I am a South African, now resident in Germany on the Northern flanks of the Alps. No straight line describes the path that brought me here. I have lived and worked and paid taxes in three countries on three continents. I became a father a year ago; I will pass my fortieth birthday before this turn around the sun is done.

I have burned out, dived in oceans of despair and touched the seabed at their darkest depths not once! Yet I strive, into 2025: I strive for hope.

Hope is enough. Hope for me and hope to spread to you.

All writers are readers. In no particular order, here follow a few the most inspirational things I read, last year, in 2024. They kindled my hope. Now, at the start of the new year, I revisit them and recommend them whole heartedly.

Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun in game design (2ⁿᵈ Edition, 2013) is a friendly and playful distillation of wisdom that is justifiably lauded as ‘required reading’ in its domain. It’s a fun and welcoming treatise. It delves into play, problem-solving and learning and makes a unassailable case that games are fundamental, games matter, and play is necessary for our humanity.

What is fun? What is art? What are games? What is play? All of these ephemeral quandaries are discussed in Raph Koster’s book, with eloquence, and reading it imparts a sense of wonder.

When our brain is really into practicing something, we’ll dream about it. This is the intuitive part of the brain burning neural pathways into our brain, working on turning newly grasped patterns into something that fits within the context of everything else we know. [^theory-of-fun]

The book ends with a challenge: the best games present players with intriguing realms into which they entice the player’s minds to play: to tackle problems, understand systems, learn and master its patterns. They are safe spaces for playfulness and they matter because this power can teach and change.

Do we take up the challenge to wield that power for good or do we close the lid of the toy-box and turn away, to return to a mundane world? I choose to open the box: for fun and hope.

“No [person] ever wrote, except for money,” decried one Samuel Johnson. He was wrong and that he was wrong is eruditely argued by none other than Cory Doctorow in an essay published as recently as December. That writing, too, offers hope.

Cory argues that artists will create art because their art matters to them. Many writers must write not merely because it is intrinsically satisfying but because, to them, it is necessary.

I, too, feel this way. It is validating to read another stating similar opinions and even more powerfully so when they are none other than Cory Doctorow: an author for whom I hold a great deal of respect, who’s opinions I grant a great deal of credence.

One such opinion in the linked essay reinforces the need for artistic solidarity and then goes on to expand upon that, reminding us that the legacy of any artist is not the pittance or wealth of artefacts they leave behind but the fertile foundations they nurture and establish upon which their creative successors may build.

Pluralistic is, in part, … a way for me to reaffirm the solidaristic nature of artistic activity, the connection with other writers and other readers (because I am, of course, an avid, constant reader).

Charlie Jane Anders wrote a plea for community, for inclusion of diversity, and for art that strives to speak to the audience, now, rather than inscribe an incunable for tomorrow’s scholars of classics.

Keep daydreaming. Daydreaming is important, serious WORK.

Her writing is imbued with hopefulness and she ends it with a call to have fun: dance, single, have a pillow fight, laugh and be kind.

Silliness is life affirming. I don’t trust any version of the future where we never rejoice.

Finally, returning to the domain of game-development: Nathalie Lawhead wrote a long-form essay out of their key-note speech at Graz, Austria and it is phenomenal.

It encourages playfulness and personal expression. It validates the existence of silly, small, goofy things. It reminisces about tweaking and theming and customising and promises us that there is no reason to accept that those are things of the past.

It is a celebration of delightful toys and useless things that enable play and fun.

The fact that it’s such a “toy” helps it be a tool to people. They invent uses for the very weird art tools. They end up making something even though they had no intention to do so.

It affirms individuality and eccentricity and quirkiness.

Most importantly, it reminds us that we can ignore the travesties and tragedies of triple-‘A’, ignore the blandness and slop on five-giant-websites and the mediocrity of “normal.” More exists, today: PICO-8 exists. Electric Zine Maker exists. itch.io exists. The Internet is different now. Pillowfort exists. This – my own website – exists. There is an Internet that is ours.

Our world, today, has problems. I can do little against the haters and the destroyers, the bigots, the dictators, empowered egomaniacs and plutocrats. I get no worth from reading more dissertations on tragedies and iniquities, neither is there a shortage of scriveners far more informed and skilled than I who write about that. Those journalists and philosophers are important in their own way; I shall leave that onus to their pens.

My fun lies elsewhere: creativity, passion, delight and inspiration; writing about the good things, the good places, the good people and the communities who thrive and revel in positivity; seeking to find the hope.

A parthian shot: an essay by Brendan Leonard which he first published in 2012: Make 2025 the year of Maximum Enthusiasm!