Tatu Pohjavirta, an experienced CEO and futurist, recently posted a brilliant take on why Venture Capitalists, and so developers, get stuck. They ask, “Are you the next Supercell?” or “What’s the next Netflix?”
As Tatu points out, they are looking for le futur, the foreseeable sequel to the present, when what truly changes the world is l’avenir, the radical, unexpected break from the past.
“The true future doesn’t really inherit the present—it breaks from it.”
This is an inability to step outside the invisible grasp of the present. We assume that our current systems are permanent. But they are just historical accidents waiting for the next great interruption.
Building the Unforeseen
Our job as game designers is to increase the risk of predictability by building something genuinely “other.”. Our work is not to design the next of something; it is to design the first of something else.
But how do you design l’avenir when you don’t even have the language for it? This is where your methodical approach, the discipline you apply to strategy and prototyping, becomes the most powerful creative tool.
Design a game where the question becomes, “What is that?”
- Deconstruct Your Genre’s Assumptions (The Historical Accident): Take the genre you know best and list all its “permanent” features (e.g., Shooter: First-Person Camera, Health Bars, Headshots). Identify the Historical Accident, the feature that isn’t essential to the instinct (Combat, Acquisition, Escape) but exists purely because of platform or technology limitations 15 years ago.
- Prototype the Vocabulary: Tatu asks, “What’s the wildest thing you can imagine into existence that you don’t yet have language to describe to others?” Your job is to prototype the vocabulary. Build a prototype that demonstrates this “wildest thing” using only simple geometric shapes and text. Playtest it with people and watch their reactions.
Your job is to stop being trapped by le futur and start building the unexpected arrival of l’avenir.