
On the other hand, that same thing can inspire you.
I was never a musically inclined kid in any way, shape or form. Nobody in my family played, I never had an instrument as a child, but when I heard Days of the New for the first time, I ran to Guitar Center and bought an acoustic.
For about a month, I practiced and played and played. I never got anywhere, gave up after a month, and looking back on it, I should have realized that level of playing was going to be years away, even if I had a professional teacher. But I didn't care at the time.
I think the trick is to have achievable targets (I am beginner), simple strumming, chords progression. Just like PICO-8 advice above or "hello world". At least half of the time I play to enjoy myself, the songs that inspired me "BRUTTO - Вечірнє сонце" [1], "Green Day - Good Riddance", "Oasis - Wonderwall".
It is extremely important to tune guitar perfectly. I tune it before each session and found it usually got slightly out of tune if I don't enjoy playing anymore. It is surprisingly hard to sing while playing, it fills mind while hands gets practice.
It is easy to excel in first months because there is not much yet. Playing without looking at guitar, working on posture, accurate timing (not tempo!). Find something to enjoy, Brushy One String plays one string and it drives [1] .
Scene is another big thing, and in the article, Graham draws on SV as a scene, too. That community can be really sustaining, even when you move past the organizing reason. I have not modded Total Annihilation in nearly 20 years, but I still post on the community forum at times because of the people still there.
I had the same experience except modding Motocross Madness and Carmageddon.
Carmageddon was especially easy to mod because it was all self-documented data files in .txt format [1] and you could mess with literally everything from graphics to physics.
The huge difference between this and now is that if I wanted to mess around with any kind of game I would need an IDE - which for a kid without a technical parent/mentor/friend would be a non-starter.
I've never heavily modded anything, but I made some mods for Skyrim and Fallout 4. In that case, the game engine is anticipating the extensions, so it's a bit easier. Add in community tools and it was stupid easy to do any sort of scripting alterations to a game. I can only imagine the complexity you have to grapple with when wading into a modern game not built to enable it.
Modding is definitely one of those things that has become harder. Often due to lack of availability but definitely in terms of skill level to get near a similar quality bar.
But at the same time it's never been easier to make a game from scratch in a whole host of different and easy to use engines.
