Creativity, Decisions, and the Beginning
Creativity
I recently read an article by Fredrik Haren, where he interviewed Alice Liu, who shared a perspective that completely reframed how I think about creativity:
Creativity is 99% decisions and 1% inspiration — Alice Liu
For so long, I thought creativity was something abstract — a kind of mysterious spark that visits you when it wants to. But when Liu said that creativity is about making decisions, I realized maybe it was never about waiting at all. Maybe it was about moving, one choice at a time.
Decisions
Liu also described a simple yet powerful framework for becoming more creative by improving how we make decisions:
- Practice decision-making deliberately — the more decisions you make, the more your brain refines its prediction models.
- Desensitize yourself to fear — confront the fear of failure, and mistakes become data to learn from.
- Optimize your path to decisions — keep moving forward in the creative process without getting trapped in indecision or overthinking.
That last part struck me the most because it connects with how I’ve been thinking about constraints lately. I used to believe that constraints limit creativity, but now I see them as what make creativity possible. When I only have eleven options instead of one hundred, the decision feels manageable. Constraints give clarity — they optimize the path to decisions.
Even game jams use this principle intentionally. Their themes are constraints. They focus the chaos into direction.
The Beginning of My Journey
In the end, creativity always comes back to decisions and the constraints that shape them. Limits aren’t barriers — they’re guides. They narrow the path just enough for us to see where to step next. Starting an indie game studio was one of those defining choices.
Coming from a love of watching stand-up comedy that tackles sensitive topics — what we call materi pinggir jurang — and a lifelong fascination with games, I’m starting a small indie game studio called Pinggir Jurang Studio. We make games that invite players to stand on the edge and see the world from a different perspective. Our first game is Paranesia — a satirical, mutiplayer deck-building game about running a political campaign.
This is where the journey begins — at the edge, where Pinggir Jurang Studio takes its first step and Paranesia starts to take shape. There’s no clear map ahead, only the decisions that will carve the path forward.