Think Like A Game Designer - Steven Pressfield — Conquering Creative Resistance, The Craft of Historical Fiction, and the Interplay of Games and the Muse (#57)

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Steven Pressfield stands as a titan in the literary world, a master of historical fiction with profound insights into the creative process. He's renowned for works like "The Gates of Fire," which earned him accolades, including Spartan citizenship. His book, "The War of Art," introduces the concept of resistance, offering strategies for artists to overcome this ruthless creative demon. We discuss his days grappling with self-doubt and his triumphs as a legendary author. His stories are not just tales of the past, but lessons in perseverance and the relentless pursuit of creativity. Hosting Steven on the Think Like A Game Designer Podcast holds special significance for me. His books and stories about confronting creative resistance mirror the difficulties I’ve faced in each of my creative endeavors. It's an honor to share this episode with our listeners. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. In today's episode, I speak with Stephen Pressfield. Stephen Presfield is the author of many incredibly successful books, including the legend of Bagger Vance, which was later turned into a film, Gates of Fire, Tides of War, and the one that had the most impact on me, the War of Art, a book about the process of how to succeed as a creative and battling against resistance, really illustrating the fact that there's a common struggle

that we all face in our creative work. And that's been really at the heart of what I've tried to share as part of my message with this podcast and the work that I try to do to help people live a more fulfilling creative life, whether you are designing games, writing books, starting a company, all things that I have done and that I have faced countless hours and weeks and months and years of resistance on. And Stephen Presfield has been a mentor for me throughout that process through his books, through his writing, and now through our conversations. And we cover a lot of ground. We cover his process for how he creates story ideas, the foolscap method. We cover how he views mentors and what his process is for how he views life and how he views the connection

between work and art. We talk about being pulled by the power of positivity and the dark side of the force and how that can influence your creative work as well. We cover a lot of ground. Stephen also has a lot of really fascinating questions for me. We dive into the differences between writing and game design and the many, many, many similarities. We talk about Stephen's new book, the daily press field and the insights that it can be to help Stephen be one of your mentors. The War of Art is honestly, it's a book I reread multiple times throughout my life every couple of years. It's the book I have gifted the most of people. It has the most concise way of really illustrating the heart of the challenge of doing good creative work. It was a real honor for me

to get to have him on the podcast. He's revealed a lot of insights, some of which are covered in his books, some of which are not. And that was really one of my goals is to kind of dig into some more principles and some more ideas that it hasn't necessarily talked about elsewhere. So I absolutely loved this conversation. I got so much out of it. I know I will be listening to again whenever I start facing resistance and really kind of hit that wall and I'm unsure what to do. So I hope that you find it as useful as I did without any further ado. Here is Stephen Pressfield. Hello and welcome. I am here with Stephen Pressfield. Steve, this is such an honor. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Justin. It's great to be here.

So I, you know, this podcast is really about, you know, primarily our audience for people that are in the game industry, game designers and creatives in this space. But it's really deeply about the universal principles that is how we get creative work done. And I will say that your book, especially the War of Art, which I, for those that are visual here, can see my really beat up copy. I read it every three years or so. And it has been the best encapsulation of the core struggle of the creative work I have ever read anywhere. So I'm eager to dig into it. Have you kind of share this because there's a lot of our audience. I've talked about your book on the podcast before, but they haven't had a chance to hear really the deeper principles.

So I'd love to hear just kind of a brief overview of like the heart of how you perceive the job of a creative and what we face. Well, certainly the war of art is about the force that I call resistance with a capital R, and which seems to me to be the first thing that any creative person has to deal with before you can sit down and do anything. And that is, it certainly was for me and my evolution. Like when you sit down in front of one of these things or anything that looks like that, if you're like me, you can feel a negative force radiating off of that thing and it's trying to stop you from sitting there for longer than a minute and a half, you know?

So all I know is that that negative force kicked my ass for years and I never even knew it existed. And the huge breakthrough for me in my own, you know, writing life was just giving a name to that force and recognizing that it does exist and that we have to deal with that negative force before we can do anything else. So that's sort of the start of my thing on this subject. Yeah, yeah, and I think that anybody can relate, right, you know, you held up a keyboard for the people that are just on the audio portion here. But anybody can relate that when you, you know, that process of trying to get started and something that's meaningful to you is, it's so hard. It's so hard. We face that struggle of pushing past resistance capital R.

And it's funny, you know, you come at this as a, you know, kind of creative and a writer background. I come at this as a very analytical person. I came out, you know, I started as a professional game player. I kind of tried to break everything down into steps. And so when I, when I first read the way that you personified resistance and the muses and everything, it's a, you know, kind of, there's a, you know, there's a sort of. woo-wooness to it on its surface level that I intrinsically kind of recoiled from. But I think that the metaphor is so powerful, the imagery is so powerful and it just resonates as true. How have you found that, you know, that that kind of story of resistance and the muses and those like those forces as being

kind of real personified resonating across the, the spectrum of people who would normally say, I'm not, I'm not interested in this kind of thing. I think actually, I really haven't got and very much pushback on that at all. Most people can kind of relate to it. They're sort of anthropomorphic like I am, you know. But, you know, in the War of Art, I do sort of stress that if this kind of language of muses and angels freaks you out, you know, then just think about it as, you know, quantum physics or something like that.

But yeah, let me ask you, Justin, as a gamer, how do you experience resistance? As a game designer, or how does it happen for you? Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, the pretty much everything that you had talked about really resonated. You know, it's changed over the years, right? There's my, when I first transitioned from being a game player to a game designer, there was a, who are you to do this, right? You don't know, you're not creative. You're not a creative person.

You're not a creative person. You don't have these skills. So this is the voice in your head we're talking about. Yeah. Correct. That's the voice in my head. That's right. And the voice in my head was there all along that was just saying that it couldn't be done. And then as I was able to actually do it, right?

And in part, it was only because I was lucky enough to have, I got hired because of my game playing career, not because of my skills as a designer. And they were going to fire me if I didn't get the job done. So I happened to have like a proverbial done to my head that like forced me to get it done. I don't think I would have done it if not for that. And then as I've progressed in my career, even at tiers of success, I find that resistance showing up. If it's a new, you know, you're always pushing to a new project or a new creative boundary, right? I'm doing, working on a new style of game. Or now I've been, you know, trying to transition more.

And I really want to dig in this for you, which is, you know, when you make this jump from, you're, you were a creative writer, a fiction writer. And then you, you know, had the balls to say, I'm going to show you how to write. I'm going to be a nonfiction writer. I'm going to help other people this way. And you write about this a bit in the book. And now as I've transitioned in the stage of my career to try and teach, help others, I felt that same kind of resistance coming up.

Who are you to do this? All of that continues to rise up. And again, voice in my head, the desire to do anything but the task in front of me, the desire to do very productive things, like check my email and go help a teammate with something and, you know, things that, like the resistance is tricky and shows up in a lot of ways. Oh, that's interesting. So in other words, it's exactly, the voice in your head is exactly like the voice in my head,

and everybody else's head too. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing about, that's what. What I think resonates so much about your book and what's resonated so much with, as I again, I've talked to creatives across the industry. I mean, you know, in the music industries and writing and entrepreneurship and games, it does not matter what it is. Resistance is there for you. The principles to break through are there for you.

