Since my earlier post (Christian Manga – the Good, the Bad and the Okay) seems to have risen to a high rank on Google, I’ve been getting a number of responses and queries about Christian Manga from various people interested in creating Christian media of various sorts, and wanting to hear what I thought about it. Therefore, I’ve decided to post a series of follow-up posts, dealing specifically with my thoughts about the creation of Christian manga.

One of the important things to note about the Japanese manga industry is that it is very targeted. The market is very clearly segmented by audience, and every manga magazine specialises in publishing stories for a select group of people. The most common demographic segments in manga (at least in the stories that are popularised overseas) are the ones targeted at shounen (young boys), shoujo (young girls), seinen (young men) and josei (young women) audiences. Each of these manga demographics has certain conventions in theme and style – derived from the psychological needs / state of its’ audience, and historical developments in the field.

This post will deal with the topic of audience and themes – specifically, with the shounen and shoujo demographics.

Shounen Manga

Shounen manga caters to young boys, typically around the age ranges of 10-18 years old. Examples of well-known shounen manga include Naruto and One Piece (action/adventure), Detective Conan/Case Closed (mystery), Eyeshield 21 (sports), School Rumble (comedy) and I’’s (romance). One of the biggest trends in shounen manga is the ‘battle manga’ style of storytelling, most commonly identified with the manga magazine Shonen Jump. It centres around the direct and personal resolution of conflict through individual combat / battles of skill. These can be combat skills (Naruto, Bleach, Rurouni Kenshin), or it could be brainpower and deductive skills (Conan, Death Note), or other skills in different areas (football skills in Eyeshield 21, spiritual powers in Shaman King, cooking skills in Yakitate Japan, etc.).

For creators, it is helpful to think of the themes that appeal to this audience of young boys. Shounen battle manga tends towards themes of ambition, camaraderie, competition and power – becoming the best at something, with the help of friends. And each character in shounen manga is known by a few characteristic skills – the ninja techniques of Naruto and his friends, the specializations of the sports players in Eyeshield 21 or Slam Dunk. At this stage of development, many boys are starting to deal with their adolescence, and issues of identity. And for boys, identity is constructed and determined by one’s abilities in competition with others. A boy is known by how well he does something – his abilities and skills – and how he compares to others in the ladder rankings of power and status… whether determined by rough games in the neighbourhood playground, exam rankings in the classroom, trophies on the sports field, or in the fantasy land of the manga world.

To engage young boys, then, your manga needs to touch on some of these themes: ambition – wanting to become the best at something, camaderie – finding friends and comrades to help you on your way and fight next to you, competition – facing and overcoming challenges, and power – when and how to use your strength to fight for your ideals. Boys follow the strong – strong of arm and strong of heart. How can you show the strength and heroism of Christianity to young boys? How can you create Christian role models in your stories that are kakkoii (“cool”)?

For the most part, those themes deal with the majority of shounen manga. Shounen and seinen romance and comedy manga have some different challenges, which I’ll talk about in another post. But for creating shounen battle / competition manga, those are the essentials.

Shoujo Manga

Shoujo manga caters to young girls, roughly 10 – 18 years of age. Unlike shounen manga, shoujo manga tends to be more diverse in terms of subject area, conventions and storytelling style. The major genres of shoujo manga are the magical girl genre (exemplified by Sailor Moon), historical/fantasy adventure (Inuyasha, Fushigi Yuugi), romance (Ouran High School Host Club, Hana Yori Dango), everyday life drama (Fruits Basket, Baby and Me), and what I like to call the ‘ambition’ genre – which is usually about a girl who has one particular talent that she pours her whole heart into (usually creative arts or sports), and her developmental progress in that talent (Glass Mask, Skip Beat, Yumeiro Patisserie).

