作者：Peter Cardwell-Gardner

我记得我们在2015年初的Kickstarter活动时还乐观满满。那时候我不仅获得了一些喘息的空间去争取一份待遇优厚的合同，同时这也像一扇为《Cadence》所开启的大门。在某种程度上看来，Kickstarter将开启我作为游戏开发者这一角色今后的生活。之后我们开始获得一些奖项提名，并进一步明确我们将面对的正确方向。总之，所有的一切都以一种明朗的状态而发展着。

我之所以提到这个是因为我们必须承认高涨的情绪有可能创造出一种具有破坏性的行为，即将可能导致最终的情绪倦怠。与传统的集资方法不同的是，Kickstarter的成功是既定的。不管你是获得资金还是什么，所有人可能会以为你什么都未得到。从心理上来看，这更有助于具有较高风险性的游戏。我还记得当我看到其它失败的Kickstarter时曾想过：“谢天谢地这种情况未发生在我们身上。”但也许这只是一种故作姿态的情绪，因为我仍然会担心自己的活动的结果。

结果便是这让我很容易掉进“让我们更加努力去做好这个”的模式中。当然了，如果你投入更多努力，最终可能会出现“消耗过猛”的情况，而这时候唯一能够起到推进作用的便是让自己好好睡一觉。因为我已经学会如何去识别这种问题，所以我不会让这种情况再次发生，而我主要是受到这种简单的想法所启发：“想象之后的生活会有多美好。”

同时，与一些基于同样目标的小型优秀团队合作将会创造一种很棒的感受。就像我们为了最后几天的赶工而来到我们的视频制作者的家庭办公室以方便彼此间的交流。因为不断逼近的截止日期，我们与合作伙伴之间更是建立起一种亲密的兄弟关系—-我还记得我们的开发伙伴Rodain说过之前他从未感受过这种来自独立开发者的友谊。同时这也会鼓励你更加努力地工作，因为你并不希望让周围的人感到失望。

最终当我们竭尽全力完成所有工作时，我真的已经精疲力尽了。我觉得自己从未像那时候一样迫切想要睡觉。同时我也知道自己的电话伴随着通知信息不断响着。

24个小时后，也就是在补充了一些睡眠后我的意识开始恢复了。来自朋友和当地社区的支持真的让我感到非常惊讶。当看到一些朋友和家人开始资助我们的Kickstarter活动时我简直措手不及。那时候我的第一反应便是满满的内疚，因为我所在乎的这些人正在为我那愚蠢的游戏而花钱—-但之后我也意识到这也是他们在表达相信我的一种方法。因为游戏开发中总是充满自我怀疑与焦虑，所以看到自己所喜欢的人的这些做法真的让我非常感动。

但是我没有太多喘息的时间了，因为我马上就要搭上前往旧金山参加GDC的飞机。在这点上我还是有点小聪明的，因为我让自己提前前往旧金山从而可以留出几天时间倒倒时差。但是我并未拥有平和的休息时间，因为我发现我们的Kickstarter活动很快便失去了活力，而摆在我们面前的道路也变得更加崎岖。

GDC是一场重量级会议：在这里每分钟便会出现数千个参与者，群组，活动，以及你所崇拜的偶像—-而所有的这一切都足以支撑你的首次亮相。你之所以会花那么多钱并飞跃大半个地球去参加这样的会议是因为在这样噪杂的环境中你能够认识一些之前没有机会认识的人。当然了，没有人会主动向你伸出橄榄枝，你需要做的便是让自己变成一个积极主动的人，并不断去推销自己的作品，因为你永远都不知道有谁在真正认真听你讲话。

如果你是一个内向的人，这一任务可能对你来说非常艰巨，就像我便一直很羡慕那些可以大胆地做着这些事的人。而因为Kickstarter活动的衰败，创造“奇迹”的压力变得更加迫切。在这种环境下，你需要表现得足够友善且足够积极，如此所有人才会相信你所分享的内容能够让他们的生活变得更加美好。

同时，如果我的表现过于夸张，别人可能会觉得我动机不良。即我是在分散他们本来面向自己真正关心的内容的注意力。当我非常欣赏并尊敬的人产生这种想法时，我便会非常受伤。我甚至曾经躺在旅馆的地板上好几分钟以尝试着找回原本的自己。

尽管他们不清楚我正在经历什么，但还是很感谢在GDC上所遇到的新老朋友。仅仅只是围在我身边并询问我的工作近况便足以调动我的情绪，我也尽量让自己能够拥有有趣的GDC经历。而在这里我觉得失败感是最致命的因素：这会让你想要找个地方躲起来—-你将不会看到任何机遇，因为你总是认为自己没有这样的运气。