And so, you know, I wanted to, there's so many places I want to go with this. I think that the, as you have gone through and made this transition from fiction, And I want to dig back into some of your history, although your story is told very, very well throughout your books into kind of, and again, nonfiction writing is the easy way to see it, but sort of teaching and becoming, I don't know, in a sense, an avatar for kind of creatives out there. And how has your vision for that refined? How has your message refined over the years since the War of Art released? And you've released a variety of other great books that feel like they come at the same message, but in different ways. I'm not I mean my message has refined to the extent that I've done these other books that are sitting behind me here that are kind of attacked the same same issue from a different angle but I have definitely not it's not like I hit a fork in the road and I decided okay this is now what I'm going to do I mean I'm still writing fiction you know every other book is a work of fiction and so I just sort of bounce back and forth in a way I kind of feel like I wish this hadn't caught on as much as it had.

I never set out to become the guru of resistance, and I don't really want to be that at all. But it does seem to have, you know, created a momentum of its own. So I'm trying to help such as I can. I don't know if that's an answer to your question, Justin. Well, no, I mean, it is. And it's sort of interesting. there's a couple angles to go from this, right?

Is it that there's a, that you, you put this out there and it resonated maybe more than you expected and now you're along for the ride? Or is it that there's a way that this, I would assume that this feeds back into your other creative outlets and into your fiction writing? And is this an area, like how is resistance showing up for you now, right? At this tier, right?

And again, I like these, I really like to break these things down because you've reached the pinnacles of success in this space. You've had multiple bestselling books. They've been turned into movies. They've had all of these things. And so I want to, you know, sharing like where resistance shows up for you now, even as this supposed, you know, guru or avatar, I think would be really helpful. It still shows up just as strong as it ever did. You know, the dragon is still there every morning. It gets, it's gotten more subtle. and I recognize it in different ways. Like you can hear my voice now that I've got the flu.

I've got some sort of thing. And I'm convinced that that's a form of resistance. That I just, you know, the book that we were just talking about a minute or two ago, The Daily Press Field is just in the process of coming out, my newest book. And that's always tough. Like I'm sure it's the same when a new game comes out that you've designed, right? And so it's not at all a surprise to me that I just, that I got sick and that had been in bed. It also, it took another form for me the other day where I kind of woke up in the middle of the night and something you should never do.

And my mind started working. And there's a person that's close to me. And I started getting into kind of a pattern of reciting grievances that I had against this person. And bump-a-bum-and-pump, you know, 45 minutes later, I'm ready to dial the phone and tell in the middle of nine, tell this person, you know, go off in a way that would, you know, suddenly I said to myself, you've got a new book coming. This is freaking resistance. This is, you know, so in other words, it's trying to sabotage a relationship for me that would have had really bad ramifications, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da. So in other words, it continues. It's not quite the voice in my head of who are you to do this.

It's not quite the voice of, oh, this has been done a million times. Yours is going to be more boring than that kind of thing. I sort of can recognize that voice when I see it. But resistance continues to sort of morph into more and more diabolical and nuanced and subtle forms. Yeah, yeah, that's power. So, you know, and I think this is, it's worth lingering on a little bit because a lot of people won't, right? The sort of not good enough or the project's not good enough or whatever.

Like that's a pretty common trope, but to say that it's actually, if you're sick, it's resistance. If you're fighting with your spouse, it's resistance. If you're, you know, anything that kind of gets in the way of your work shows up as resistance, what tools or practices do you have or do you recommend when people to, A, notice in the first place, right? How do you, what, what triggered you when you were getting ready to call your, your, your, uh, and, and shout to them that this is actually resistance? How do you know when it's resistance and when your friends actually just being asked? I think, uh, maybe both at the

same time, right? A lot of times it is. Um, but I do think that, uh, after 50 years of this, I'm starting to begin to recognize, because it's so subtle. It's always the voice in your head that you think is you. You think it's your thoughts. But it's not your thoughts. It's like, you know, a devil has possessed you. But I would go beyond, like, getting sick. If you get into a car accident, a lot of times, that's resistance. Or, you know, if you hurt yourself at the gym, you know, I always now, I'm just aware of it and questioning it.

You know, could this possibly be, you know, a symptom of some kind of self-sabotage? And a lot of times it is. arrogance, complacency, all those things as well. When you think you're riding high, it's a never-ending thing. Yeah, it's a lifelong battle. And then everything goes, all the bad stuff goes away. Yeah, just sit down and get to work.

I could put that on a billboard. So there's a mantra that I have that may have. if it resonates with you that I think is sort of these lines take you know take take 100% responsibility for everything in your life even as you realize that you have no control over any right that this idea that like even if it's if it's raining outside that could be resistance right you know but but I don't but I don't hold attachment on the flip side I don't hold attachment to the results of my work right like I what I can control is you know I can set myself up so I can work through the rain I can work through the sick I can find you know

take care of myself to be in that position but if I feel like what I've learned after releasing countless creative projects over the years is I cannot control the success of those projects. I cannot control what happens on the other side. And that like how do you find the balance or if that does resonate with you or if you would tweak that all in that dichotomy of taking responsibility for what you can but somehow letting go of your babies once they're out in the wild? It's just like what you said, Justin.

I mean, all you can do, it's extreme ownership like Jocco Willink says, you know, in the Navy SEAL concept of this thing. And I try to do that as much as I can. But just like you say, once your baby gets out there, your daughter goes off to college, she's going to come back at, you know, a different woman than you send her, you know? You know, I have a friend who is educating me a little bit about Vedanta.

Do you know about Vodonta as a religious discipline? No. Have you heard of it? I've heard of it, but I don't know much about it. It's kind of the sort of the, basic religion that happened before Hinduism, before Buddha, way, way, way, way back. And one of the things, one of their principles, let's see if I can get this right, is work without attachment is worship. Work without attachment is worship. And when I heard that, I thought, you know,

the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I thought, that is some deep shit, you know. And it's exactly, if we work with attachment, meaning we hope our game is going to come out there and it's going to be a giant hit, right? Yep. Then we're working out of our ego. Then we're stuck in our ego. And as long as you're in your ego, you're in a very bad place where bad things happen, you know. But if you can release that, and it ain't easy, right?

Because we all want to succeed. We all want, you know, if you can release that, now you're on the soul level, you know. And now really good things happen, you know. And I'm not talking about success. I'm talking about, you know, soul to soul with whatever is great that's out there. And I do think that art or creation becomes spiritual in that sense. Not that it's spiritual, obviously, from the get-go. But in that case, it really is spiritual.

Like Krishna says to Arjuna that you're entitled to your labor, but not to the fruits of your labor. Same thing that you just articulated, Justin, you know? And that's life, right? You know, we're not entitled to the fruits of our labor, you know? All we can do is do our best and put it out there. And that's a real lesson to learn, I think. You know, in the end, we have to relinquish everything, our lives.

So, you know, art is a kind of a way of learning. that lesson ahead of time. Yeah. There's a famous story. I'll bore you with a story here. No, please. This was from Jed Harris, the famous Broadway producer of the 20s and 30s.

He was being interviewed one time, and he had kind of hit after hit. And a young reporter said to him, well, Mr. Harris, how do you explain the flops? And Jed Harris started laughing. And he said, that's not the question, kid. The question is, how do you explain the success? In other words, the flops.

are the, that's, that's the default position, right? Right. The successes are the flukes. So, and of course, he didn't have an answer for that either. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Again, I've been doing this for not, you know, not as long as you've been doing things, but 25 years now I've been making a living, you know, in games.

And I still can't tell you when a product's going to be a successor. Everyone I've released, I think is going to be a successor, or else I would be doing it. You know, I was due to do it if I didn't think it was great. But let me ask, let me ask you a question, Jess. Yeah. Do you find that success is surprise you? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, like I, probably the game I'm most well known for is game called Ascension. And I did not release it. I basically made that game for me and my friends. Like I literally just made it just for us to play. I never expected it to do anything. And then a friend of mine was like, oh, you should put this out.