The three top themes to remember when creating shoujo manga are “relationships”, “dreams” and “drama”. Regardless of the setting, style or storytelling, all young teenage girls are interested in developing relationships between people (especially romantic ones), pursuit of their hearts’ desires, and how dramatic happenings in the plot impact their favourite characters. A large part of adolescence, for a teenage girl, is discovering the web of social relationships that underlie her world, and then figuring out or negotiating her own place in it. “Where do I belong?” and “How can I pursue my dreams, in spite of challenges?” are common questions that you need to deal with in the course of your story. There almost always is an internal conflict between the inner ‘true self’ of a girl, and the outward requirements of her societal position or situation. This is the basic engine that drives most girl-oriented storytelling across all mediums, from movies (Disney’s Mulan, High School Musical) to books (Anne of Green Gables, Sweet Valley High) to TV shows (Gossip Girl, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) to magazines and games.

When bringing themes of Christianity to young girls, again, the focus should be on relationships, drama and dreams. What is a relationship with Jesus Christ like, and how can she benefit from His influence in her life? How can Christianity help her overcome obstacles and challenges in life, especially in terms of finding/making her own place in the world? What kind of dreams does a Christian girl have, and why are they so important? Will Jesus / other Christians accept her for who she is, or place another burden of societal expectations and responsibilities that conflict with her identity? How will her relationships with other people grow, change or diminish with Christ?

Since I don’t belong to the demographic, I hesitate to say more. But one thing I’ve learned – a good cast of characters is essential. Since most of the story is driven by either internal conflict or societal relations, you need strong characters with clashing views. Preferably a strong male lead and a strong female lead in conflict (plus some unresolved romantic tension). And there are no perfect characters in manga. The good prince is a goofball or a gullible idiot. The dashing rogue has anger issues or a traumatic past hurt. The reliable friend is prone to jealousy or misunderstandings. Even the rival or enemy usually has a touch of goodness within him, to balance the overall evilness. It is the flaws in the character stereotypes that make interesting reading.

Thought #2: Most Christian games aim at imparting knowledge. That’s not my goal. My goal is to create games about Christian PRACTICE. Let the player feel what it’s like to be a Christian, by putting them into a shoes of a practising Christian. Not by telling them the theology or history or message of Christianity. Show, don’t tell. And it’s very possible that my game really will appeal a lot to the casual game crowd, who want to experience games which put them into familiar roles they see, with ordinary people in real-life settings doing their everyday activities.

I accepted Christ was I was 13-14, in my secondary school Christian Fellowship. We had a youth pastor who visited us every week from Calvary Church KL, and he would speak at our meetings. One of those meetings, he gave an altar call, and I accepted Christ then as my Lord and Saviour. The next year, the seniors who were leading our CF graduated, and I and a few other of the younger ones were left to form the  nucleus of the next generation of CF leaders. So I became a leader of the CF. There was a committee of about 4-5 of us, and we had a very good teacher advisor – Ms. Yap, who helped us organise meetings. I was a CF leader, but I didn’t really know much about what a life in Christ entailed. The CF was just an event – a weekly activity that we would organise. It became more of a social gathering than anything else. We ended up playing games most of the time.

Then when I got to college, out of sheer inertia, I sought out and joined my college CF. If I was a Christian, then I thought I should join and hang out with other Christians in college. That was my thinking at that time. Christianity was a social group identifier for me. So I joined the Taylor’s College CF, which was also known as the Mid-Week Service, and we were partnered and hosted by the Asian Youth Ambassadors, a Christian youth organization founded and led by Pastors Kenneth and Sandra Chin (they’ve now birthed a 700-member church out of the seeds they sowed during that college ministry).  After about a year, I was approached to be a leader of the CF… to be part of the committee. Eventually I became Secretary. While I did grow a lot in my own Christian walk during that time, my service in the CF wasn’t really about my service to God. It was just something I had to do. A list of tasks to do in order to keep an organization running… and I was comfortable with the organization, and I didn’t want to see it stop, and somebody had to do it… so I helped do it. That was my attitude. I didn’t want to see the CF stop, because that’s where all my friends were, so I took on the burden of helping to organize meetings, to keep things going. In the process, I learned the procedures of how to run a morning prayer meeting, the order of a typical service / cell meeting, and all the nitty-gritty that goes behind the scenes of running regular youth meetings.

