Yes, I've caught the “Culinary Class Wars” bug, and it’s made me think about things in a new light.
Where you start in life is a roll of the dice—economic status, upbringing, early influences, education. Those are your ingredients. Some start with caviar and foie gras: born into wealth, access to mentors, loving family, all the opportunities. Others get less ideal ingredients: leftover rice, bruised tomatoes, expired spices. They’ve faced trauma, loss, limited resources. But here’s the thing—both can cook up magic.
Judge a chef by their skills, not just their dish. Don’t just look at someone’s end result. Look at how far they’ve come, what they’ve done with the ingredients they were given.
Those who started with truffles and caviar - they barely need to do anything to end up with a good dish. But even the finest truffles can be burnt and messed up. They could put their good ingredients to waste.
On the flipside, someone with basic supermarket ingredients, with enough training and skill, could turn those into something magical. Fine dining level cooking. Think of Napoli Matfia’s chestnut tiramisu. Wow, just wow. Or the Self-made chef, or my favourite, the Comic Book Chef. My god, those guys are so inspiring!! And its inspiring precisely because you know that they started at a disadvantage. They didn't have the luxury of training at 2 star Michellin restaurants, nor the mentorship of star chefs. Some of them had to start from the bottom - washing dishes, mopping floors, and work the hard way up to get to where they are.
Judge someone for the journey they have taken. Not their end destination.
Some people say it doesn't matter where you came from. All that matters is where you end up. I disagree. It does matter where you came from. Remember it, look back on it, but do not let it define you. Do your best with what you have. Make that Michellin star dish, with your imperfect ingredients.
"Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack in everything. That's how the light comes in." - Leonard Cohen
Acceptance is key. You need to make peace with your past, in order to move forward into the future.
Life is but what you make of it.
Ingredients, then Ingenius.
In life, the real magic is turning what you have into something inspiring. You may not have started with caviar, but you can still aim for a Michelin-starred dish—made in your flavours, your style.
Games = Food
I've been thinking about the business of creating games. Unlike the flashy Silicon Valley tech startups that are all the buzz now, and unlike the high-paying industries of finance, law, tech, medicine:
How do I justify my existence? How do I stay motivated? How do I approach my work as though it were a calling?
When people say they want to be an entrepreneur, the first thing you ask them is: Do you have product market fit?
Does this solve a real human problem? Cater to their needs?
While I understand this concept, I've always found it weird when applying it to my line of work. Who needs games? What problem am I solving?
The only path I see to answering the question is: people play games to escape. Their lifes suck, and games are a new world for them to not suck in. Or at least, to suck without real stakes. To distract them.
But man, doesn't that sound depressing?
Can you imagine going to work and telling yourself that you are building a distraction? A fake world where people can succeed in, but none of it is real?
And then I thought about chefs. From Singaporean hawkers specializing in their one dish, to restaurant chains like McDonalds and Din Tai Fung, to Michellin star restaurants with fine dining precision and months-long waiting lists.
What problem do they solve? What need do they cater to?
Hunger? LOL
Maybe you think that McDonalds caters to hunger, but even still, you don't choose McDonalds just because you feel hungry. You go because you know that you can get a decent meal, in good time, at a fair price. The taste is standardized so well, across stores, across countries, that some might even call it a miracle. magic. The magic of the system.
You go to these places for the experience. The taste, the sights, the service. The magic.
Great food is art. It is precision, recipes, perfected over countless iterations. It is the skill of the chef, embodied in the unique style of their dishes. It is meant to be admired, appreciated, treated with reverence. It is worth waiting in line for, sometimes for months. It is worth travelling out of your way for.
Great games are also art. Rolling dice, flipping cards, moving tokens on the board. These are all ingredients. What makes a game great comes down to the skill of the game designer. How well do they cook each ingredient? How do they choose which ingredients to combine together? How do they sequence them, how much of each to add? Do you juliene the peppers, or dice them? Do you baste the steak, or put it in the oven? It’s all raw material, but the art comes in how you put it together, how you blend flavors—strategies, themes, mechanics—to give a player a unique experience.
Just like chefs don’t only cater to hunger, great games aren’t just about passing time. They’re about crafting moments that linger, stories that resonate, and a sense of joy in the shared experience. The work of game design feels much like the work of a chef. It’s not about flashy tech or lucrative industries. It’s about creating something people connect with.
Be A Chef
Game designers are chefs in their own right. We pick ingredients—dice, cards, tokens, boards—and figure out how to blend them into something new. The best of the best, like Reiner Knizia or Stefan Feld, continue pushing boundaries, creating new flavors that challenge, excite, and bring people together.
So, if life has given you leftover rice, don’t despair. Accept it. See what you can make. Be a chef—be resourceful, be creative. And whatever your art—food, games, anything you love—treat each creation as an opportunity to serve something truly meaningful.
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