Making things with others, especially those I love
Comparison, Competition and Collaboration
“Why are you always finding flaws in the stuff I’m making”
“Why are you getting so defensive?”
“All level design ideas I come up with you always find 20 flaws in them, I am not bashing stuff you’re sharing”
“But when I am asking questions, I am actually engaging with what you are sharing with me, if I said nothing that's when you should be worried about apathy”
I am lucky that almost everyone I collaborate with, I really like them as people. I could even say that I love my regular collaborators, they are my close friends and I don’t just make things to pay the bills. For at least the last 7 years, I have spent 50% or more of my time on projects with no direct financial return. Often times though, the general sentiment in the world can be to not work with your close friends or your family, it can lead to messy situations.
Messy situations like arguing with my sister about level design, but just like arguments about dishes are never about the dishes, this argument was also not about the level design. Whenever I am collaborating with someone (sorry Charu but you are the perfect example for this article), especially on a piece of work that needs a merging of our visions, this strange part of me comes out. It is always hyper vigilant about whether I am heard, understood, and most of all respected. “Do you care about what I have to say? and will you give it the space I think it deserves.” This feeling used to be much much stronger 5 years ago, which is when this conversation took place.
Charu and I were making our first game together that wasn’t for a client, it was just the two of us, and we were also embarking upon this adventure of making 6 games together over the course of 6 months. Even before starting, I knew it would be a bit crazy. 15 days into our first game, having gone through some cycles of procrastination and avoidance, we had our first big fight. Not in this project, but in life. Yes, almost 25 years of being sisters and we never fought. But something about collaboration is so personal that all criticism feels personal.
Her statement gave me pause though. Why do I assume questions are coming from a space of criticism and not from a space of curiosity. Her point was completely fair, her questions really were coming from a space of curiosity, but I was not able to receive them as such.
Side note, I despise social media psycho analytical short form content. Reels that tell you what someone else meant by some action they did or they said. Like, seriously, just go and ask the person, don't presume what they mean. Human mind is in general primed to think we are telepathic and all the statements that come from someone else are filtered through what we “think” they mean, but in reality more often than not are just a way in which our worst critic’s voice comes out loud. I wasn’t sure about my own game design and I wanted to blame her, coz “if I think its not good, I’m certain she also thinks its bad”.
But I am glad I had that conversation with her. It really helped me at least ask myself, is this coming from curiosity? or from criticism? Is the criticism my own voice?
Mistaking curiosity for criticism is not the only challenge one faces when working with someone close. There is also the problem of sneaky competition. If I’m making something with someone I care about, I obviously want the final output to be great, and I obviously trust the person and their skills, but what is interesting is that there is a part of me, that wants to be just a “sliver” better than them at the thing we are making. It’s a weirdly shame inducing thing to acknowledge to be honest, because what kind of a mean person internally competes with those she is working with? Those she claims to care for and respect and love? The insidious thing though is the fact that this is also the part that gets triggered when the other person is being “better” than me.
I have personally experienced two reactions to that, either “well then maybe they don’t need me in this project anyways and they wouldn’t have worked with me if they weren’t so close to me” or “ I will show them next time”. This is still a work in progress, reminding myself that I am not really trying to defeat the ones I am collaborating with. That we are in this as an “us” and not a “you” vs “I”. It isn’t easy though. Far easier to slip into patterns of subtle competition.
Now, a reasonable person here might say, then don’t work with people you love and care for. If it makes you interface with rather unsavoury parts of yourself then the better path is possibly to actually work with folks you can maintain one hand distance with.
I am very greedy though. I know the kind of creativity that comes out when I truly deep down trust the other person, it can never come out anywhere else. No amount of measured collaboration will ever be able to achieve even 10% of the depth that those things that are made with these super close collaborators. Part of the reason is that these people are able to trust me in ways that I probably don’t trust myself yet. I have this idea of practical trust and emotional trust (maybe an article on that in the future) that I heard/read somewhere years ago, and I think for me to get the best results in any situation, I do need both of those kinds of trust. I do need to know that if I fall this person will catch me. This just not the kind of thing that one can do alone, because trust requires another, by definition (really, please don’t try trust falls alone).
I know that I would not have been able to be even half the game maker if I didnt collab with my sister. I know that if Kahran was not around me pushing me to do things, I’d probably have ignored so many different aspects of what I could even dream of being possible. And if Varun didn’t take a chance on me back in 2023, I’d not have gotten to explore my own systems and ops oriented abilities.
Even with the uncomfortable parts of me that come out, the ones that I would not want to see or feel, ultimately making things with people is still worth it. After all, I get to create things I could have NEVER made alone. And that, to me, is worth the price.
Because I talked so much about my amazing sister Charu, here is an illustration from one of the games we working on together, back in 2020 on our 6 games in 6 months spree. Here is a link to her Itch page where you can check out all the games that we made and more that she made. Games are here
This was so beautiful. Thank you for writing it. I also especially love doing creative projects with people I closely trust and know.