But still, what I was interested in was running the meetings. People were only incidental to me. I had friends, of course, but they took a back seat compared to the desire in me that “the show must go on”. The program was important. If you stick to the program, and people got blessed by it… well, good for them. The program has fulfilled its’ purpose. If people didn’t get blessed, then it’s okay. Just keep trying with the program, and things will work out eventually. At that time, I also had a very vague conception of what “being blessed” meant.

As I look back now, I wonder if I really touched anyone’s life at all while I was in college. I think I impacted only one or two people significantly… my friend and classmate Chuan Shern, who I invited to a camp where he got saved and whom I helped to serve as an example and give advice on the Christian perspective on things sometimes after that, and my junior Vivien, who had just recently accepted Christ, but didn’t know how to do quiet time. I explained what that involved – “a mini-church service by yourself” – and lent her the bible study book that I had found very useful in my own formative Christian growth. She thanked me for it later, and told me that my explanation and the book had really helped her grow. But other than that, I don’t think I really made much of a difference in people’s lives. In fact, I’m pretty sure I made a few horrible or embarrassing mistakes along the way. (I can still remember my first time as an MC for the service. Ouch.)

This carried on into university. Being the good Christian boy that I was, I visited all three Christian organizations on campus, and half a dozen churches before settling down in Community of Praise Baptist Church and Varsity Christian Fellowship. I joined the dedicated Bible study group on Mondays (Swordfighters), as well as three cells – on Wednesday (Science CF), Thursday (PGP hostel CF) and Friday nights (DNA church cell) respectively. Tuesday was the CF-wide Sunset Prayer meeting. After about a year of that, I had burned out. I left the church, got into video game addiction, and only joined PGP CF (the VCF branch that had meetings in my student hostel) once a week. Because of my background, I was asked to help co-lead Bible studies and cell meetings for PGP CF in my second year of university, and I did so… again, it was more of a “keep things running” mentality. I tried to organize daily devotions and prayer meetings, because I thought that’s what a CF leader should do. But my heart wasn’t really in it, and the efforts died out eventually. Thank God, I wasn’t the PGP CF chair… each year I was serving, I found someone else who could be the chairperson representing our branch to VCF. I was always the number two. Maybe God was gracious, because frankly… I don’t think I would have made a really good cell leader at that time.

However, what PGP CF taught me was the close-ness and the bond that can grow up between people who meet up regularly every week. Even until today, several years from when we’ve all graduated, we still try to gather at least once a year to catch up. And I learned how to prepare and lead small group Bible studies and worship during my 3 years at PGP CF. And I polished my eloquence in praying out loud for other people too.

So there I was. I had all of this experience. I had all the skills to effectively lead a small group, honed through years and years of Christian meetings… nearly 8 years in leadership of various Christian organizations and cells. I could run a cell group meeting all by myself from start to finish without any problems… and I often still do so. Frankly, looking back at it now… I honestly wonder whether I made any difference at all to the people I’ve met and the lives that I had the privilege to care for. I believe the last 1-2 years have made me grow more than anything else in terms of my understanding of people and God’s heart for them.

When I accepted a leadership role in Branches – the young adults cell I’m leading now in church – I had a lot of reservations. I had already learned from experience that if God didn’t call you to a ministry, don’t bother stepping in. It’s a waste of time, because it won’t grow. During my years as a leader in all of the other ministries, they didn’t grow. I didn’t want to repeat the same experience here. I spent three months in prayer (off-and-on) about it, and needed a lot of encouragement from Sylvia (the previous Branches cell leader), plus the prospect of co-leadership with Huiting before I agreed. And even then, it was partially a responsibility angle again – Huiting didn’t want to lead by herself, and if she wouldn’t, then Branches would have no leader. So I filled in the other half necessary for Huiting to lead. I ran the meetings, and she took care of the members.

However, it was only after Huiting got married and left me with the sole responsibility of leading Branches that I really started to grow as a cell leader, I think. Many things have changed since I first took up leadership. In fact, of the original Branches group from Sylvia’s time, only Natasha, myself, Li Ping and Darren remain. All the rest has changed. I’m really grateful and thankful for God’s grace upon our cell, and for each of our new members. And somehow, this last year has been a year of great growth for me, I think. With no one else to share responsibility with, I now had to be the one to start caring for the members spiritually. I had to listen to them, pray with them, share my life stories with them and disciple them and help them grow in each of their personal, individual walks with God.

