“When does your project die, Mahsa?”
A few days ago, while talking about my project with a professor from Sharif University, he asked me:
“When does your project die, Mahsa?”
Out of everything we talked about, this was the question that stayed with me the most.
Later, I asked sensei the same question:
When does a project die?
He gave me two words:
Will and money.
But the first one meant more to me.
Will.
That one word stayed in my head for days.
I started asking myself: what does it really mean to want something?
Is it a wish?
Not exactly. A wish can stay in our minds forever without ever turning into action.
Is it about pursuing something?
Maybe partly. But pursuit is more about searching and trying to reach something.
For me, will is something deeper.
Maybe it’s that inner force that makes us keep something alive even when the path becomes difficult, unclear, full of mistakes, and sometimes exhausting.
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My project has changed many times. I’ve removed ideas, changed directions, and faced design problems, budget limitations, bugs, bad decisions, and a lot of doubt.
Sometimes I genuinely ask myself:
Do I still want this project? Or can I just not let it go because I’ve already put so much time and energy into it?
I don’t think a project only dies when the money runs out, the team falls apart, or development stops.
Sometimes a project dies when the will to make it disappears.
And sometimes a project can still be in development but already be dead inside, because it has moved too far away from what it originally meant.
For me, this project is not just about making a game.
It’s about the Sarv-e Abarkuh*. About protecting something older and bigger than “us.”
These days, my main question isn’t:
“Is my project finished?”
Because it isn’t.
My question is:
Can I bring the design back to the reason I wanted to make it in the first place?
For now, my answer is yes.
Maybe sometimes, to understand whether a project is still alive, we shouldn’t look at how much work we’ve already put into it.
We should ask whether we can still connect the design to the reason we started making it.
Maybe sometimes, to understand whether a project is still alive, we shouldn’t look at how much work we’ve already put into it.
We should ask whether we can still connect the design to the reason we started making it.
