Earlier this month I got to spend a few days in LA, speaking at IndieCade and having some really inspirational conversations with friends I don't get to see much.  It was humbling and overwhelming in a lot of ways.  I wanted to share some of the ideas I picked up from the trip with you, and record them for posterity before I cleared off that part of my whiteboard.

I should stress that I did not think these things up myself, nor am I certain that these are somehow universal truths.  These are things that came up in the course of conversation with some people for whom I have an immense amount of respect, and the ideas struck me as thought-provoking or inspirational in one way or another.  I hope you'll read these in the same spirit of thoughtful consideration, and whether you ultimately agree with them or not I hope you find them interesting or useful.

NOTE: I have attempted to credit the folks who turned me on to each idea, but I have also paraphrased these ideas for this brief transcription. Anything about the formulation of the following ideas that seems wrong or bad or whatever is almost definitely my fault, and not theirs at all!!  Nor am I claiming necessarily that these ideas are deeply held beliefs of the credited individuals.  But these ideas are somehow connected to these individuals in my head, and I'd like to at least thank them for that.

Tabula Rasa: If you live someplace or work in an industry or study in a field that is relatively new, it is easy to feel like the lack of foundations, history or tradition might doom our existence in those spheres to be somehow less rich or less valid than life in a more traditional or historically rich space.  But what if the opposite is true?  What if tradition and history choke innovation and strangle evolution?  What if we can invent our own traditions and our own standards?  What if we can learn from the traditions of everything around us and use those ideas to build our own rich culture, full of the best of everything from everywhere else, but free of some of the crippling constraints? (Kazu Kibuishi)

Power of Focus: Picking one thing and sticking to it and obsessing over it forever can change the world in impossible, unimaginable ways. (Kazu Kibuishi)

Service: A lot of people like to talk about providing things "as a service" these days, but maybe it's more interesting to think of "service" less like a commercial or retail system, or more like the religious and/or civil connotations.  Maybe the art we make is a service in that sense.  Something we owe humanity in exchange for being human. (Kazu Kibuishi)

Making Mainstream Art: As an indie game dev it is really easy to settle into a kind of comfortable disdain for mainstream games or mainstream gamers or the amorphous and vaguely threatening mainstream itself.  It's really important to remember though that a lot of the things we perceive as mainstream in games (Call of Duty, Halo, etc) aren't mainstream for humans at all.  Maybe thinking of "mainstream games" as games for humans, instead of games for gamers, is a more interesting and valid pursuit. (Kazu Kibuishi)

Experiential Systems: One of the great strengths of video games has nothing to do with "gamey" systems, and everything to do with atmosphere and that certain sense of place and mystery and isolation and connection.  However, I think it's common for people to think of these sorts of videogames as being somehow less system-based than more "gamey" experiences.  I guess what I'm saying is don't underestimate the systemic complexity of a good Not-Game, or "open" game.  It's quite possible that "gamey" games are the easier systems to build. (Kris Piotrowski)

Folk Games: Folk games (JOUST, Ninja) and folk game design is totally amazing and ridiculously fun.  Folk games may be to tabletop what tabletop is to videogames.  Badly want to put on some Austin game jams now that don't involve computers even a little bit, Flixel be damned. (Doug Wilson)

Infinite Truths: Designing games that explore and illustrate surprising truths about systems is a worthwhile and satisfying alternative to "fun" or "addictive" game design, and perfectly suited to the strengths of videogames. (Jonathan Blow)

Collaboration & Contribution: Work with as many people on as many projects as you can.  Everyone is amazing and including them in your "work" in whatever capacity makes sense just enriches everyone all the time forever. (Nathan Vella)

The Big Picture: We spend a lot of time solving small problems in game design - balancing, tuning, and so on.  But it rarely feels like we tackle longer-term, almost meta-problems in our designs.  I'm having trouble explaining more than this without giving away things I can't give away, but I am concerned that our expertise at solving short- and medium-term problems is distracting us from considering all the advances that could be made in communicating long-term goals, and I think this can have a huge impact on our new audience of truly "mainstream" players. (Jordan Mechner)