And I have never been more blessed.

This is what cell leadership is all about. It’s not about how to run meetings, or lead Bible studies. It’s about the day-to-day, spiritual watchfulness and care over the people whose growth God has asked you to be a part of. It’s about discipling them, watching them grow into spiritual maturity. It’s about listening to their problems, and helping them find answers and solace in His words, as well as in practical matters. In a weird way, I thank God for each and every problem that my cell members bring to me, because it gives me an opportunity to grow in love for them, and to learn the limits of my own abilities and why I need to depend on God. This is real. This is meaningful. This work touches and changes people’s lives. It’s not about running meetings, or planning programs. It’s about changing lives. About finding ways to help people grow.

There’s still a lot I have left to learn. But this past one year has taught me so much. And by the grace of God, I will continue to grow to accommodate more of his love shining through my life.

Power is the ability to exert your will on the surroundings – to make the environment, people, places, things, respond to your bidding. The ability to control part of the world around you. Most games are about power. Some people have claimed that many hardcore games are all about fulfilling the “male power fantasy”… the ability to dominate and master the world around them, by proving they are bigger, badder and more powerful than anything the game can bring against them. It primarily exists in two forms in games. The first form is the ability to take direct action that becomes increasingly more powerful as you progress through the game (eg. more powerful weapons in first-person shooters, higher-leveled characters in role-playing games, faster cars in racing games, etc.). The second form is the ability to control more and more things as you progress through the game (eg. more soldiers and resources in strategy games, more objects and tools in simulation games, or even something as simple as more tables in Diner Dash).

It seems to me that most games fall into one or both of these paradigms – either make your actions affect the world more and more as you progress, or give you a wider and wider array of possible actions as you progress. All of this is predicated on direct control – you command, they obey. Often instantly. That’s what feedback mechanisms are for, after all. They let you as they player know that You Are In Control – that you have agency, that You Can Change The World with the push of a button.

I think this view may be limited.

I think the enormous popularity of social games are showing why it is limited.

Think about it. Just how powerful or how much in control do you feel in a social game? Heck, not just the ones on Facebook. Even real-life games based around social interaction, like Charades or Taboo. The point of the game isn’t about power or control. It’s about interaction… it’s about making connections – between people, between ideas and words, between perception and action.

It’s about influence.

Which led me to start thinking… what would an influence-based hardcore game be like? What would the mature form of social gaming turn out to be, ten, twenty years from now? So here’s what I know about influence:

• Influence is not direct. It is usually indirect in pursuit of its goals. I don’t tell you what to do. I persuade you that it’s worth doing.
• Influence is based on connections. It’s not about what you can do. It’s about who you know.
• Influence requires that the other party have wills of their own, that are distinct from yours. We control robots. We influence people.
• Influence often is closely linked to several other societal phenomena. Morality, social norms, public perception, ties of friendship, emotions, traditions, ideas. We make appeals to God, to tradition, to principles and laws, to the things that touch people’s hearts when we want to influence them.
• Influence requires that you care about something – either the agent you want to influence, or the result you are influencing them towards. It requires meaning to be created for an action to be taken.

Where do we find systems of influence working in real life?

We see systems of power operating in the military, science and technology, and in feudal governments (which perhaps explains why those themes are so common in hardcore games today). Command, control, conquer. Beat the game. Beat it HARD.

Systems of influence are built to connect, to persuade, to relate. You find them in religion, in politics, in the media, in the ordinary everyday relationships between family and friends.

In other words, everything that hasn’t really been addressed fully by (Western) games as yet. There has been, even to this day a decade later, exactly ONE successful implementation of a commercial game wholly based around interactions between family and friends. (I exaggerate slightly for effect… The Sims series certainly contains many more iterations than just one game. Nevertheless.) There are no decent games about religious or political influence – the ones that aren’t backed up by guns and assassins, that is. There have been many that have tried to incorporate sub-themes or minigames of influence into games about power (the Fable series comes to mind, as do many MMORPGs). But they sometimes feel like they’re trying to shoehorn influence in as an afterthought, rather than as a core mechanic. Or they’re trying to mix and match with power games, instead of strictly focusing on mechanisms for influence, and that dumbs it down. (Dragon Age, I’m looking at you.)

