Game Design is never easy
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This is from Penny-Arcade.
"Cory Barlog, the Director on the new God of War, posted a video of himself checking the Metacritic for the game. It’s like an unboxing video, but for the potential of the human spirit.
I had a sense what the video would actually be about before I started it, and ultimately time would prove it correct: it’s not personal in any way. it’s the relief of having lead people through a very hard place and, with the number in front of him, having independently verifiable proof that their trust had not been misplaced. He did not lead them astray. Until he saw that, he didn’t know himself."
Think about that as a game designer. He has dozens of talented people, researchers, scores of support, and a powerful gaming platform or two to work with. And still, in the end, he can't know if it will be good in the publics eyes
Now think about trying that with a MU*, with this audience.
You have to be somewhat mono-visionary about it when you work to create something with direction, and then it has to find an audience.
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I think what I am saying is I appreciate the visions, and the efforts of those who create these games, whether or not I am in the audience who finds the final product.
@Apos
@faraday
@Lotherio
@CobaltasaurusThat list is ultra short, as I have no memory, or in many cases, no knowledge of who it was that drove a game into creation. Or I don't know their name here.
Please tell me more names of folks who have a vision of their game, and they drive it, make sure it comes into being and drive the stories and set examples of what they see for others to emulate. You can tell who they are not in the beginning necessarily, but in the end, when they leave their creation.
I also appreciate those who support and help nurture these projects. The coders, the player story tellers, the grid descers and playtesters.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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:waggles his fist at a cloud.
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@Sonder and @Wretched for Fallcoast.
@Seraphim73, @GirlCalledBlu, and @Auspice for The 8th Sea.
@Taika for DescentMUX.
@Coin for Eldritch.
@tragedyjones for Reno1 and BITN.
Annapurna (not sure of her forum name or if she has one) for Fate's Harvest. -
@misadventure said in Game Design is never easy:
I think what I am saying is I appreciate the visions, and the efforts of those who create these games, whether or not I am in the audience who finds the final product.
This is one of the reasons that I will always cheer on a new project.
It takes courage. It takes creativity. It takes real work. It takes time.
And there are no guarantees for any of it.
It's one of the reasons I will always support any ethical choice (and most choices are completely ethics neutral when it comes to these games -- things like where to set it, what time period, etc.) whether it's the choice I would have personally made or not. (I won't support things like, say, Elsa emailing abuse to people, because duh. That's the kind of thing I mean about unethical choices.)
There are a lot of things I disagree with. I still believe in encouraging people to try them, and explore the possibilities of them. They might work, and that would be awesome! If they don't, we've collectively learned something from that, too, and maybe they or someone else can fix it so it does work.
Every creative endeavor -- and I consider world building, grid building, roleplay, plot running, and even code to be creative endeavors -- is a constant learning process. Everything is constantly in a state of being refined. Sometimes this is from one game to the next, sometimes within a game. I think that's actually a pretty healthy thing, and it speaks well of those willing to do it. I start things over from scratch repeatedly for exactly this reason more often than I ever imagined I would at the outset, and that goes for not just games, but all the other artsy foo-foo I do. (I lost count of the number of times I've restarted the current knitting project to refine it, for instance; I know it's over twenty.)
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I'm moving this to our new Game Design section, because hey!
