The Sherlock Holmes Approach to Problem Solving, or: Why I Told Google About Non-Programming Game Engines

…because every now and then, you just have to break the aggregate feed with your title. (Sorry in advance.)

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Sherlock Holmes (or, rather, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) was speaking of detective work, but this approach is surprisingly useful in other fields. Game development, for one.

When applied in a creative situation, this approach looks like:

1. Assume a given problem is solvable.
2. Establish criteria for an acceptable solution.
3. Rule out all the approaches to solving the problem that don’t meet the necessary criteria.
4. Select your solution(s) from among the remaining approaches.

When is this a good approach? When the potential solution space is overwhelmingly large or invisibly small.

Here’s an example that doesn’t relate to game design. Back in August, I received an email from someone I knew at Google. “Would you be interested in giving a talk at our office, about video game design or some related topic?”

Um. Yes? Yes. “I’d love to give a talk at Google! Can you tell me a bit more?”

He gave me a quick summary – plan for an hour, try to break it up into 30-45 minutes plus Q&A afterward. He included a link to the Talks at Google series on YouTube.

There are some people who can accept an invitation like this calmly. In this field, they are probably people like Jane McGonigal (director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future, author of New York Times Bestseller SuperBetter) and Jean-Baptiste Huynh (founder and CEO of WeWantToKnow, creator of DragonBox and DragonBox Elements). They are mostly not me.

Most of the people who visit Google have something obvious to talk about – their new book, their concert tour, their physics breakthrough. I haven’t released a large-scale game since Ollie Ollie Oxen Free, and I haven’t worked on a commercial game since Revolution 60.

It sounds like an icebreaker at parties. “You’re going to give a one-hour talk at Google. What’s your topic?”

I made the mistake of sorting the YouTube list of past videos by popularity. I recognized a disconcerting number of names. Then I closed the browser and wondered if I should have said no.

…but – I wouldn’t have been invited if they weren’t interested. If someone didn’t think I had something worth saying.

I decided they were right, because it was much more helpful than deciding they were wrong. With that assumption in place, I set out my criteria:

• It had to be a topic within video game development.
• It had to be a topic accessible to people who aren’t in game development.
• It had to be a topic where I have at least as much authority as anyone else they could have invited.

This knocked out huge swathes of the solution space, including game design (broadly or specifically), playtesting, production, game development communities (indie dev, altdev, intfiction, etc), the current state of interactive fiction, and all specific game engines. I can speak as an expert on all of these topics, but most of them failed the second criterion, the third criterion, or both.

I realized my topic had to be deeply informed by my personal experience.

And then I remembered a conversation from a few weeks prior, when I went to brunch with some friends and we started discussing what our social media presence looked like from the outside, and how weird the concept of “personal brand” is, and what we thought people thought about us based on our Twitter streams.

I said, “I guess my personal brand is ‘Let’s all make games, hooray!'” Then, rather crestfallenly: “That doesn’t really say ‘give me loads of money’, does it….”

My friend leaned across and patted my hand. “No, but it’s very you.”

Anyway – I remembered that conversation and everything clicked. I knew that I could talk about the experience of wanting to make video games, and not knowing how, with as much authority as anyone else in the world. Gaining the ability to make video games was transformational for me.

I care deeply about video games as an art medium, and I believe in self-expression as a basic human need. Historically, video game creation was limited to programmers (and people who knew programmers, and people with the money to hire programmers).

But a increasing number of game engines are being created with non-programmers as a target audience. And every day, more people are having the same experience that I did. Which means that more people from more backgrounds are creating more games from more perspectives.

It’s nothing short of an artistic and cultural revolution.

…and that was a topic worth telling Google about.

I sent in my proposal. They said “yes, that sounds good, you’re scheduled for October 15 wait no 14.” I hyperventilated for about two months straight.

I went to Google yesterday. They fed me lunch, they brought me to a stage, they wired me up with a microphone, and I told them about art and passion and self-expression and video games and the people who make them. (For the curious, no money exchanged hands. But the brussels sprouts were tasty.)

I’m deeply grateful to all the non-programming game devs who shared their experiences with me beforehand. I was honored to hear your stories, and I only regret I couldn’t have included more of them in the talk. Thank you.

I am grateful also to all the software developers who chose to make game engines that don’t require a programming background, especially when they make their engines available for free. You are literally changing the world for the better.

The talk will hit YouTube in three to four weeks. I’ll share the link when it does.