Pillars of My Community

Think of this as, like, my Game Community Top Ten—the people in the sphere who I think are most important to our performing at top form.

Artisans: The palpitating heart of any art community are its artisans, the people who’re very good at what they do, and who care most about doing good work, and fuck what the rest of you think about it. That’s how I see Vincent and Nathan—their passion for craftsmanship moves me to do better work.

Innovators: The innovators’ job is to try new things, do experiments, give us new ideas. They don’t always do things best—that’s what artisans are for—but they do things first, and the work they do in breaking new ground keeps us from being mired in stale ideas. It’s why I keep an eye on Jonathan and Kevin—I know they’ll always be up to something I didn’t expect.

Liaisons: Of course, we would still stifle each other just with the weight of our company, if it weren’t for the liaisons like Emily, Eero, and Jenn, who keep us connected to related communities. Their bringing in fresh faces and concepts from other fields helps us avoid chasing our own tails.

Experts: Being a community with really strong interdisciplinary needs, we also benefit a lot from experts like Harper and Elizabeth, who are good at things that aren’t core to our community values—as I see it, we’re game artists, and that means, we are good at playing games, and sometimes we write about them—but support that core value by knowing things that we don’t all know.

Enthusiasts: Let’s not forget the most important part of the community, its social feedback engine. If it weren’t for wonderful people like Meg, John, and Eppy, we wouldn’t be doing what we do.