I wonder what would happen if a developer tried focusing on nothing except influence. A game entirely focused on persuading people or NPCs to do things, a game about understanding people’s motivations, a game about making the right connections between peoples, desires and ideas. A game about building relationships and meaning with agents that have a mind of their own – that you can’t overtly control, but you can influence. It would be a remarkably interesting game to play, I think. Any suggestions?

You see, the people around me always live such busy and active lives that they rarely have time to sit down, do nothing, and just listen for several hours at a time. Every day – every year – I find myself becoming less and less willing to share with other people about my life, simply because they don’t have the patience to listen for several hours while I try to find the words that express my doubts, my fears, my thoughts and feelings. Extroverts have it easy. They can say whatever comes to their mind immediately, and connect quickly and simply. Introverts have a harder time of it – especially Idealist introverts. It takes time for me to open up. And not just time, but demonstrated care and concern as well. I can only truly open up to someone if I know that they care enough to spend time waiting for me to voice out to them, and put away all other distractions and concerns to focus solely on listening to me. And that can take hours.

It’s something I’ve only very rarely experienced with my parents – maybe once or twice in the last 8 years. I remember it happening more often when I was younger. My Dad and I would talk in the car while travelling back from my college, or when picking someone up. My Mom and I would talk over the dining table after dinner, or during teatime. And the time I failed at university – that was when they were willing to sit with me to listen to me, and let me take my time to verbalise all that I felt, all that I thought. Those were the memories I treasured most about my parents… though it took a string of “F”-grades to bring them about sometimes.

Maybe that’s why I became such a good listener. Because at heart, I knew that everyone wanted someone to listen to them. Someone to show care and concern, someone who was willing to sacrifice hours of time they could have used to spend Doing Things, and just listen instead. My primary criterion for a soul-sister – the first indicator that lets me tell whether I’ve found a kindred spirit or not – is this ability to Just Listen. That’s why I love spending time with my soul sisters, and we often have multi-hour-long conversations every time we meet. Because we both Just Listen to each other – for as long as it takes. And sometimes, it takes a long time to get down to the root of our fears – to peel away the layers that we are used to showing in casual, shallow conversations and go deep to the bottom of our hearts. To have heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul talks.

People go around with layers on their hearts. There’s a shallow layer you show to acquaintances at work or on the street or at church – the standard “I’m doing fine” reply to the perfunctory “How are you?” question that everyone asks in order to be polite. Sometimes, with people whom you meet regularly and have deeper connections with, like cell members or close colleagues, you can drop hints about your current situation – “I’m angry about this”, or “Today I got a bonus!” And those can be taken at face value… maybe it’ll lead to a stream of small talk and decent mid-level sharing. And you go away, with your feelings slightly eased, vaguely okay. And most people seem comfortable with that. If you practise it daily, then I guess you could get by with regular doses of middle-level conversations every day, and never miss what you don’t know exists… that soul-deep, bottom-of-your-heart kind of conversation you can only get when someone Listens to you for several hours.

But if you’re an introvert surrounded by busy people, nobody Listens to you. And so the urge to speak builds and builds, but there’s no friendly outlet. So you’re constantly vaguely dissatisfied… lonely and trying to share with the people around, but no one really bothers to Listen.

My parents and most of my friends wonder sometimes how I can get so jazzed up after one good conversation. They don’t believe or don’t understand how just one conversation with my soul sisters – with someone who Listens – can keep me on a euphoric high for several days on end. They sometimes think I’m overexaggerating. I’m not sure if they understand the concept of soul nourishment – a deep conversation with someone who Listens is like a drink of water in a desert, or fresh bread to a man starving for months. Maybe it’s because they haven’t had these kinds of conversations before. Maybe they don’t need them like I do. Maybe their personalities are different, or they imagine that the mid-level conversations they have with their friends is the closest things will ever get. Maybe they’re just too busy, wanting to Do Things, and can’t see the value of “wasting time” doing nothing but sitting and talking. I don’t know.