Like, it's good. You know, it's good. I'm like, okay, whatever. Yeah, sure, why not? And I was just thinking, this will be fun. and I'll learn like, you know, how to go through the process because I hadn't, I was just starting my company then. And so, and I put the game out and it just caught like wildfire.

And I was never, ever saw it coming. And it kind of catapulted my career. And, you know, it's a, it was, I found there is definitely a piece of this that I've learned over the years is that whenever I've tried to make a game to be successful, I try to make a game to like follow a market trend or like hit some demographics specifically. Like, it doesn't work, right? I have to make a game that I love and am passionate about or, you know, that I can at least, you know, be excited about if I'm, if I'm making a game for little kids, I need to have the little

kid me be excited about it, you know? That's definitely been core. I would say, go ahead. I would say that's true for me too. Yeah. And I bet if we had a panel of creative people here, they would say the same thing. I mean, you hear the story over and over, like with bands where there's one track that, you know, has been sitting around on the back and somebody says, you know, put it out on the B side or whatever.

And that's the one that becomes the hit, right? And it's a surprise. So let me ask you this. If that's true, what do you think that means? Well, for me, I think that our creative work is an expression of who we are, right? That there's no way that you, like a part of you shows up in the world and you actually discover a part of yourself through the work that you create. If you're trying to put on a mask that is I'm trying to be this person or this other thing,

it's not coming across as you. It's not that, you know, and there are many different aspects of the self, but I feel like the more I have put out work and I look back over my body of work, I see these patterns of like things I'm trying to say with my games, these same kinds of experiences I'm trying to create that I can start to see. It's impossible to see forward, right? You can only see it backwards. But when we express part of ourselves, there's a chance that that will resonate with the moment. And if we don't, then you're going to just fall, be part of everything, you know, be part of the trend. That's kind of my guess.

Yeah. No, I would agree with that too. In fact, I just was having a conversation with Rick Rubin, the music guru, you know. And he was saying the same thing. He said, you can't second guess the market. You can only say, do I love? love this song? Do I love this sound? And you just sort of bet that your taste is going to resonate with taste that's out there. Or, you know, like you were saying before, if you try to

tailor yourself to what you think the market is going to do, you're not being authentic from your own self, you know? Like, I'm quite sure that when Steve Jobs invented the iPhone or whatever hell it was. I mean, there was no market. It wasn't like people out there were saying, give us an iPhone. They didn't even know what it was, right? He had to lead them. And let me show you something I think is cool. And I'm betting that you think it will be cool too. Right. Right. So anyway, that's, I agree with you on that one. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like, and there's another piece of this too I found, which is like, if I put out a game that I am proud of, right? It's something I'm excited about. Whether it succeeds or not, I still feel,

I could still feel good about it. If I make a game where my only purpose is to be successful, if it doesn't succeed, then I'm a failure. I've met up, right? And there's just the, you know, just given the baselines of like, we can't tell for sure whether something's going to be a successful you might as well make something that you're proud of. Yeah, something that expresses some genuine part of yourself. And then, and then the other side of it, and I'd be curious because this is, yeah, I don't know if this is, I've resonated with this as much in your writing, but I also really just try to always optimize for learning. Like, I want to put things out there and do projects that are going to make me grow as a baseline. And where, whether it succeeds or not, if I learn from it, that's a huge success.

Like, I'm just, I'm obsessed with ways to kind of improve and learn and grow. And I find that my creative work in the same way writing a book, I imagine this was the case for you. But it forces you to clarify your thinking in ways that are far more powerful than I thought I knew how to be a creative, right? But until I had to write my book and write a book about game design and really, like, write those ideas down, then suddenly I just became better at what I did. Yeah, I would agree with that completely. I mean, the War of Art was a book I really wrote for myself, not for anybody else. I really, and the follow-ups to it the same way. I'm sort of asking myself, what do I think about this. You know, I'm sure it's just saying, you know, I don't really know. I sort of have an instinct as I

start, but by the time I'm done with 200 pages, I go, oh, okay, that's what I think about this. And I'm like you. I feel like I've learned something, you know? Yeah. And so the, the, I'm curious then, as you're sort of going down these projects, I want to dig into like a bit of your rituals and your process here going through this. Are you consistent? in the way that you do your writing rituals and when you're working on projects, do you work on multiple projects at the same time? What percentage would you say of projects that you do are, you know,

end up dying or end up going into a kind of save pile or are you now in? Because I know you, and maybe you can tell some of these stories because I've read them a bunch of times, but how finishing was so hard for you at the beginning? And how do you feel about that now? I gave you a lot of ways to go. I have a lot of questions. Yeah, yeah. So we'll bounce around them all. I've got notes for things. So just pick whatever's most

appealing to you. I find that there aren't a lot of projects for me that I quit on. Pretty much once I've made up my mind that I'm going to go for it. Because the reason partly is that the voice of my head that says, why don't you quit? Why don't you drop this? I said that's the voice of resistance. So I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to stop, you know? but maybe it's just because I don't really commit to something until I really love it, you know? How do you know if you love it? How do I know if you love it? What makes it?

What pushes that boundary? You know, I don't know what the answer to that other than you just know it. But I sort of ask myself a question because almost everything I do I do on spec. I don't do it with a contract or anything. So I have to kind of ask myself, am I willing to spend a year or two years on this thing? totally on the come. I don't know if that's the way games work.

And if I say to myself, yeah, I'm willing to do that. Then I know I love it, you know? Yeah. You know, I just ask myself, is it worth it to me to finish this thing? And if it is, then I'll do it. Yeah.

The only reason I pushed back on that a little bit is because for me, I find I don't know if I love something until I do it for a little while. Right. So I'll go down rabbit holes and explore a concept Right, maybe there's a particular game mechanic that I like or a particular emotion I want to evoke or a particular story I want to tell.

And until I spend at least some amount of time, at least a couple of hours, like fiddling with it, I don't know if it's really, if there's a there or there. And so I don't know if you have that just comes to your mind, like, oh, I want to, this is my concept and I love it. I would, I agree with you. But I would say it's for me, it's maybe more a month or two months of thinking about it before I finally sort of say, you know, if it's a story, I'm asking myself the questions, you know, how does it end? What's Act 3? Who are the characters and getting a sort of a shape of the story in my mind? And then asking myself, do I really want to tell the story? Is it really worthwhile? Yeah. So definitely I have an idea of what it's going to be, you know, enough of an idea to assess it or whether I love it or not. And when you're going

through that early stage process, is it ruminating in your head, going for walks, writing things down, creating an outline. What's the, what, what gets you from zero to? I love this. It's writing things down. I mean, I have a thing that I use called the Foolscap method. Have you heard of me? Not familiar with that. I've done it like a series on this on Instagram. Like a, I don't know, a 30-part, you know, a series which you, which is, it's also on YouTube now. But it came from, I'll give you sort of the longish version of this, Justin, came from. came from a friend of mine named Norm Stahl, who this is, this is him right here. I know that people don't have video, a mentor and dear friend of mine, and a foolscap page,

I'm showing a yellow legal pad here. And Norm said to me that he said, God created a single sheet of foolscap to hold, to be the exactly right length to hold the outline of an entire novel. In other words, do it on one page. And I have this, I've sort of evolved this system where I have like 10 or 12 questions that I ask myself about a story. Who's the hero? Who's the villain? What's act one? Act two, act three.

What's the inciting incident? What's the narrative device? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if I can answer those questions for myself, and I do this on the computer, I do this at the keyboard, I do this creating files. and just sort of talking out loud to myself. If I had a writing partner, I'd be talking to the writing partner, but because I don't, I just do it on the page. And it's sort of like an airline pilots or a pilot's checklist.

