A Tetrahedron Mind
Funny, Swedish Packages
Everybody knows beverage cartons, many branded as tetrapak®. They can be found all over the world used for milk, juice or even wine. Tetrapak® is widely known but have you ever thought about the meaning of this brand name? It translates as "four-sided package" but those cartons have six or more sides. What's wrong here?
Tetra Pak simply is the company's name which produces these carton boxes. They started off in Sweden back in the 50s, selling package for liquids, shaped like triangular pyramids. The company used this shape's name (tetrahedron) for their product and itself. It seemed to be a cool idea back then. Nobody else had such an eye-catching product. It would sell like hot cakes.
After a while Tetra Pak recognized that their stroke of genius was not as cool as intended. The odd shape made its storage a pain. Further customers had to use scissors to open the packs. Soon the company refrained from their first idea and started selling right-angled packages as we know them today. They emerged to be much more practical and replaced the initial form. Finally the tetrahedrons generally disappeared sometime in the 70s.
The Flow Is Not Your Enemy
This story made me think about my own beginning in game development. I always had great ambitions for my game projects, many ideas and bright visions. The vanilla game features bored me so there should always be twists in my games, features never seen before. This was a kind of "tetrahedral thinking". Nothing should be as usual (speak cubic), just incomparable, great new stuff.
Two dumped projects done in coffee-binging-work-at-night mode told me that the way of the tetrahedron leads nowhere. There is a reason for all these similar games with alike features: It's simply best practice!
Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about innovation here. It's about reinventing the wheel by making it square. When you don't have experience in something you should not try to start a revolution. Go with the flow. The riverbank of innovation can be accessed anytime when you have learned how to swim. That's something I have to say to myself over and over. Otherwise those tetrahedral-shaping ideas start creeping up my mind again. :)
Finally I'm going for approved methods. A simple way, well-trodden by others in the past. Speaking in liquid package terms it should be like this:
Cheers,
Thomas