All I know is, nobody Listens to me.

Every week, as a cell leader, as a friend, as a son, I get called upon to Listen to somebody. I spend hours on the phone and over meals, listening to people. I keep taking in more and more things from other people’s lives – their hurts, their insecurities, their problems, their hopes and dreams. I Listen, and make them feel good to unburden themselves. I Listen, and they feel cared for, comforted to know that someone understands what they’re going through – someone’s willing to pay attention to them and soothe the hurts in their soul. My family, my friends, my cell members… even my co-workers – they all need someone to Listen, and I do that for them.

But who does it for me?

That’s why I have this blog, really. I write in it all the thoughts and feelings I have… all the things I want to say but never can say because nobody listens. They have to come out somehow. So I write on a website that nobody reads… kinda pathetic, but there’s always the off-chance that someone who values me might read it. Even if they don’t, at least I’ve voiced it out. The pressure’s slightly eased. But it’ll never go away until somebody listens.

And frankly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. No one in my family has been willing to spend hours to Listen to me for the last few years, all too busy with their own lives. Of my three soul sisters, one has a constant irregular schedule as a flight attendant, and the other two are studying overseas at separate colleges, and I don’t even attend the same church as them anymore. And of my two oldest friends, whom although they aren’t soul sisters have learned how to get me to share openly after 10 years of friendship… one is halfway around the world, and the other is preparing for marriage. And my oldest friend here in Singapore is already married. And the only other person here whom I think has the potential to grow into another kindred soul is so busy with so many problems that I think I need to spend more time Listening to her than talking to her.

So. Nobody Listens to me, and it looks like nobody will ever really listen to me. I wonder if that’s the reason why I fall so easily into addictive or self-destructive habits sometimes?

Secondly, it has also helped me realise that I don’t need to be a perfect teacher. Maybe this is also because of my past – or maybe my past experiences have merely excerbated the natural tendency of my personality to blame myself for everything that goes wrong. If I have failed in my little duties, if I receive any sort of complaint, if I make a mistake or an error, I can magnify it all out of proportion and get really down on myself. Even if I have 99 A-grade students, and 1 student who got only a B+ because of some error in the way I taught or advised him, I will worry and agonise over that one “failure”. What did I do wrong? Should I have done something else? What sort of punishment or bad consequences should I expect for this mistake? Will this person hate me for life? I have let them down… I am no longer worthy of trust, I have failed in my responsibilities. All these kinds of thoughts run through my mind.. and even though I’m wise enough to dismiss the majority of them, still… they occur at least once, and even more if someone else expresses them to me. That’s why I always have a strong desire to act and play perfectly. Even in my games, I can re-play the same scenario over and over again past the point of boredom, just to achieve perfection. I once spent 6 hours replaying 10 minutes of game time, over and over again, to find the optimal series of actions to take.

But I’m learning to let go now, following the examples set before me. While yes, students are important, and to some extent I should feel responsible for them, I needn’t beat myself too harshly if I feel like I’ve failed them. It’s a learning point for me, and I should regard myself as an apprentice at the craft of teaching, not as a master. I can make mistakes. I’m expected to make mistakes every now and then. I’m not perfect. I can learn and improve, and maybe not make the same mistakes again. There is forgiveness. There is hope. There is always a new batch of students every semester. I can hone my craft slowly, iteratively, working until I’ve polished my skills and gained more experience.

There’s so much to learn about the craft of teaching, I realised. It really is a skill by itself. And teaching design is almost as fun as doing design. When doing design, you’re trying to make certain explicit principles become embedded and tacit in the designed product. When teaching design, you’re trying to make things that are embedded and tacit in the designed product become explicit and extract design principles which you can share to the students. It’s the same process, just in reverse. That’s what I find so fascinating about it.

Something struck me today.

The process of design is often a very difficult one to grasp for students. It takes numerous examples and constant exposure to practice before they get it. Even for me, I’ve been doing design work for the last 4 years or so, and I’m only barely getting a glimpse into the methodology that goes behind the work. Almost nobody ‘gets’ it and is able to put it into practice after one exposure. It takes repeated exercises, repeated work, before the principles become habit.