You know, I'll go to a thing, flaps down, fuel in the tank, you know, wings de-iced, that kind of thing. And when I've got all those things down, just in rough form, then I have a real sense of what this thing is. and I can ask myself, is this worth two years of my life? So that's kind of my process for that. Yeah, that's great. And so the specific questions are all on your YouTube page or on the Instagram. So we'll link to those in the show notes so people have access to that.

And then you mentioned kind of in passing, well, as part of this, that your mentor. and that maybe ties into a side question here of like, how do you think about mentors and people that, you know, are just getting started and whether finding a mentor or do people need mentors or, you know, what makes a good mentor? Like, how do you think about mentors in general? Certainly in my life, I've had a bunch of mentors that without them, I don't know where I would be.

You know, they're usually bosses, people have. I've worked for, you know, that, but I also think that books can be mentors, movies can be mentors, fictional characters can be mentors, and most of all dreams can be mentors. And in my own life, dreams have been a huge, you know, thing for me. When I'm lost, I've had many times where a dream has kind of come and guided me. me, you know, or reassured me. But we need, we definitely need, we need mentors. That's, that's for sure. But going to look for them, I don't know if that really works. And a lot of my mentors, if I think back over, weren't even writing mentors. They were in some other area, you know. But yeah, I'm definitely,

and you can, you can make someone a mentor not even know them. You just sort of watch them. watch what they do. And it could be anybody. Somebody that's a great car mechanic, you know, just watching their hands as they work, you know, can be a great thing. Yeah. Seeing people that are great at what they do or their aura and the way that they present themselves. Absolutely, I can think of many of those.

And I will even sort of keep my own kind of mental counsel of mentors that are, you know, I'll literally in my head imagine having conversations with, you know, of these people that will be, okay, what would they tell me here? And it's, you know, able to tap into different parts of my own psyche to answer the question, but just to reinforce that, you know, if these are the kinds of people that I want to be like, and these are the traits that they have, like, how, if they were here, what would they do in my place? And I found that to be a really helpful tool. And does that work for you, Justin?

Do you actually sort of have imaginary conversations? I do. As people may think I'm crazy here, but yes, I will occasionally break, I'll, I'll, just because it, you know, when you're thinking something through. in your own head, it can often just kind of get into a loop, right? You just kind of have the same thought patterns, the same thing. So either kind of, you know, journaling and writing things down and working through is helpful talking to a friend or actual mentor. And then even just having an imaginary conversation with someone that you would respect and someone that is a mentor I

found has worked through a lot of problems for me and had insights. So let me, I'm going to ask you, just like you asked me. Now, let's say when you have a conversation with a mentor in your mind, where will you be will you be driving will you be sitting at home where will this take place yeah so i'll i'll be i'll be meditating um so i'll be either you know if either can be home and in a cushion on the chair or whatever or i could be outside you know be outside anything i'll just like sit quietly i'll have a pad of paper next to me um and then i'll just you know take about five minutes just kind of calm focus on my breath and then i'll kind of you know summon the mentors that i want to speak to and then and just start talking through my problem with them, you know, in my head.

And then as things come up, if I have stuff I want to write down, I'll write down. And then, you know, go through the process. The whole thing takes maybe 20 minutes. Ah, well, that's great. I haven't done that. That sounds great. Yeah, it's fun. I think I first got the idea of it from the book, Think and Grow Rich talks about this concept.

And I read it when I was in high school, I think, and did it occasionally, you know, sporadically and found it helpful. and then I forgot about it and then reintroduced the practice about a decade ago. So I don't think I've ever talked about that publicly before either. So it's a good thing to surface. So the other piece of this, so we've talked about a little bit of the process. We've talked about the core of resistance and how kind of sneaky it can be. The other piece of this that I found and why I keep coming back to your book so often and others, you know, Marcus Raleigh's Meditations, I think is the only book I read more often than I read yours.

but there's a whole variety of these things. And I will put reminders around me is because the lessons that we're talking about here, these, they're not complicated. I mean, there's little tricks here and there and audit, you know, but, but it's, it's pretty straightforward. It's just somehow we keep forgetting. I speak for myself anyway, right?

I just, if I don't, I haven't joked that I wouldn't, I don't need to learn any new things. If I just did all the things I already know I'm supposed to do, I would be successful and fit and happy relationship and everything would be great. But I don't do it. How do you think about this process of continuing to have to remind ourselves and refresh our knowledge of these fundamental truths? It certainly is absolutely true that we will just backslide constantly. We'll slip into unconsciousness or whatever you want to call it.

You know, just sort of, well, I'm going to go through the motions and we forget. yet. And we do have to be, keep reminding, I do too, remind myself to be alert to it. Again, because I think that's another aspect of resistance that even when it's not sort of hitting us with a frontal assault or a punch in the face, it's kind of digging the dirt out from under our feet, you know, very, very subtly. Little by little, it's, you know, it's like it's like Donald Trump constantly, you know, putting out his bullshit into the world to undermine everything that, that, that, that, that, that we're all trying to do in a positive way. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't mean to get political. Oh, no, yeah. It's fine. You can cut that if you want to. No, no, no, it's fine. I'm, I've, I've no, no love loss there. I think that the real value, I think.

So in this idea of subtle resistance and our losing track of things, do you have any particular practices or, you know, do you have books that you reread often or other things that you come back to to kind of get back on track? No, but I'm always looking for new things that will kind of remind me. But to go back to just what we were talking about, if you think about the devil, you know, the devil is always trying to undermine us, right?

It's always kind of in the background, you know, doing something negative to, you know, however subtle it is, however little it is. And it's like tooth decay, right? If you just leave it alone for a year or two years, pretty soon your molars are falling out. You know, it's entropy, right? There's that constant sort of drip, drip, drip of it's always there. You always have to be alert to it. you know if you're if you're a primitive hunter and you're out you know stalking you know mastodons

you've always got to be wary of the wolves that are out there and the pitfalls that are out there and is the weather going to change and we're going to get caught in the middle of a storm blah blah blah blah that's kind of life i think it is so yeah i am i'm always like i just mentioned vedanta to you it's a friend of mine that i just meant that he's kind of told me a few things about that and And I'm, you know, when I, when I started to think about it, thought, oh, this is great stuff, you know, I got to get into this a little bit more because there's a lot of, it's a whole way of looking at the same thing I'm talking about, but coming at it from a whole other angle. So I'm always looking for something like that. Yeah. Yeah, that's great.

So I'm, I wanted also spend some time talking about your fiction writing and the process of, those things. I saw in my research that you were you were awarded a honorary citizenship of Sparta about 20 years ago. And a lot of your writing, you know, takes place during these kinds of ancient wars, a sort of historical fiction and battles, you know, telling gates of fire and a variety of others. What, what drew you to that, to those kinds of historical fiction stories and how do you tell that kind of tale when it has, you know, these sort of real words? world pinnings versus a story where you're, you know, you have a bit more freedom potentially and you're making it up from the ground up like, you know, some of your more recent books I've

seen. We were kind of talking a little earlier about, or I was asking you, if your success has surprised you, you know, and I think that a lot of times, you know, I'm a believer in the muse. That's my, that's my, the way I anthropomorphize something. and the goddess will sort of give me an idea, and the idea always surprises me. And the idea for Gates of Fire or for any of these kind of ancient world sort of military-themed stuff came out of nowhere to me. It wasn't like I grew up wanting to do these things, or that I knew anything about it,

or I was some kind of an academically trained classical scholar. But I think for those things, like I see life as a battle. That's what the War of Art is about, right? To me, it's a battle against something inside my own head. So when I'm looking for a story to tell, a lot of times it becomes a kind of a war story. You know, it's probably the same in games, right? I mean, there are a lot of games that are about flat out war, right? Different kinds of war, you know, the future, you know, whatever it is, right?

