Got a desktop full of unfinished projects? That's okay, so does Square Enix creative Tetsuya Nomura

When you dive into the mess of folders on your PC, what do you find? Cobweb-plastered manuscripts for those twelve fantasy novels you started? Mouldy design documents for those nine games you never actually began coding? Perhaps dozens of little motheaten thumbnails of that masterpiece you're planning to someday paint? Relax, I'm not calling you out (I have my own groaning cybercabinet of neglect). Rather, I'm here to say don't worry. Everyone does it. Even famous Final Fantasy character designer and Kingdom Hearts director Tetsuya Nomura, who has a “huge number of game proposals lying dormant” in a mish mash of folders on his PC. You're just like him!

Nomura made the comments in an interview with Famitsu (translated by Automaton - thanks!) where he spoke alongside Takumi Isobe, director of upcoming action RPG Reynatis. When asked about the number of projects he has, Nomura jokes that his computer is a "labyrinth" replete with scenarios and synopses. He's unsure if any of them "will ever see the light of day". A bunch of game ideas and proposals get plopped into a folder simply called "NEW".

The veteran Square Enix man talks some more about his creative habits in the interview. I'll let you delve deeper if you want. I just wanted to evoke some sense of common humanity to all those frantic souls with fifteen first drafts languishing in the dark corners of their desktop. Because reader, I am also he. In many ways, I too am the man who designed the characters of the best Final Fantasy game. I too have been credited on 103 video games. We are the same.

I'm being silly. But I really do like it when the people we look upon so often as the legends of an industry reveal something mundane and ordinary about their working life, like the state of their folder hierarchy. All those people you admire, they do not only pee and poop, but they close the wrong tab by accident too. They get lost in their own sub-directories and have to quickly scribble down any idea that comes to mind into hasty documents so they don't "forget what the proposal is about", in Nomura's own words. If you spend a lot of time working on a PC, there is something genuinely unifying and levelling about the idea that even those we call the greats must click "remind me later" multiple times a day. Even Shigeru Miyamoto has probably typed his password with caps lock on and only realised it after hitting enter.