And that is really the goal of any design teacher – to practise and train their students until the principles that they are taught manifest themselves in habits of behavior and thought. You don’t pass on knowledge, you pass on a skill… a pattern of doing things. And this must become tacit knowledge – must become ingrained into the student’s soul – before it is of any practical value.

The trouble is… these things take time. They take practice. You can’t teach a skill like piano-playing in a day. Similarly, you can’t teach a design methodology in a day, a week, or even a semester. It’s a very slow process. You have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat… expose them to the same skill and same principle operating in various circumstances, until they get it. But how can you do it in a classroom setting? And how can you successfully measure the outcome, if the learning objective is a process, not a product or a body of knowledge?

It’s a very difficult problem, and I’m not sure I know the answer.

Right now, I can see that the best way to teach a design habit is really through a mentoring / apprenticeship model, the way all other craft skills are taught. You have someone working on something, and a more experienced mentor working alongside, showing them how to do certain things, and evaluating their progress, on a one-to-one basis. You’ll have to structure the lessons in such a way that one aspect of the skill is taught at one time, and constantly reinforced throughout the course by subsequent lessons as well.

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I think for me, this marks the beginning of a new stage in life… a new season. A third of my life – a quarter-century – has come and gone. If I were to look back, I would think that the first third was characterised by a quest for manhood. The main goal and search of my life was to find out and then become an ideal of manhood. What does it mean to be a man, and how can I live up to that standard? That was the question that always surfaced in my mind whenever I examined myself or thought seriously about my life.

And now in the last year or two, I think my views have solidified, and I have found an answer. It may not be a complete answer, and may not encompass the whole definition of manhood, but for me, it is enough. It satisfies my understanding of what seems to be the key essence of manliness – the cornerstone of manhood upon which all other qualities are built. And this can be summed up in one word: responsibility. Responsibility – as a husband, as a father, as a teacher, as a leader, as a citizen, as an employee, as a friend. When Duty calls, Man must answer.

A man can be measured by the depth and breadth of the responsibilities that he has been entrusted with, and how well he bears up under the burdens of them. Responsibility for the care and safety of his family. Responsibility to not leave or run away… for staying and being there when others need him. Responsibility for the decisions he makes, and the consequences thereof – from choosing Who he will follow to what he decides to do in the day-to-day moments of his life. The first words that God spoke to Man included in them a burden of responsibility and a duty to fulfill: God charged man to “fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen.  1:28, NASB)

So that is my answer to the quest for manhood that took up the first third of my life. I will probably still continue to grow and discover more about what it means to be a man as I gain new experiences in life, no doubt. But these will now no longer be my focus. I think the season is changing for me.

The next season in life, I feel, is going to be about the pursuit of wisdom. I have learned, and have acquired responsibilities – as a teacher, as a friend, as a leader, as a son. But the wisdom to manage those responsibilities well – to advise people who are facing difficult situations, to handle unexpected surprises in life, to know what to do and what to say in troubling circumstances… when Solomon inherited the awesome responsibility of being king over God’s chosen people, he prayed for wisdom to be able to fulfill his task in life. And so, too, I pray and wish for the same.

What does it mean to be wise? And how can I increase in wisdom? Those will be the questions that will guide me in the next 25 years of my life, as I deepen and broaden my experiences in life – as a working adult, a Christian leader, a filial son, a husband, a father, a friend, and a teacher of others. When I turn 50, I hope I will be known for my wisdom and insight into human nature and Divine reality. But there will be a long road ahead.

Of course, nice as they sound, I am taking it with a pinch of salt… I get the feeling my scores were significantly boosted by two things this last semester – one, the program we used was unexpectedly causing a lot more problems, so students were desperately grateful for any help they received, and two, I had huge amounts of free time to help students with the problems, because I hadn’t yet started my own Master’s studies and research. That’s not going to be the case this coming semester onwards, so I do expect a slight drop in my scores from now on.

Then, of course, we come to the more interesting comments – about how I could improve.