And I think it resonates because Marcus Aurelius said, what was it? Life is a battle. Life is warfare and a journey far from home. That was one of his great quotes. And I think that's exactly true. I agree with it completely. Life is warfare and a journey far from home. And what I take from a journey far from home is a journey far from spirit,

far from the other dimension of reality, the soul dimension, that we are not in here on this material plane. I know I'm getting kind of off target here. No, no, that's not off target. That's fine. But so war stories resonate with me and that's why I tell them. Yeah. So then let me ask because, you know, circling back to the point where I've sort of noticed

this, you know, this trend, like the types of games I make, the types of things I design, you know, they're representing aspects of my personality and my beliefs. And you've highlighted here that, you know, for you, you view, you know, life is a battle. and there's a lot of other ways you could say that, right? Life is a game. You know, life is love. Life is a journey. Life is, you know, people, you know,

but the metaphor that you choose to use really makes, makes an impact. So I'm curious where that comes from for you is that, you know, what have you learned about yourself in this, in this mode, right? And how is there, is there a moment in your life where that sort of that realization came in or is there something that why does this, this resonate so deeply with you? That's a great question. And I'm not a believer in kind of the psychiatric theory of life that things happen to you when you were three years old or eight years old. I think it happened a long before that.

I'm definitely a believer in previous lives or some form of something that we come into this world not as a blank slate or tabula rasa or anything like that. we're bringing with us certain unfinished business and things we're called to do. So I can't really put my finger. I can't say, oh, there was a moment when so-and-so happened. No, I just have to say that that's kind of the shape of my personality. And what I'm obsessed with or drawn to is that kind of battlefield metaphor, rather than life is a journey, life is love, life is a game, life is fun and games. You know, when I think about those, I think, no, it's not.

Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, we talked about, you talked about Vedanta. And, you know, at the core of like the Hindu mythology is this life, life as play, right? Life is that, you know, the sort of the godhead is all knowing, all seeing, gets kind of bored being all knowing and all seeing. So it gets to go through this play like a, you know, like a Broadway play style. Like we're going to pretend to not know everything. We're going to pretend to be all of these different roles and have all of these experiences and suffer because that makes things more interesting. That's part of the, it makes existence more joyous.

And that's sort of a, and you know, I think this is, Alan Watts kind of drove home this point for me. Originally, I listened to a lot of his stuff where it says, you know, the narrative that we choose to tell. And then culturally, right, that's the Hindu mythology in, you know, the Western traditions where, you know, God is the creator and you as a piece of clay and are. you know, the artifice world versus, you know, sort of more Chinese mentalities of sort of growing out of this world. There's a lot of these, and that really impacts like how we interact with the world and how we, how we are. So I think that the metaphors we choose to adopt really do impact our lives in ways that we don't see, you know, unless we kind of really step back and analyze them. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I'm also a believer that life is play. And that's a big part

of Vedanta that for sure. Yeah. That that an art, creativity is play, right? I mean, when you get into it, I mean, that's what a game is, right? We play the game. Yeah. And when we're playing, I think we're like a kid

at play doesn't notice the time, right? Time completely goes away. A kid at play or kids at play aren't doing it for any reward other than to love of the game, right? They just want to keep playing. And when mom says, come on in, it's dinner time, you know, it's like, oh, no, we got to put the ball down, you know.

So, and I do think if we can get to that stage in whatever we're creating, where it's fun and it's just play, then we're on that right level. We're on that soul to soul level. Yes. So I'm a believer in that, too. It's a battle, but it's play at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So the way I like to look at it is that, you know, all of these are different lenses we can choose to look at the world through, right?

It's not, none of them are true or false in any absolute sense. They're just, it's either useful to you and makes your life and work better or they're not. So sometimes I view life as a battle also, right? When I know I've got to like push through some really tough things. It's not about play. It's like, hey, I got to get this done. I got to be the warrior. And then there's other times where it's like, okay, I'm going to, you know, I want to be

in a creative spirit. I want to be playful. I want to have fun with it. And so, okay, now life is play. And being able to sort of, it's a subtle thing, but knowing when you want to shift from one to the other, right? When you want to shift to this, this, you know, even the sort of far back, we're all connected and part of an eternal, you know, being versus no, no, I'm in the grind right now. And this, I've, I'm feeling it is, is something I've been getting better at over time,

though I won't say I'm great at it. So when I, we, we're never able to sort of know how, you know, what's going to be successful and what's not going to be successful. We've kind of covered that. We talked about the process for coming up with, you know, how you kind of get it from zero to one in the sense of taking an idea and turning into something that you love. And then from there, you've, you said, look, you will take it to the finish line, kind of no matter what. And so some of the other questions when I threw like a dozen questions at you were, what is that, now let's, what does that process look like in your day today? Today, how does that help you get from, you know, kind of start to finish.

Yeah. One thing I've been thinking about recently is self-doubt. And I was talking to a friend about this. And then I started thinking about my own process. And I think, let's say I'm starting with a story, a fictional story that's going to take me two years or two and a half years to do. I would say for the first 18 months or more, I'm in the throes of desperate self-doubt over this thing. Is it a good idea?

Do I have what it takes to make it work? And I would say, if I don't feel that self-doubt, something's wrong. I think that it's part of the process. You could say, and I would say, that that self-doubt is resistance. It's resistance trying to stop you from doing what you're doing. And the more you feel that resistance, the more certain you can be, you've got to keep going. You know, its resistance is sensing that you're onto something good, and it's trying to stop you by making this voice of self-doubt appear in your head. So for me, I set my mind like a marathon runner that because I had so much trouble finishing.

at the beginning part of my career, I couldn't finish something. And I sort of, that became my bet noir, right? I've got to overcome this goddamn demon, you know. And so I still maintain that thing. You know, I will finish or die. Yeah. That's the only way I'm going to stop from finishing something. So I set my mind, no matter what self-doubt comes up,

no matter what second act horrors, no matter what panic, what horrible shit in my real life comes in, nothing is going to stop me from getting to the end of this motherfucker. And at the same time, however, I try to be a bit easy on myself. You know, I say, okay, you can't beat yourself up, you know, 365 days a year. So if we fuck up for a month, okay, that's all right. I'll get back on the bicycle, you know. But come hell or high water, I'm going to finish this thing, whatever it is.