我们余下的Kickstarter活动将只是慢慢走向尽头，而我也并未花太多时间去接受这一结果。因为我已经耗尽权利且没有多余的经历去抵抗这样的结果。似乎舔舔伤口并储存好精力去应对下一次挑战是更加明智的做法。然后事后反省却不是一件容易的事。我记得有些人出于好意尝试着去提供给我们一些具有建设性的意见，但是对于我们来说平静地去听取这些意见是根本不可能的事。幸好我已经不是年轻人了，所以我知道如何去调节自己的心态，但同时我也认为这里存在其它需要掌握的内容。

显然在经过漫长的工作后我已经耗尽体力。这意味着当活动不能实现目标时，我便会觉得自己遭遇了失败。此外，当人们在分析活动时，我会觉得他们是在批评我的行动并攻击我的动机。但我还是会尽可能维持一种正确的心态，记得活动所创造的一些积极面，同时也尝试着将这一失败当初一种经验教训。

在接下来几个月里我更是注意到其它连锁效应。就像你是否认识一些本来很喜欢一家餐馆，但是在吃到一次不好吃的菜品后突然不喜欢它的朋友？这便是一种“分离”心理，即将保护你避开一些不开心的事。而我也发现自己曾尝试着创造与Kickstarter的心理距离。这并不是说我将放弃Kickstarter这一平台，而是这将导致我们更难去进行其它Kickstarter活动。

让人惊讶的是，这种影响力也蔓延到了《Cadence》上。我发现自己不再那么热衷于这款游戏了，尽管我们在Kickstarter活动期间与之后都收到许多正面反馈。这也引出了信任危机让我们很难去把握这种半成机会。竞争不再像表面看来那样值得参与进去。确保粉丝们一直热衷于更新内容就像你永远都忙活不来的家庭杂务一般。你的生产力会开始下降，并且你将很难再专注于任何任务，因为这时候的你已经不确定自己是否还能走向正确的道路了。

indie(from gamedev)

最后我问了自己一个有价值的问题：我们是否真的失败了？《Cadence》的故事非常长，所以谁会知道如果我们使用来之不易的经验先在Steam上发行游戏或进行完整的游戏发行会是怎样的结果。这是我一直在学习的有关成功与失败之间的关系的有趣问题—-在两年间我一直致力于《Cadence》，我的失败率也显著上升了。比起我在理论上的实践或者作为一名雇员，我在此遭遇了更频繁的拒绝与失望。但同时我们也获得了一些难能可贵的经历，并遇到了那些只有选择这条道路才能够遇到的机遇。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

When Your Best Isn’t Good Enough: A Tale of Failure (Part II)

By Peter Cardwell-Gardner

I remember the lead-up to our Kickstarter campaign (early 2015) as being a time alive with optimism. Not only was I earning some welcome breathing room on a well-paid contract gig, but it felt like doors were finally starting to open for Cadence. In a way, it felt like the Kickstarter was going to be the thing that would break the dam wall and be the beginning of the rest of my life as game developer. Along the way we started to pick up a few award nominations, bolstering the sense we were pointing in the right direction. In short, I was flourishing and things were bright.

I mention this because it’s important to acknowledge how feeling emotionally high enabled a destructive behaviour that paved the road to emotional burnout. Unlike traditional methods of funding, Kickstarter success is cut and dry. Either you get the money, or else everyone very publicly sees you get nothing. Psychologically speaking, this makes for a very high stakes game. In fact I can remember looking at other failed Kickstarters and thinking: “thank god that isn’t going to happen to us”. But perhaps this sentiment is best described as posturing, because I was still deeply anxious about how things would pan out.

Consequently this made it was very easy for me to slip into a pattern of “let’s work just a little bit harder on this, you know, to make sure”. Of course, if you keep working just a little bit harder here and there, you eventually end up in a situation where you’re horrendously overcommitted, and the only fuel left for the fire is your sleep and physical well-being. As much as I’ve learnt to recognise the symptoms and swore I’d never let it happen again, I was undone by that very simple thought: “imagine how much better life will be afterwards”.

In the same breath, collaborating with a small team of awesome people with a common goal can be a wonderful feeling. In this case we’d camped out in our video guys’ home office for the final days of the lead-up to optimise communication time. The looming deadline for something we cared about created a bold sense of camaraderie and brotherhood – in fact I can remember Rodain, my development partner, saying he’d never felt indie fellowship as fiercely before. But this can seductively encourage you to push even harder, because now you don’t want to let down those around you.

When we eventually, exhaustedly, flicked the switch to go live I was totally shattered. The following hours were a hazy blur that could fit right into a drug-addled Johnny Depp biopic. I can’t remember another time I’ve so desperately wanted to sleep, only to be denied by an adrenaline hangover pushing thoughts around my head. It couldn’t help that I knew my silenced phone was simultaneously blowing up with notifications.

24 hours later, a modicum of sleep acquired, the gravity of what happened started to dawn on me. The support from friends and the local community was amazing. But I was caught off guard when some friends and family started making very sizeable contributions to our Kickstarter. My first reaction was pang of guilt, that people I care about were spending so much on my silly game – but then I realised that actually this was their way of showing me that they really believe in me. Considering game development is so often filled with self doubt and anxiety, this was an overwhelming feeling that bought more than a tear to my eye.

