Easy mode
“Exoneration” was one of my favorite takeaways from Phil Stut’z book “The Tools.”
There’s a tremendous desire in our culture to be exonerated. We think we can reach a point where we’re famous or rich enough to not have to work on ourselves anymore and everything will be perfect. This is an insane joke. There are three laws of the universe: there will always be pain; there will always be uncertainty; and life will always require effort. Anybody that says you can be exonerated from these laws is lying.
It reminded me a lot of something I used as a kid called “The Gameshark.” (A successor to the 8/16-bit era Game Genie.)
It was a device you would plug into your Playstation that would allow you to “hack” any game with cheat codes.
Hate running out of bullets? Give yourself unlimited ammo!
Stuck on a level? Skip to the end!
Tired of dying? Now you have infinite health.
I wanted exoneration from the struggle of the game.
But after a few weeks, The Game Shark started collecting dust.
It turns out making video games extremely easy also made them extremely boring.
Funny, isn’t it?