And I've never regretted it, never. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of relentless tenacity is such a key part of being a successful creative, I think, because you're constantly getting. Let me interrupt for one second, just to say, in other parts of my life, I am not good at that. I'll drop the ball really badly. but in this one area of work that, you know, I am relentless. Yeah, well, I mean, and again, it may be worth sharing some of the narratives

because you've developed, you've mentioned this, and of course you talk about it a lot in your book, but that you had to go through an awful lot of suffering and hardship before you developed that relentlessness before you could even finish your first book. Maybe it's worth sharing a little bit of that story with our audience that isn't as familiar with it. It's, uh, if, if anybody wants to read about this, in detail. I just wrote a book called Government Cheese, a memoir. But the, kind of the short version of this is, as a real young guy, I tried to write a novel, which I had no business

tackling, anything like that. And I sort of fell out of the bottom of the middle class, and wound up kind of on the road doing the kind of jobs that you do, that you only need a pulse to do the job, you know? I had no training to do any kind of real blue collar stuff. I was kind of below that level. So I had to do jobs that were at the very bottom of that, like working in the oil fields and stuff like that, picking fruit. And running away from writing, being defeated by my own resistance. This went on for years and years and years. Like I was 52 before my first novel was published, the legend of bag of rants. And so those kind of hard lessons of finishing at all costs, you know, they were learned over that, that long period. Yeah. And I just, I think it's just

it's just, and it's part of why I think you're just so successful as obviously great writing, of course, but that you, you've lived, you know, you've lived until the tale, right, of what can go wrong when you, when you lose the battle with resistance, right? Yeah. And there's a lot of people I know that I mean I've had a lot of people that reach out right so there's you know there's obviously plenty of young kids out there that want to become game designers or writers or start a business but there's also you know there's plenty of people in their 40s and 50s and 60s and you know that that that want to do it too and I think it's important that like just because you haven't gotten started before now doesn't mean now is not the best time to start and that there's that that that is

still available and and that a creative life deferred is bad enough a creative life completely unlived is is a real tragedy. Yeah, I would, let me second that for anybody that's like if you're 50 years old or 60 years old or 70 years old and you know, and you say, oh, it's too late, that's bullshit. You know, that's the voice of resistance in your head. And again, resistance is so diabolical that it can take something that's true, objectively true. Oh, yeah, you are 61 years old, but that doesn't mean you can't do anything, you know. So you have to sort of see through that. voice and just say this is bullshit i dismiss it i can do it you know yeah easy for me to say i know but it's but many you know so many people have started so late and done so well it can definitely be done yeah yeah and so

you know and like it's it's it's you're right you know easy to say hard to do but the these these tools we've talked about a couple of these tools already but maybe that we can we could linger on some more right there's just the you know finding you know mentors be they you realize you're for, you know, books or dreams or, you know, imaginary, finding the, you know, finding this kind of, you know, being conscious of resistance and raising consciousness when it's, when it's showing up, taking responsibility for everything that shows up in your life and, and looking for resistance there. I think that the other things I found to be helpful, right, is, you know, surrounding myself with other people that are, that are fighting the same fight.

And I don't know. You know, that that has been really. really helpful. Like, if I'm surrounded by people who are doing the creative work and are pushing past that and whether it's succeeding or failing, that are just doing it, that motivates me quite a bit. I found also the, of course, putting some kind of horrific consequences on the other side of the equation. That was really helpful. Again, I would not be a designer today if I wasn't on the hook and would have lost my job if I didn't get it. And now I have a company and people that depend on me and things like that. Are there other things that come to mind for you that

are tools in the battle, weapons we can bring to fight to fight resistance. Let's talk about the positive side of this for a minute. Because there's a, let's talk about the goddess, the muse. This is what Rick Rubin in his book calls Source, capital S Source, right? And what he says is that there are a constant flow like a trade wind in Hawaii of creative ideas coming through all the time, right, to all of us. and I would say that inside each of us is an underground river. And it's coming from a source that we cannot define, but that is divine and is positive.

And if you think about Bruce Springsteen songs, where do they come from? One after another after another. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, writers that write books, filmmakers that make movies. there's a constant flow of positive stuff. Now, what I think most of us do wrong is we're not catching those ideas as they come through. Or the voice of resistance hits us. You know, an idea comes to us in the shower for a new business or whatever, a game.

And we, the voice of resistance immediately says, oh, let's dismiss it. That's a dumb idea. You'll never do that. And we do dismiss it. But I think those of us that glom onto those ideas and take them and run, that's where it all comes from. So there is, like one of the things I say, and stop me if I'm going on too long here, is resistance comes second. And what comes first is the dream. resistance is the equal opposite reaction to the dream.

The dream being a new game that you'll come up with, a new business, your new novel, whatever the hell it is. And the analogy that I use for this is if we imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow, as soon as that tree appears, the shadow appears. The shadow of the tree appears. The shadow is resistance, but the shadow cannot be there without the tree. The tree comes first. And the tree is that idea, and that idea comes from the goddess, comes from the muse, comes from someplace we can't name.

So it's a whole mindset, like Rick Rubin's mindset, is kind of of immersing himself and believing in that force, that positive force, you know, that wealth of creative new ideas that are out there, tuning in. You've got to tune in to the cosmic radio station. That's kind of, that's, that's my mantra. So although resistance is a negative thing, it's, and must be overcome, the reason it exists is that there's a positive thing, which is this dream that we have. And what we have to teach ourselves, I think, is the self-discipline and the self-validation and self-reinforcement to work with that dream, to believe in it. and then because it's not going to appear, it's not going to become realized by wishing or by

accident or in two days. It's going to become realized by nut-busting hard work in the teeth of a gale of resistance day after day after day. But if we can do that and we can, at the end of the two years or whatever it is, we got something. Yep. And so believing in that is a big, big thing for me. Yeah, yeah.

And I'll echo that. Not only whether or not you are resistant to these ideas of the goddess or the source or whatever, right, believing in this concept of abundance, believing that there are great ideas out there, believing that these things are possible, that ability of a growth mindset, a possibility mindset, there is so much evidence, not just anecdotal in our lives, but like, research back to evidence, that that will make you. you more successful, that will make you more creative, that will make you more able to, you know, not solve just the basic problems of day-to-day life. It's not just that you have to

write, you know, the legend of bag of advance or some, you know, epic novel, even just the living a better life in your home, finding ways to connect to your family, finding ways to contribute to your community. Like these stories are writ small and large. It's your own kind of drama that plays out and that belief in that, that positive force, whatever, however you refer to it, I think is so important. And, Yeah, I think that there's a, there was another small thing you mentioned in there, which is just capturing the ideas when they show up. That's so important. It's such a little thing, but it's so important.

You're writing things down. Don't letting the ideas go away. I tell people, everybody has dozens of good ideas and they have hundreds of bad ideas. But you can't tell the difference until you write them down and think about them and explore them. It's true. It's like Roseanne Cash says that a singer has to carry a catcher's mitt. because the ideas are coming in, you've got to grab them, you know, before they wind up with Lucinda Williams or somebody else.

Yeah, yeah, Rick Rubin has said a similar message, that you're sort of tuning in to the frequencies kind of around you and that, you know, when you're, the real successes are when you're just, you're sort of channeling what's out there and just, you know, sending, you're, you know, you're the voice for the, for the, yeah, the muse in those. And that's the airy-fairy way of looking at it, but you, just like what you said, Justin, you can, you can, if we keep an idea,

or a file on our computer that says new ideas, or a little pad by our side or our iPhone or something. And when we have an idea, just 10 seconds, jot it down. Yes. That's the sort of materialistic way of doing it, you know. So it's not really airy-fairy. Just grab it as it comes, write it down. You'll immediately forget it.

I'll immediately forget. Like 10 seconds later, it's gone. But if I've written it down, and I find that I'll go back to ideas over months and months and months, and an idea that I kind of dismissed 30 times, at some point I'll go, you know what, this is a pretty good idea. Yes. Maybe nine months later, and then I'll go, okay, let me think about this.

Maybe there's something here. And three months after that, I'm halfway into, you know, 180 page book. Could not echo that sentiment enough. And I have all of the tools. I mean, not only do I always have like a notepad and I have my little journal I've created here that I keep with me, I have my a quick send app called Brain Toss, which just lets me record anything and send it to my inbox. I even have in my shower a waterproof notepad so I can write down ideas that come

to me in the shower because they do come in the shower. They do. And if I don't write it down, I'd lose it. And so those little things and finding a way to capture ideas and make sure that you process them and revisit them every so often. And the same thing, my discarded game ideas.

