Horny vs Spite

When explaining creativity to newcomers, I express the idea that everyone who makes something makes it out of one of two possible motivating factors, when viewed broadly enough. The line is:

This maxim serves to get the conversation started. You either wanted the thing to exist that didn’t exist yet, or they were mad at the thing for not existing the way they wanted it to. These two driving could also be seen both in terms of just ‘wants’ – but I think that when you simplify it that far, you leave the listener without a valuable handle, a way to grapple with the idea.

Part of being ‘horny’ for things though, it’s not just sexual. It’s a deliberately sexual way to describe it, because that tends to disarm things, and it creates a nice, thematic counterpart to spite. When you think in terms of being horny for things, it describes an almost consumptive desire, you want the thing because you want to have it, or experience it, or yes, use it in that kind of way. I think I first encountered horny in this way as Griffin McElroy describing himself as ‘horny for responsibility,’ or something. The idea that you are trying to represent a want, but a want that’s deeper, more permanent, more whole.

And importantly, you’re horny for something because you want it. It’s got to be personal.

But maybe you’re not horny for the thing you want to make, you’re horny for the results of the thing you want to make. You may want to make crochet doilies of the main character of Bofuri because you think you can sell them and the money, the instrumental result of the thing you make, that’s what you want. You gotta then think about how much you want for what you’re doing. Measure the thing you want versus the thing you gotta do to get it. And that usually means yes, artists, you are under-charging for your work.

When you contemplate if you’re doing something for horny reasons, that’s going to bring with it assumptions; unstated, unconsidered things that you’re doing because they appeal to you that way. Interrogating the ways that things appeal to you is important. It can be easy to just go ‘oh, I like things this way because I do.’ That’s true! That’s just generally true, after all. But you can often find things when you dig into what you like about things, what you find engaging and satisfying.

Consider these game elements:

• When you can fill in all the squares of a game board with exactly the right number of tiles
• When you defeat overwhelming odds in a combat scenario
• When your level of mastery of a game lets you treat an enormous threat like it’s nothing
• When a thrown object bounces off something unexpectedly and creates an impossible situation you weren’t expecting

Each of these situations appeals in a different way. They each scratch different itches, they appeal to different game impulses, and they’re satisfying to different types of players. Understanding what it is you find appealing and engaging about a game experience teaches you how and where you want to focus on making those experiences yourself.

But what of spite?

Spite is the drive that speaks to not the joy of consuming but frustration and rage. Spite is the anger that the thing you want does not already exist, or frustration with the way the thing exists as it is. If you’ve ever played a game or used an application and found yourself angry at the interface and the way it behaves, but think it’d be improved with just a thing, then you’re probably seeing that spite element. There are so many people making Pokemon fan-games, who are starting from a position of spite, wanting to address a problem they see with a game for four year olds that is as much a problem with the game not being built with their interests in mind as any kind of inherent problem with the game.

Spite is when you want to take something away from something. How dare this game engine that’s beautiful and fluid be used to make another game about colonialism. How dare this excellent level design be put to use in a game with such tedious weapons. How dare this idea at the heart of this story be used once again to tell a story about sad Gen-X and early millenial dads.

Spite is powerful. Spite drives us to exceed something; it means that we can look at something we’re unhappy with and know that there’s a way we want it to be that’s better. This can be true of small things but of big things too. There’s a lot of distaste for spite in our stories and our communities. It’s always seen as if trying to do a better job than someone who failed you is a poisoned motivation. I used to buy into that, though, I have more and more come to realise that that’s a position that’s used by people who are doing a bad job who don’t want you to think that you can do a better job.

Spite can be so powerful and so useful when you’re looking at making things where you’re keenly aware of problems. It can be refined, and improved so much by just interrogating that impulse, that this is wrong, and it can be better push. It’s easy to go ‘this is bad’ and ‘this makes me unhappy’ but coming to terms what about it is bad, and what you can do to address it is important. It also means you get to consider what fixing bad things really looks like.

It’s one thing to want to be kind to people because people were unkind to you. That’s reasonable. But it’s not enough to perform kindness. That’s not really doing the thing you want, that’s not really doing a better job. It’s performing an element of it, but understanding what it means to be kind is part of it. Do even better. Do more. Extend out beyond the performance of it, and start looking at what it means to do a better job.

That’s the secret of all of this game design talk. A lot of making games – good games or not! – is about understanding how people think and feel about experiences presented to them. It’s about understanding your own feelings and preferences and then using a system of cardboard and coins to construct that experience in someone else’s mind.

So share your love of something, or share your drive to do better.