Welcome.
This is the very first issue of Wide Open Games. I don’t know what it will turn into. I’ve never run a business before, and I have no idea if it will find success. For all I know, Wide Open Games could be featured on Oprah’s Book Club or it could go out to 43 like-minded weirdos for a year and then die silently. I hope it’s the former, but if it’s the latter, I hope you’re one of those weirdos. Whatever the case, here it is. It’s starting. I’m sending it out.
This launch is the result both of one momentous decision and repeated small actions. It’s both a leap off the high dive and climbing the ladder up to the board rung by terrifying rung. It’s that feeling we all get in before moments of risk. It’s me pacing around my parents’ basement in middle school with my crush’s phone number punched into my first brick of a cell-phone psyching myself up to just hit “CALL” already. Just that one simple push.
And this start is also about trusting that it will turn it out okay.
I trust that in this leap, the net will appear.
Of course I have my doubts, but as the great Sugars and India Arie say, courage isn’t being fearless. “Courage is action in the face of fear.” Which to me is what the four games in this issue are all about. They’re about starting big and small, and overcoming doubt, and saying yes in a world that’s constantly saying no, and having compassion for yourself through it all.
So come on, weirdos. Let’s start.
