Part 5: Foundational Principles

"What interests me is the number of people who believe they have the ability to drive the train. They think this ... is the way to shape their companies' futures. The truth is it's not. Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the track." 

Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, Creativity Inc., p214

We started with a Purpose. Before we started hiring anyone, we spent a lot of time thinking about what the Product needed to be to achieve that. 

Our Purpose is to transform an entire generation of children with high-quality entertainment products with God's Truth.

To accomplish that, we set Four Essential Pillars:

Fun. People play games because they're fun. Because they are engaging. Because they enjoy them.

We do not sell Robitussin. Robitussin is, "Yes, I know this tastes bad, but it'll help your cough."  We sell chocolate cake stuffed with vitamins and calcium, so the child loves it, and the parents are happy for them to keep eating. 

If you're building a consumer entertainment product and your consumers are not entertained, you have nothing. 

Excellence. It's important to us that our products are high-quality. That the bugs are low, the features work, and there's a high degree of polish.

We want our game players to invest and engage. To invite them into this connection, we creators have to show we are invested too. We want our players to be proud of the product they're using.

Beauty. We serve a God of beauty. We want our players to be inspired and enraptured by their experiences. Beauty is an essential attribute of the God we serve. 

Christians used to make the best art, buildings, books, and music globally from the time Constantine accepted Christ until the late 1800s. Of course, things are different today, but it doesn't have to be that way.

The way it should work is: Because it's Christian, it's awesome. There have been some examples recently in music and film/TV content that have hit those notes. 

We aspire to do that too. 

Truth. Our product must convey God's Truth. We are here to transform an entire generation by bringing God's truth to an immersive and delightful experience right at your fingertips.

We will convey God's Truth in an engaging and relevant way ... not cheesy, not heavy-handed, but not so subtle that you miss it.

We've recently spent time as we're building defining what qualifies as success along each of those metrics and then building to those standards. 

In my next post, I'll talk about how that applies to our culture at TruPlay

We're hiring many people right now (Producers, Engineers, Game Designers, and more). A couple of recent highlights are a Platform Architect who is a former Architect from Zynga and a writer who has sold over 3 million books.  We're looking for exceptionally skilled people who feel called to our Mission. If that's you, we'd love to get to know you.

1. Part 1: The Problem
2. Part 2: Our method
3. Plugging in my old Nintendo
4. Video Games, God, and Redemption
5. Part 3: Why Good Writing Matters (and Jack Bauer)
6. Personal Culture
7. Empowering Creatives
8. Empowering Creatives Pt 2
9. Part 4: Where do Children Find Hope? (and the Challenger Documentary)
10. What are they really watching?
11. R.A.D.A.R
12. The Art of World Building
13. The Redemptive Power of Play