(To limit the scope of my discussion, I’m using ‘creating’ to refer to releasing digital or physical media. I tend to use game comparisons as that’s my experiene.)

Context

Last December I was fortunate enough to attend a live interview between Hideki Kamiya (Okami, DMC, etc) and Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil, God Hand, etc.), two accomplished action-game designers in the Japanese AAA industry. At the end, there was a Q&A, so of course, I decided to ask their thoughts about maintaining creative input/output as they aged through their 50s. Mikami likened it to a constipation metaphor of sorts (balancing input and output), and Kamiya didn’t seem to think about his process in these terms, although he did mention recently feeling very moved by the all-female Takarazuka theatre. (I immediately set about applying for a Takarazuka credit card to bid for tickets, of which I’ve successfully won zero…)

Why did I ask this? I’m always curious about the perspective of people who have maintained some level of creativity and integrity for two or more decades into adulthood, rather than phoning it in and resting on their laurels.

There seems to be anxiety around losing the ‘spark’ and motivation of youth, as one gets older and wants to be creative. Since I’ve been making games and music for 13 years or so now, I thought I should write about this!

Youth isn’t an advantage (in the long term)

If you are creating stuff, chances are you or someone you know has felt anxious about ‘not doing enough’ by the time you’re 30. Or that you’ll run out of inspiration when you get old. Or, you’re above 30 and feel you haven’t done enough. Symbolic of all of this is the ‘age in bio,’ (for creatives, often an expression of pride yet underlying aging anxiety) or on a wider scale, the entire concept of ‘20 under 20’ or ‘30 under 30’. Amongst the various types of prejudiced ‘-ism’s in our society, it’s quite bizarre that ageism is so widespread, accepted, even praised - given that we will all age.

In the context of game-making (or creating), there’s a mistaken assumption that being young makes you more creative. It’s easy to see why: it’s a talking point when a young person puts out their first hit - and curiously, it’s not a talking point when an older person puts out their 20th game. Humans collectively do a disservice to older people, but they also do a disservice to the young by placing their worth in their age. It’s like planned obsolescence in a human context.

Some thoughts on youth and creativity:

1. It generally takes humans until the age of 16-22 to develop the mental faculties to process - and creatively output - their life experience up to that point.

2. People tend to lose creative confidence as they age and enter the workforce, making it harder to pick up or try new things

3. Younger people are more tapped into the zeitgeist, and younger people tend to be the source of virality/popularity

4. Younger people tend to push their bodies to their limits more - all-nighters, long hours, etc.

When you combine these factors, it’s no wonder that we tend to see more popular games from people in their 20s! In many ways, if you want to make at least one hit, being young is an advantage. You have the yet-untapped experience of your childhood, the physical endurance, an awareness of what sells, and you’re not yet afraid to do it. But if we take into account that it’s never healthy to set your expectations at ‘making a hit’, a lot of these traits matter less, and it’s never too late to start or find a creative spark.

And what about when these factors stop applying, one by one? You can’t rely on these factors forever. Your childhood will fade, you won’t be tapped into the zeitgeist, adult society is set up to chip away at confidence to try new things, and you will have to reckon with your body.

Although being young sets someone up with a process for producing interesting creative work, and people of all ages can produce valuable and interesting work, being young does not inherently set one up with a process that will work as they age.

When Youth Dries Up

By the time someone decides to be ‘creative’, they’ve already built up at least 12 years of conscious life experience. If youth seem more creative, it’s because they are excited to finally have the skills to express their wellspring of experience to the world. It’s worth noting that you never lose this resource; it’s carried into adulthood. Plenty of people start creating at later ages and realize what a rich variety of experience they have to draw on!

Why is childhood valuable? Assuming peacetime circumstances, society is set up to put us through 10+ years of mandatory socializing, activities, meeting people. This immediately ends after high school or college. Stuff happens at such a fast speed that it’s no wonder we all spend our lives unpacking stuff from it.

While it’s possible to rely solely on childhood, truly good creative work mixes in recent experience as well. Every new thing you do might spark a way of relooking at something that happened in the past.

But adult society isn’t set up to shuttle us off to sports competitions or our friend Dowd’s house: it wears us out and hopes we’ll binge on something to hold us over.

The reason people find it challenging to pursue creative work into adulthood - be it hobbyist or full-time - is because society isn’t set up to encourage us to seek out new experience. This curiosity comes naturally to some, but not all.

For example:

• It takes more effort to make friends as you get older and lack a common space to see each other each day.

• It can be scarier to try new activities when you don’t have classmates who want to try, too.

• When you’re tired it can be easier to load up the same gacha game instead of something more interesting.

• When you’re tired you might cut off a potential conversation with a short or uninterested answer.

It can feel hard to do new things as an adult… but it is necessary. I truly think if you want to create satisfying creative work in your life, there’s no way around just getting used to the friction of being curious and pursuing new experience.

The solution for maintaining creative input is simply to be a ‘sicko’ about something that takes effort to do - especially involving human-to-human interaction, whether it be studying different types of cement, reflecting on some period of your life, or reading through and thinking about some dead author’s essays and writings.

It gets harder to build habits as you get older: but you should try! Never too late to start. And if you’re ever scared, just remember:

What ACTUALLY ruins creativity?

The death of creative health is rooted in cynicism. This can range from business-y cynicism - “oh, we have to make money, so we have to make this horseshit game about blah blah blah”, to simply being an insufferable cynic. If you’re going to be miserable, find problems in everything, be a pest who leaves negative Steam Reviews, and not try something because you’re convinced it’ll be pointless, then you’ll soon find this affects your self-worth and creative confidence.

Be a cynic too long, and you will one day find yourself alone. Friendless, single, because all you do is complain, unwilling to compromise. You will find yourself in a room: probably small without much sunlight. A room with only the glow of the single game your childhood self opened itself enough to love. The rest of the room is filled with the emptiness of an adulthood spent discarding everything that didn’t meet your impossible expectations. You curse the sun for each new day it brings without a sequel. Soon, you start to block out the sun, too. The nights come and go. Zero creative input. The world comes and go but you deny experiencing even a drop of that kaleidoscope of possibility. You have chosen the bad end, and this is you:

Sometimes, it’s important to be a hater, but you also need to know when to be a lover.