While most of them indicated I was doing great, there were a few things which I thought were important. I got two complaints that sometimes my responses to emails were a bit slow. I think I recall about 4 times during the semester when that occurred. Two of those times, I frankly discount, because they emailed me on a Friday night or Saturday, asking me about something due on Sunday. If I didn’t check my office mail on the weekend (and I usually don’t), then of course I would have missed it. The other two times… yeah, fine. I dropped the ball a little there. Should send acknowledgements when I receive emails, rather than sit silently on it while waiting for an answer before replying. Still learning good email communications practices. It always seems to me to be rather useless to just say “Received, thanks”, when I haven’t got anything more to add, but I guess it reassures the sender that they’ve been heard, at least.

(Then again, I remember one group sending an email to me asking to meet up within a hour or two of the sending of the email. I still managed to scramble to meet them, but just how often do they expect me to check my mail?! I think this generation is becoming too used to Instant Messaging… I remember when I used to be happy if I got a reply within a week of sending an email. I still associate email more with a sped-up version of snail mail than a slowed-down version of MSN Messenger. That’s why I use it to send infrequent but long messages, rather than the one-liner conversations that most people are starting to use it for. But maybe I’m just an old fogey.)

The other repeated complaint (again, two) was that sometimes my words were too kind, and I didn’t point out critical problems with their projects, so the grades they finally got didn’t tally with the comments I made. Hmm… not much I can say about this. I think it’s a tradeoff, generally – if I used harsher critical comments, I would no longer be seen as more friendly and approachable. And for me, at least, the kind approach works better than the strict approach. I realised most of my students aren’t actually interested in continuing on to develop games in the future, so I thought at least getting them interested in games and having a (reasonably) pleasant exposure experience would be good for them, rather than raising the bar to professional standards they require in the industry. Still… I know several times I was plagued with doubts whether it was a good idea to let some groups proceed with a decision which I could foresee a lot of problems with. Most of the time, I let them decide on their own which direction they wanted to proceed in, but gave them feedback on the appropriateness of their course of action (or the benefits and pitfalls of it) after their decision was made. Still not sure if that’s the best idea or not.

I realised something in the course of teaching this semester. There exists such a thing as “design sense”, or “design judgement”. Some people have it – they can unerringly sense which of the myriad choices they face would turn out to be the most entertaining, or aesthetically-pleasing, or make the most sense to their audience. I had a couple of students like that in my classes – they were quite sure of their direction and what they wanted to achieve with their games, and their game ideas were always simple and achievable, but fun. With those kinds of students, it’s a pleasure to just sit back, outline the problems they have to face, and then watch them go at it. Reminds me of me in my younger days, even if I do say so myself. ^^

Some people are blessed with naturally good intuition and design sense – it’s inborn in them. For most others, I think it can be trained through repeated experiences – you gain insight from experience as a substitute for natural instinct. And I think part of my job is to help them gain that insight into design through experience, by letting them make their own choice, grappling with the unknowns and trying to accurately foresee what the pitfalls and benefits that lie ahead of any given option. That’s my policy behind why I prefer to let my students make their choices instead of telling them they should do it this way or that way. And even if they make mistakes, or travel down the wrong direction, I’ll try to hint to them what problems they’re going to face, and see if they can exercise judgement in pulling back or going around the problems.

But what do you do with people who are completely lacking any design sense at all? I had a group like that last sem. I simply didn’t know what to do with them. It was really weird – they had the usual mix of good ideas and bad ideas…  but for some reason, they almost always chose the bad idea over the good one. It’s not that they were lacking in good ideas, mind you – their brainstorming session threw up a couple of gold nuggets, I thought. But whenever I left them to their own devices and to make their own choices, they consciously, deliberately… chose the bad idea. And remained convinced it was a good direction. I mean, I tried to be fair and point out that there could be ways to get around the problems that they were going to face… in retrospect, maybe they took that as encouragement that they were heading down the right path, instead of a desperate attempt to salvage what could be saved. But I might as well admit that my system totally failed when it came to that group, and they were probably justified in voicing a complaint about my teaching. I wonder how other teachers handle this sort of problem? How do you teach the tone-deaf how to sing, or the colour-blind how to paint? Is it possible, or am I always doomed to lose a few students to this problem?