Failure. What does it bring to mind? Most likely a stinging sensation no doubt. I would agree that failure is the pathway to success and you can't get to the great stuff without it. What they don't tell you is that the sting never really goes away. I would always hesitate to put this in any version of a portfolio of mine over the years because it brought up a lot of painful memories. Who wants to sit in an interview and be like "Uh, yeah, that? That's the thing that I ... couldn't ..." Then break out in an ugly cry. This was my first major project I initiated and lead that required 3 years of work. I got to research, co-design, illustrate, character design, graphic design, world-build, do video instructions and playtest. It sent me to Gen Con for the first time as well as hours of playtesting with target audiences. One day after we were almost ready to deliver the final product, I heard the words, "Sorry, we can't afford it right now." which were told to me in the hallway outside the men's room. The perfect metaphorical setting for dreams going down the drain. I kept telling myself people in a lot of industries go through that all the time. However, it didn't make it less painful. I failed to bring it to market and the game would never see the light of day. Time to move on.
The success came not too long after we decided to gut the characters and story out of the game and create graphic novels out of all of it. We ended up doing something that we never did in that company before. We weaved 70+ pages of graphic novel throughout 32 weeks of curriculum design in 4 books in 4 years. Had we not created the game, we wouldn't have gotten to the real innovation. Innovative curriculum that has been circulated hundreds of thousands of times to kids all over the US and impacted countless lives. Thanks failure, but I still don't like you. #failure #gamedesign #innovation #illustration
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