Do you have a Garbage Fountain Accountability Buddy (TM) ?
I'm currently using Twine to make a game that was originally created as a deliberately terrible idea to stress test our marketing formulas while working on Steam discoverability, and I owe it all to my Garbage Fountain Accountability Buddy.
You see, I just entered a garbage-making pact with Lars Doucet (of Fortress of Doors, Land Is a Big Deal , Level Up Labs, and ValueBase fame).
Lars initially pitched the idea of the Garbage Fountain in his seminal blog post (wait for it) Operation Garbage Fountain. (Didn't see that coming, did you?) It's well worth a read, but the gist of it is this:
– We want to do things, but we don't, because we're scared that they will be garbage.
– BUT you can only get better at things by doing them.
– In fact, doing things as much as possible causes you to get better faster than doing them slowly and perfectly.
– So, let's make garbage.
I was quite taken by the idea when I first read it.
I am one of those people who wants to create so many things that sometimes it's hard to sit still (or sleep or cook regular meals or spend time on important adult activities like watching sports/The Great British Baking Show/whatever it is that you people do.) Despite (or perhaps because of this) wild, uncontrollable drive, I finish… maybe 10% of the things that I want to do. In the last year, I successfully wrote a Temple Run game, made a tabletop RPG adventure that won sixth place in a moderately-sized contest, experimented in hand-bound book making (using empty Lego boxes and an old Hawaiian shirt), and… "produced" an album of ambient space music/CIA interrogation tool, but this is a pathetic, minuscule fraction of all of the things that I started.)
After reading his article, I tried experimenting with similar methods myself with… mixed results. I made more than I had in the past, but still much less than I wanted to.
I recently asked Lars how the operation was going for him, and he said that sadly, he had kind of fallen off the wagon. (Quite understandable given the circumstances of his life.)
Well, the chaos gremlin that inhabits the left hemisphere of my brain immediately hijacked control of my mouth and said the following words:
"Want to be accountability buddies?"
So, I am now in a garbage-making pact: Once a week, we are going to meet for a grown-up show and tell where we get to exhibit our terrible ideas and even more terrible executions. "You get points off if it's actually good!" declares Lars.
Garbage Fountain Day is next Wednesday. Lars (I believe) is working on a rudimentary Economy Simulator + Monopoly + AI Agents prototype. (Unless something else catches his imagination in the intervening days. I know he's been wanting to work on his banjo playing.)
So, I'm returning fire by taking an idea that I initially created several years ago to be deliberately unmarketable as a way of stress testing the marketing formulas that we were working on at Level Up Labs AND BRINGING IT INTO ACTUAL EXISTENCE.
AS A CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE-STYLE GAME BOOK.
...You can duel a talking monkey.
(But it will give you the bad ending.)
Stay tuned! We are expecting terrible things.
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