I had a game idea that I had had eight years prior. and finally I looked at it and it was like, oh, wow, combine that with a circus theme and then I had a really successful game called Ringmaster, and it was, if I hadn't had that file, that game wouldn't exist. Ah. So let me try and...

Let me try and... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, sure. Hit me. Are... Is a game a metaphor for life? Why are games so popular? Yeah. So in the same way that...

You, we, why do we resonate with stories, right? I could turn the question back on you. And I would, and I'll be happy to have you answer it. But the way I would answer is the stories are the way that we learn. They're the way that we make sense of the world, right? That's how we transmit knowledge from, you know, kind of parent to child and throughout communities and tribes. It's how we build our identities, right?

The other piece of that is games. We learn through play, right? You look at, you know, even animals will play, and they'll have play, pretend battles and they'll have these things, right? And so we as a species are built in, it's built into our DNA to play and have these kinds of games that teach us the important things about life and let us experiment with these roles, right? When you're playing pretend as a child and or if you're playing or experiment with our physical

prowess when you're playing baseball or, you know, and then more of the, you know, if you're having a strategic game, more resource management or, you know, how do you kind of trade-offs between different decisions, right? We learn through this safe space that games create for doing the things that really do matter in life, but we can play with these different aspects of our personality when we take on the role of a conqueror, whether that's true in one of your books or that's true in one of my games. It's, I think, the same thing is why these art forms resonate with us so deeply. Well, I certainly can't argue with anything you said there.

I mean, but again, sort of play, like if you look at kittens playing with each other or dogs, puppies playing with each other, it's really kind of they're miming a fight, right? Right. You know, they're, so that's part of that the play is like a battle, a rehearsal for it. Exactly. And I'm sure as you play a game, what's happening, the trail you're leaving behind is a story. Yes, 100%. And in the end, you know, character A wins or whatever.

That's the end of the story. Right. And it starts another story after that. That's right. So it's interesting. Play and story are really kind of two sides of the same coin, I think. Yes, very much so. And when I design games, I think about how does what is the story that I want the,

the player to feel throughout, what stories are. And because they're unlike in a book or a movie, the audience has agency. You want to play with that feeling of agency, right? What is the things that, because I made this choice that led to this dark outcome or to this glorious victory, right? That you feel it in this way that's really powerful. And it creates a lot of really interesting opportunities for the letting the, in the same way that in act two of a story, you want the hero to be in struggle. You want them to be suffering.

You want them, you want the worst of the worst to happen to them. And I joke about this because I'd say when games, my job is in many ways to make you suffer. I want the tension to be there. And so that when it gets resolved, that joy or, you know, the agony of defeat is so much more visceral. And so I'm trying to play with those emotions and those tensions. I think in many ways similar to the way you do in an traditional story. I just have, I have different, you know, you have the typewriter and the words on the page. I have a few different tools at my disposal.

Do you start with or do you have a theme that controls, that goes through a story? Yeah, that's a great thing you think about while you're doing it? Yeah. So what is this story about? Right, right. So when, and I wrote a lot about this in my book, I think like a game designer. But you can start from a few different places, right? So you can start with a theme and say, okay, I know I want this to be, you know, I want you

to feel like a powerful wizard fighting off demons, right? Or I am, or I've worked on major brands. I've designed games for Marvel comics or for World of Warcraft or for a variety of others where, okay, I want to tell the superhero story. How do I do that? There's other times where I'll start with a like a game mechanic or like a system where I'm like, oh, it would be really interesting if you had to decide, you get to pick how many cards you want to draw and there's a poison pill in there. And if you, you know, the more cards you get, the better. But if you draw the poison pill, you, you know, there's this bomb that goes off, right? And that's, so now I'll have that mechanic and I'll be like, okay, what is it, is it a pill?

Is it a bomb? Is it a, you know, whatever? I don't know what the story is yet, but I know that there's this mechanic and there's an emotion, there's a core, what I call a core tension that I'm going to build around. Or it could be that there's a component, right? There's a, I make a game called Bakugan, where there's a toy that's a little plastic ball that rolls. And whenever it hits over, it's got a little magnet on it. If it rolls over something metal, it pops open and becomes a monster.

And so I was tasked with this. designing a game around this component. And so, okay, what's the story? What's the play? It could start from any one of those three places in my experience. Very interesting. And so the, yeah, I think it's fun to sort of talk through the parallels and the distinctions between them.

But at the end of the day, right, what I say is, you know, sort of player experience is the only metric that matters, right? That at the end of the day, your audience, your reader, your, you know, whoever's going of view your art or use your product in a game, right? What you're trying to do is create some kind of emotion or experience in the person you're trying to serve, in the person who's, you know, who's going to be participating in this art form that you're created. Do you think about that in the same sorts of way or is it? I do. I do exactly. That's what you're trying to create. You know, if it's a, if you're writing a song, right, you want to take the listener to a certain

place, right? And make them feel a certain thing. You want to make them feel heartbreak or joy or excitement or fun or whatever it is. And if it's the way you measure success is, does the audience feel that? If they don't, then it doesn't work, right? But yeah, you're trying to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And we had, Morgan Page was the one that connected us and he was on our, he was on the podcast recently. And so it was great to talk to him about exactly music. The same things resonate with people at the top of their music game as do with the people at the top of the writing game and the games game, all of it. So I wanted to try another metaphor out on you, which came up for me as you were talking

about the power of positivity. I came in with the negative forces, right? The consequences in the real world, the things will hold you. And you said, hey, let's focus on the positive for a second, which is great. And I found over my life, my, what I like to use the metaphors of the dark side and the light side of the force, right? That I was very driven growing up as a by the dark side of the force. And what that means is I was not this feeling of like I need to be successful. I need to be perceived as smart and capable.

And like if I don't, if I don't work hard, if I don't do all these things, then I'm not enough. And that was, I didn't consciously know any of this, but it drove me. I mean, it drove me like a demon at my back, right? And I was able to be very successful because of it. And I think that there's a great power, like that, you know, there's great power that comes from the dark side. It can move you and you can move mountains, but, but you, it kind of eats at your soul a little bit, right?

This idea that if I, that's when you are hinged on, if I'm not successful, I'm not good enough, right? When I faced a near bankruptcy of my company or projects didn't work, it was like, I was dying, right? And then over time, I switched, and I have gotten much better, at switching to the light side of the forest, which I think is this positivity to God, is that instead of being running from this demon

or being afraid that if I fail, I'm not enough, right? I'm now looking towards the joy of, wow, what can I create? Like, what is the thing that's possible here? What could I bring into the world? What can I explore and learn and grow into? And that is a, I don't know if I could have had that perspective when I was in my teens and 20s. I'd like to think I could, but I'm not sure, right?

but making that shift has been powerful. So I guess I'll put it back to you with both, does that metaphor resonate with you? And did you find yourself always pulled by the goddess or was it the demons and the dark side that was pushing you at first? I do think it was the demons for me at first. And I think that that's sort of a natural progression

from being a young person who has no agent, in the world and feels that with excruciating pain to, and you're driven, right? I got to learn to do something, you know, I got to learn to play the guitar or something, you know, so I, you know, and then I do think as we sort of mature from archetype to archetype, from the youthful wanderer to the warrior to the father, da-da-da-da-da-da. At some point, you do cross over into giving back, right? right into well what can what can I what can I what can I give the world now that I've now that I've sort of gotten myself up out of the swamp um how can I help those people that are struggling

with the same shit I was struggling with yeah and and I think then you do sort of uh turn you know a little bit more to the to the bright side of the force yeah but yeah I definitely felt for years like the whip was being cracked over my head you know I was cracking it myself um and that if I didn't, you know, somehow surprevail on whatever terms, you know, whatever I could get, then I would become a casualty. And there are a lot of casualties out there, you know, we all can become one at any moment. But I do think as you evolve into more of a mentor role or, you know, a bit of a, of a, somebody possessed of some wisdom that you do want to, you know, help as much as you can.

go to the bright side. Yeah. There's another metaphor. I don't know if you're familiar with David Brooks's concept of the second mountain. No. Yeah. So he's a, you know, New York Times Atlantic writer. Yeah. So his, the idea is that there's this mountain that we climb in our youth that is this mountain of agency and freedom, right? As we just exactly like you were talking about, like breaking out of control of our parents, figuring out what we can do in the world. And during that, climbing that mountain, it's really about me. It's about how do I get, you know, for me, how do I get what I want out of the world. I'm going to do things to figure that out. And you think that that's the peak, right? You can get to the top of that mountain. You get to success, whatever, however you define it.