There wasn’t much time to catch my breath however, as I was soon on a plane off to San Francisco for Game Developers Conference (GDC). I was at least smart enough to plan in a few days to recover from jet lag once I arrived (I may have also nabbed an airport-priced massage during my layover that was money gladly spent). I can’t say my rest was peaceful though, as it was rapidly becoming apparent our Kickstarter was losing momentum and the path forward started to look increasingly steeper. My stomach was in double and triple knots.

GDC is a massive conference: thousands of people, parties, events and meeting personal heroes by the minute – more than enough to make your first time completely overwhelming. But conferences are also what you make of them, the reason you spend so much money and travel halfway around the world is because this chaotic environment has the ability to create connections and introduce you to people you might never otherwise have access to. Of course, no one is going to hand this to you – you must be open to possibilities, network like a demon, and always be selling because you never know who is listening.

As a recovered introvert, this is already a tough ask, and I’m always envious of anyone who could shamelessly perform in this manner. But against the backdrop of a flagging Kickstarter, the pressure to create some “magic” was immense. Besides, I’d come too far to not give it my all, so time and again I’d throw myself into the fray and pitch Cadence to people I’d only just met. Ideally in such situations you want to be friendly, energetic, and most of all believe you’re making the other person’s life better by sharing your awesome thing with them.

But instead, being so emotionally depleted, it always felt like I was operating with a very obvious ulterior motive. That I was the noise distracting them from what he or she actually cared about. This felt particularly brutal when that someone was a person I deeply admired and respected. Often I left an interaction feeling like my psyche had been raked over a bed of hot coals. At its worst I remember taking a few minutes to lay spread-eagled on my hostel dorm-room floor, just trying to recapture a little bit of myself.

Even though they didn’t know exactly what I was going through, I was immensely grateful to have friends, both new and old, at GDC. By simply being around and caring about my cause they lifted my mood and I managed to leave GDC having had a good time. But I think this points to one of the most insidious things about feeling unsuccessful: it tends to make you cower, to want to hide yourself – to not see opportunities where before there were none and sabotage your own luck.

The remainder of our Kickstarter campaign was a slow death, but it didn’t take me long to accept the outcome. I was exhausted and simply had no more fight left in me. It seemed far wiser to simply lick our wounds and save our energy for the next scrap. Nevertheless the post mortem was really difficult. I remember people, with the best of intentions, trying to give constructive criticism – but it was almost impossible to hear it without getting very upset. Thankfully, I’m old enough to know when it’s time to go for a walk, but I think here lies another clue.

Clearly, over the hours of hard graft I had invested countless little pieces of myself. This meant that when the campaign failed to meet its goal, it felt like I had failed. Additionally, when people analysed the campaign, it felt like they were picking apart my actions and personally attacking my motivations. But I tried my best to keep the right perspective, to remember the many positives of the campaign and to try and frame the failure as a learning experience.

In the months that followed I noticed another knock-on effect. Do you know any friends who love a particular restaurant but then after a bad experience suddenly it’s the worst? The psychological term for this is ‘splitting’, which acts as a defence mechanism to protect you from unpleasantness by writing it off wholesale. In this case I found myself trying to get as much psychological distance from the Kickstarter as possible. This isn’t to say I went around trashing Kickstarter as a platform, but it made it very difficult to look at our own page or to back any other Kickstarters.

Alarmingly, this effect spilled over into Cadence as well. I found myself far less enthused about the game, despite all of positive feedback we received during and after the campaign. This points to a crisis of confidence that makes it hard to take those half chances. Competitions don’t seem like they are worth entering anymore. Keeping your followers engaged with regular updates is a chore you can’t manage. Your productivity wavers, and it becomes hard to put your head down and focus on any one task because it’s hard to believe you’re still heading in the right direction.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself a valuable question: did we actually fail? The story of Cadence is a long way from done, so who knows what might happen when we use our hard won experiences to launch on Steam early access or do a full release. This is a curious thing I’m learning about the relationship between success and failure – in the two years I’ve been working on Cadence, my failure rate has gone up significantly. I’ve been rejected and fallen short of expectations more times than I ever did academically or as an employee. But in between, we’ve also had amazing experiences and been presented with opportunities that could only be won by walking this path.

One perfect example happened during that crazy GDC week. One of my hostel dorm mates innocuously mentioned Stugan – a non-profit accelerator for indie developers to work on their game in Swedish country side. And now, four months later, I’m thrilled to be writing this article from a lakeside cabin, one week into my two month long stay. Being surrounded by 22 other indies so far has been an incredible boost to morale. Maybe it was a mistake to try and promote a Kickstarter during GDC? But then again I wouldn’t be here, and right now the view is pretty great!(source:gamedev)