Legendary game designer and creator of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto, once said at a press conference:

I do not call our video games a piece of work… A piece of work refers to when a creator embodies the work with their own thoughts. The audience is free to interpret. However, the reason we refer to our games as products is because we hope the audience uses it in line with the creator’s intentions.

A few questions come to mind. What is a piece of work? Is art a piece of work? What exactly is a product?

Digging deeper and putting the terminology aside since words like art and products mean different things to different people, I think we’re really looking at two extreme types of things we create.

On one end, it is 100% about expressing ourselves. On the other end, it is creating a thing for someone that makes their lives better.

It is not to say whether one end is better than the other, but I think recognizing there is this spectrum and understanding where our creations fall brings us clarity.