And then you, only then you realize that this is a pretty, it's a pretty empty place. And then only then when you reach the top of that mountain, can you even see that there's a second far greater mountain over there. And that's the mountain where you actually do bind yourself. Where you do, you say you commit to something that's bigger than you. You give back. You actually will, you know, whether it be community and relationship or, you know, your work, whatever, there are things that you are doing that are not just for getting for yourself that you're doing to give back and to be connected to something that's more meaningful. But that I like this metaphor because it, you know, you couldn't even see it until you got to the top of the first one. Only by seeing

through the emptiness of that kind of personal success can you get to the place where now, okay, you know, freedom and what I want is not what's as important as like how do I feel, how do I create meaning through this, this connection to the world around me? Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Do you know who Richard Roar is by any chance? R-O-H-R? He's a Franciscan or Benedictine monk. Terrific writer. And he sort of says the same thing in a different way. He divides life into part one and part two. In part one, you're creating the vessel, he would say. That's that first mountain, right? And you get to the top of that mountain and then you ask yourself, well, what do I put in this vessel? and then you see the second mountain and that becomes a, you know, so I go along with that.

My metaphor for that, I have a book called The Artist's Journey. And what I say is that life is divided into two halves. The hero's journey is the first half where you're seeking who you are, right? What is my calling? That's the first mountain, I would say. And when you get to that point, let's say you decide, okay, I'm a game designer. or I'm a musician. Then the second half becomes the artist journey.

And the question then is, what do I want to sing about? What is my song? And how can I make myself into an instrument for that song? And at that point, in many ways, I think your life from the outside starts to seem pretty boring. Because you're just kind of in a room. You're in a studio working on something like that. But inside, it becomes really exciting because now you're producing, you're Beethoven producing the works that you were born to do.

You're no longer, you know, the wandering guy traveling around. So I think that second mountain is a great analogy. You know, there's part one, that's part two. And I'm sure there's a third mountain and a fourth mountain. A lot of them after that. Yeah. And so much great things here. And we're running out of time.

So I won't be able to get to all of them. But how? We can do another time, Justin. Great. Yeah, this is, I just, I love talking about this sort of stuff and, and really appreciate the generosity here. How do you think about, you know, a lot of times we've been talking about this as like, you know, this is my, I figuring out who I am and what my mission is in life. How do you think about people? Is it, is it always one mission? Are there ways to transition and kind of peel back layers of identity like layers of an onion? Is it, how do you think about those times when it's ready to move on and you've done, you've done your work in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a. and maybe it's time to go forward.

I do think the onions, the layers peel back, you know. But I think, you know, I've only lived this one lifetime that I'm aware of, so I can't, but I think that it's the same onion, you know. It doesn't become a different onion. But that onion contains multitudes, you know. So, yeah, I do think, you know, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper, but it's always the same onion. Yeah.

I think, well, okay, I want to make sure we reserve some time to talk about your new book. So I have a copy you generously sent me here. I have gotten through about two weeks of it. So let's talk about the daily press field and when, you know, both when it's coming out and what you're hoping to say with this book. The daily press field is a 365-day, you know, big, thick thing. that I in recent years for whatever reason people have kind of reached out to me and said stuff like I want to write a book how the fuck do I do it you know or I want to have some kind of a dream and

how do I do it and I started to think to myself you know in in all of my you know 20 odd books it's just stuff scattered in every part of it you know and I thought how can I bring this together in a one thing that actually would be useful to somebody you know that I could You could sit it down next to your laptop and start at day one and it would help you, you know, as you went through a thing. So that's kind of the idea. Like the first chapter of the daily press field is called Resistance wakes up with me. And it says, and it's true. And it's kind of says that people ask me sometimes, when in my day do I first experience resistance?

And my answer to that is the minute I open my eyes. And so the point of that being day one of this book is that is the establishing of a mindset for the person who's reading this book that they're going to take them through the entire year, where we're going to realize that from the minute we open our eyes, we've got this dragon that we have to slay. And that's the first thing we have to think about before we do anything else. And then the point of the book is to take somebody all the way through the process of a long-term project so that the middle of the daily press field is about the act two horrors, which I'm sure you have in game design or something, right? You get it halfway into something and you go, what the fuck was I thinking when I started to do this, you know? How did it get so hard, you know? And anyway, that's kind of the concept.

Day one, day two, day three, kind of all the way through. And I'm trying to be a mentor to people. You know, it's sort of be your buddy at your shoulder that's going to kick your ass on certain days and it encourage you on other days. So that's the idea for the daily press field. It's just, you know, just out now. I think it's still on pre-orders, but it's about to go into orders. Yeah. Well, I'll make sure that we link to that also in the show notes.

And I want to just share my immense gratitude to you. Like you have been one of the mentors on my shoulders. You have been one of the people that I have spoke to on many occasions in my counseling. Oh, really? Because it is, it's just the heart of that message is so powerful. And so presenting it in this new way is actually exciting. I've been purposely just reading one thing a day, although now that I know what's in the middle, I might skip to the middle because I'm in that way.

It's what I call the dark forest of a project, right? When you're sort of wandering around in the, you know, and you just don't know. And it's scary. You don't know which way to go. And the only thing that serves me now more than it in the past, it's still hard. It's still scary. I still don't know what I'm doing. But I know that I have gotten through this enough times before.

I'm sure I'll get through it eventually. I don't know how or where or when, but I will get through it. And so having that reminder and the ask kick on a day-to-day basis from this book, from your many books has been a real blessing to me. And I've gifted it to dozens of people. I've gifted the War of Arts specifically, but I've read a bunch of your other work. And so I just want to thank you for that and for your time today. Well, thanks for having me, Justin.

I was really looking forward to this conversation because I knew it would go into places that I hadn't been before. And we definitely did that. Yes. We can do it again, you know. You know, reach out to me sometime. We'll do it again. I will 100% will take you up on that.

I have a whole long list of things I wanted to talk about we didn't get to, but I enjoyed the conversation thoroughly. Yeah, this is great. We'll do it again. Yeah. Any other things besides the book, any places people can go, should go to find you, find your stuff, link to things, any socials you want to promote? We've already mentioned the Instagram.

I'm on Instagram. I'm on my own website, stephenpressfield.com. Stephen with a V. And I do a blog every Wednesday, called Writing Wednesdays. It's sort of like a continuing chapter from the War of Art. It's like the 500th chapter from the War of Art. That's kind of a thing. But I'm on Instagram and at my website and you can find the book there at those places. Love it. Okay. Thank you again. So until part two, thanks so much for joining us. All right. Thanks, Justin. This was really interesting. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share

on your favorite podcast platform, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listen to reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry, and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast, Think Like a Game Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to Apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think look atgamedsigner.com or wherever find books or something.