Robert Bohl okay! I’ll unpack it.

It’s because I’m:

1) Way too competitive, especially where the stakes are so objectively meaningless

2) Unable to take any real control over my chances

3) Too invested in the opinions of total strangers

4) A perfectionist, and perfection is just impossible in this format.

So basically it’s weeks/months of self-inflicted emotional and creative stress for an outcome that isn’t even intended by the event. Everyone, me included, correctly says the winning is not the point. And yet my fucked-up personality makes it the point.

Last year I went all-out. I mean all-out, including spending money for artistic help. I put it all out there. I’ve never worked so intensely for so long on a game design. I’m not good at it in an easy, casual way (see #4). And I made…finalist. In a year where there were more finalists than ever. It felt like an enormous waste of time in the end, and I felt embarrassed that I’d gotten myself so invested.

I put it all out there. I lost. I looked at the actual winner and I cannot pick apart what she did different. I have no idea. And again, it doesn’t matter even a tiny bit. She’s never going to publish that game, nobody’s going to publish their games. People who want to publish their games are going to publish their games with or without a contest.

I’m not even that proud of the work, a year out. I looked at it again recently, thinking maybe I could/should continue work on it. Eh, whatever, I wouldn’t play it. I was high as a kite for a few weeks after, though! Thought I’d take the world by storm, spool out a half dozen variants, generate real excitement.

If I were a productive, talented designer, it might be a fun external prod to make something else. I’m neither productive nor talented, at least not in a way that Game Chef demands. I can’t casually half-make a thing. I mean I do casually half-make things all the time! But I’m not trying to vie for the approval of a panel.

My insecurities and creative limits keep me from letting it be a fun thing. I take it seriously in all the wrong ways, and dismiss it in all the wrong ways.

So there’s the unpacking. Hope it’s useful.