Show your work

I’ve been reading Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work, which is like this great little book that perfectly straddles the line between motivational anecdotal bullshit (e.g. the Ira Glass quote on the ‘taste gap’) and practical advice (e.g. ‘have your own domain name that people can associate with you’).

For the past year or so I’ve been taking part in a 1 Game a Month group here in Dublin. It’s a great group, full of lovely, helpful and enthusiastic people and I’ve learned loads about all sorts of different subjects I’m interested in: game design, programming, art, and sound. But I know people are frustrated with me there because getting me actually to let them see what I’ve done is like pulling teeth. I’ll keep it all to myself.

Around Christmas, I took part in a gamejam where I made a game where you had to navigate using sound. This was the first time I’d ever let anyone else play something I’d created and it scared the shit out of me.

I want to get better at this - showing people my works in progress. And most of all, showing people my finished work.

So here we go.