I haven’t played video games since middle school or actively followed the gaming industry, but the book The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner is so engaging and such a smooth read. What drew me to this book was its format—Mechner shares his journal from 1985 to 1993, recounting the eight years after graduating college and his journey in creating the bestselling game Prince of PersiaI, all while writing screenplays in San Francisco, New York, and France.
My favorite part is reading his annotations in blue ink from 2019, offering insights from 30 years later—explaining how certain people later played key roles or how their paths crossed in unexpected ways. His annotations and drawings in blue feels like joining a ride into a time machine with him.
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The rawness and candor of his emotions conveyed through the journal are what made this book so moving. Compared to biographies written from a third-person perspective, like Steve Jobs, The Making of Prince of Persia is written in the first person, making me feel much closer to the 22-year-old Jordan—as if I were right there with him, experiencing the ups and downs of creating the game while navigating adulthood and life in a new city fresh out of college.
It’s surprising yet reassuring to read how much he doubted himself throughout the process of creating something groundbreaking, despite having already published the bestselling martial arts game Karateka in 1984 and completed several screenplays while at Yale. Reading about his excitement upon moving to San Francisco to develop Prince of Persia, his self-doubts over whether the game would be a hit, and his constant self-reminder—“I just need to finish it”—resonated with me a lot. Even after four years of screenwriting, he still questioned if he had the talent to write and direct films. Knowing that creative, technical, and personal struggles—self-doubt and setbacks included—are simply part of the journey, even for someone as talented and hardworking as Mechner, is heartening. I’m not alone in navigating moments of uncertainty.
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The moments when Jordan reminds himself to focus, be patient, just finish it, relax, or acknowledge his confusion, is magically encouraging. Moments worth noting:
Creating fun - “What’s the point in running, running to get to the exit, if all it gets you is more of the same? … What makes a game fun? Tension/release, tension/release.”
Driven by wants - “A story doesn’t move forward until a character wants something. So — a game doesn’t move forward until the player wants somethings … Every event has to move you closer or further away from your goal, or it’s not an event, it’s just window dressing.”
Keep trying - “My temptation is to forget everything else and try — again — to create the greatest game of all time.”
Quality of good - “I redid it about five times, editing on paper. The sequence got progressively tighter and shorter and simpler and better. I enjoyed that.”
Wanting something badly - “This is the first time in my life I’ve had to lobby so hard for something I desperately wanted, and it’s exquisitely frustrating. It’s so painful wanting something from someone, being reduced to wishing and hoping they’ll give it to me. I hate it.”
Procrastination - “My reluctance to actually sit down in the new office and work on the damn game is so strong, I’ve been procrastinating by doing everything else under the sun I’ve been putting off since 1986. Even my taxes … (Game? What game?) ”
Happy state - “I’m happiest when I’m in the midst of things — struggling, forging alliances and overcoming problems and, dammit, making something. That’s why I’ve been coming up with all these crazy ideas lately, like shooting a documentary in Cuba or Madrid.”
Thanks to Weiwei for recommending this book.