Jordan Mechner: Absorbing Decades Of Knowledge

I make video games and write graphic novels and screenplays.

I ride my bike to the game studio, stopping at a café for a morning hour of quiet writing/thinking before I join the rest of the production team. A game, book, movie, or TV show takes years from conception to release, and it’s common for projects to get stalled or cancelled, so I try to have at least three or four going at once. I might be in production on one project while I’m writing the script for another and doing research for a third.

The rhythm of the day can vary a lot depending on what phase the projects are in. One thing I appreciate about France is that the culture places a lot of value on a healthy work-life balance. You can be passionate and driven in your work, and still eat proper meals, spend time outdoors, go out with friends and home to your family. If people on the team feel they have to put in seventy-hour weeks, that’s a failure of leadership.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (I read it in English as a kid, now I’m reading it in French). Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire by Marjorie Perloff.

It’s a bit hazy, but I’m sure the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A.A. Milne were among the first.

Both. I’m also an underliner and highlighter, unless it’s a graphic novel or a cherished hardback, in which case I’m loath to dog-ear or mark up the pages.

I started early, around age two. Our house was a reading-friendly environment.

At 25, A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al. To say it’s about architecture, home/office design, and urban planning doesn’t begin to do justice to its wisdom and insight into the ways our environment affects us. At age 16, I’d give myself How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I refused to read it for a long time because the title made it sound cheesy and self-serving, but when I finally did, I wished I’d read it sooner. Or if time travel is allowed, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson — because it’s inspiring, and a cautionary tale, and also because then I’d have known to buy Apple stock in 1985 and hang onto it.

In a country house in the woods, raining, with no wi-fi.

I’d recommend that aspiring game developers and screenwriters read Essays by George Orwell (including “Politics and the English Language” and “Why I Write”); Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl; and Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I wouldn’t push books about how to make games or movies, because the most important thing for an artist is to develop a well-rounded view of the world. If you focus too narrowly at a young age on becoming successful, you can end up making stuff that’s technically polished but doesn’t give your audience anything of lasting value, or conveys messages that are actually harmful.

Not all to the same dinner. The key to a great party is to bring together people from different professions and ages, so they don’t compete or fall into shop talk. So, one star author per evening. Oscar Wilde. Richard Feynman. Dorothy Parker. And Victor Hugo and Joann Sfar, for the French dinner.

Pablo by Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie, a graphic novel about Picasso’s early years.

It’s efficient. Travelling to new places, getting to know new people, studying new subjects in detail, and living through life-changing events all take years. You can only fit so much into one lifetime. Reading lets me absorb, in a matter of hours, valuable knowledge and experience that it took other people decades to acquire.

Revolution Song by Russell Shorto, the intertwined stories of six different people during the American Revolutionary War. It’s a great approach to writing history that made that period come alive for me.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. Even if Paris in the twenties couldn’t possibly have been as great as he makes it sound, I’d love to have been there.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frank, especially the first half of it, in which he describes his experience in a concentration camp. It breaks a lot of preconceived notions. And the lessons he learned are applicable to a lot of situations, not just concentration camps. If you’re feeling unhappy with your life or annoyed about something, it puts things into perspective.

The Hero with A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell blew my mind when I read it in college. It gave me a template that started making mental links among concepts and ideas that I’d never thought of as being related to each other. Also, it led me to re-read The Thousand and One Nights, which had an impact in its own right.

Dune by Frank Herbert. I must have re-read it twenty times between the ages of 15-18. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, my favorite book at ages 6-7. Those were formative. And Blue Truth by David Deida, which challenged a lot of ingrained notions I’d been carrying about romantic relationships (and other aspects of life).

Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker. My brother recommended it, and he’s got a good track record.