The Burden of Creation

An uncomfortable but persistent set of thoughts has rebounded through my head in recent years. When I'm gone, what will I leave behind? How do I want to spend my time? Am I making the right moves?

One day, these weren't just transient feelings. Instead, I realized that they had become unnegotiable concerns.

Background

When I was younger, I spent the majority of my free time playing video games. I was perfectly content with spending 8,9,10 hours per day consuming content that others had created. I don't necessarily regret the time that I spent playing video games - after all, I did enjoy the video games a lot.

But one day, consuming was no longer meaningful enough for me. In a slow downward spiral that took the course of several years, all of my old hobbies and interests suddenly stopped entertaining or fulfilling me. It just wasn't enough anymore.

In January 2025, I finally realized my time had come to create, and thus Path of Magic was born.

The Weight of Agency

Creating my own world defined by my own rules is exactly what I needed. But creation comes with unique challenges. You see, creation takes time. Agency is fulfilling, but it's hard to know if you're spending your time doing the right thing. This leads to many hours of self doubt and stressful decision making. It leads to many days, possibly weeks, exploring avenues that just don't work or must be completely scrapped later. Of course, this is all part of the process, but it's not easy.

Using the following command, I tracked all of the lines of code ever committed to the Path of Magic repository.

1git log --numstat --pretty=tformat: | awk '{ add += $1; subs += $2 } END { printf "Lines Added: %s\nLines Deleted: %s\nTotal Churn: %s\n", add, subs, add + subs }'
2
3# output:
4Lines Added: 96920
5Lines Deleted: 37251
6Total Churn: 134171

This means of the code I've written for Path of Magic, I've discarded roughly 38% of all the work I have done. Refinement is simply a part of the engineering process. I do not mourn what I had to sacrifice, but looking back I may have not been as motivated knowing how much I'd throw away.

The Weight of Uncertainty

As discussed, building things takes time. Building the right things takes refinement and sacrifice.

Through all of this, I still can't be certain I'm building the right thing. I can build what I think will work, but at the end of the day, it's all about the players. And the truth is, it's possible that players won't like what I spent my precious time building. Although playtests are useful, I've found that they rarely indicate whether players will actually find your game enjoyable as a whole, especially in the long run.

This uncertainty is something I grapple with every day, but make no mistake: I do not let it stop me in my tracks.

Carrying the Weight

With creation comes the cost of many burdens. Why do I choose to carry this weight? The truth is, I have to be brave enough to believe that what I'm doing is worth it. It's entirely possible that others do not see value in Path of Magic when it releases. Yet I do not let this stop me.

Although creation comes at a high cost, it's the most fulfilling thing I've done in my life. I might not succeed, but one day I can at least look back knowing that I tried. That pays for all of the weight of creation in gold.