I have often seen a passionate person perform their craft, and their enthusiasm ends up flowing into me. I hear a beautiful violin performance, and I’m convinced that I should get a violin. Although I should definitely take up the violin, what I am really searching for is the passion that the performer themself had. I used to get lost into hijacking other’s passions, trying them on for size. That taught me how to learn, and how I learn best. My definition of passion is doing something for its own sake. That’s my definition of art as well, so in my eyes, all artists who are true to themselves are passionate by default.

I’ve been thinking a lot about inspiration and its importance in the creative process. For me there seems to be two types of inspiration, the first is when you see or hear something that has the possibility to motivate you into action. That’s the common one. Maybe it’s a charismatic speaker that gives you a sentence that resonates, and you’ll change how you act for the next hour or rest of the day. It’s that passion that you’re trying on for size, but I think there should be a distinction between that kind of inspiration and the second type. Maybe we should call that first type a sort of motivation, because the second type is the feeling you get when your foundation is absolutely rocked. Things that used to make sense all of a sudden don’t, and things that you didn’t think were important are suddenly unavoidable. Real inspiration grips you and demands your attention. The hairs on your arm stand up, and you get the sudden urge to act instantly. We need to pay attention to those signs, that’s your self alerting you to a higher path.

I felt this life altering inspiration after I played a game called The Witness. A lot of that game consists of walking around a deserted island and solving puzzles by drawing lines. The Witness is my favorite game, and it’s about walking around an island and drawing lines? This is where I’m reminded of the difference between plot and story. Plot is what happens, but the story is where all the meaning is derived. The plot of The Witness could be considered as simple as walking around, drawing lines, and solving puzzles, but the story of The Witness can’t really be put into words. It’s a game that teaches you how to learn if you keep an open mind, and it also lets players discover for themselves what meaning to extract from it. This all might sound cryptic. I can’t exactly explain what it’s about since the game is subjectively cerebral. For me, it’s about dedicating yourself to paying attention. If you’re willing, you will learn to see. ‘See’ in this context is used as a form of understanding. You can see with your eyes all the things from the beginning, but you aren’t seeing them in their true form until you dedicate yourself to being attentive.

The Witness allowed me to grasp what makes video games my most interesting artistic medium. Video games are fundamentally different than other art because they are inherently interactive. This interactivity gives agency to the player, and if the game is designed well it can create an unparalleled experience in terms of learning about one’s self. The game can’t really stand alone, because it needs a player in order for it to be a game. This relationship allows the gameplay to be a dance between the player’s choices and the game design itself. There is magic that happens in The Witness. The magic is born from attention and effort, and it rewards you with opportunities and insight. 

Long story short, I played this game and part of Jonathan Blow’s psyche was encoded into my brain. Non-verbal communication deeper than I can explain creeped into my mind’s eye and illuminated something deep inside me. It proved that something so seemingly plain could simultaneously hold the complexity and truth of the world inside it. The Witness opened my eyes to the beauty of programming since, after all, this entire product is reducible to 1’s and 0’s. How would one even embark on such a monumental task as making a piece of work like this? It takes multiple years of dedication and learning to even start to be able to make anything this good in the programming world.

I did a lot of thinking about whether this game was just another violinist that I could admire and borrow from, but the more I think about it, I realize that this game falls into that truly inspirational category. The type of experience that knocks me on my ass and makes me pay attention to what I’m feeling. The feeling is that I need to dive into making my art, hold nothing back, and give it all I got. Real inspiration is something that cannot be dismissed. If you find that feeling, I can only encourage the possibility of you entertaining it. I have no idea what will result of this, but I’m trusting that feeling deep in my gut that says this is worth it all.