Thursday Sep 24, 2009

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One back week in Berlin. Primary Mission: Find an apartment for two months is a bust so far. I was touring one apartment earlier today, decided to take it, only to find out from the landlord that he'd already rented it out since we'd last spoken. This is par for the course.

The Project I'm stopping for is coming along,

Insert one lightly staged picture of the code alongside the game's placeholder art (lifted from Rome Reborn) such as it looks during early development.

As it stands, the game can support multiple people logging in and giving their orders. It has a turn processor that churns through all those orders and makes something that bears some slight resemblance to a story for the players to read the next time they log on, so they can see how their agents bumbled into each other as they ran around Rome doing assorted nasty deeds.

So the framework is there. Next it has to take the leap from "you can play it" to "it's fun to play." This is the moment I have to sit back and take a long look at my theories about what's going to make this game fun, and build it up from the barely strung together bones of a game that are there now into something with depth and intuitive simplicity. Terrifying isn't the right word for this moment. How could writing a game ever be terrifying?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
What it is, is the moment where I have to admit to myself that I left a steady, good paying day job with great people to do this.

I'm looking at something that if I do everything just right, people will say, "Hey, this is kinda fun" and keep playing. They'll taunt each other during their lunch breaks over what happened in the game the day before, and cut deals in emails for how they're going to divide Rome up between them. They'll cheer when their plans worked out, and laugh when they didn't. And if I screw it up enough, and it won't take much, then they'll just stop playing and not think twice about it. My friends will pat me on the back and say nice things, and in another half a year I'll be back at a desk job, my savings almost gone.

There are so many directions I can take this. Which one will make sense to people the first time they see it, and be fun the first time they try it, and every time after? Which one will be complex enough to hold their interest yet not confuse them?

More, this is the moment where I have to confront that I know what's fun for me, but, can I make something that's good for other people?

That's the beating heart of capitalism, ne? I have to earn the right to keep doing this, and the only way to do that is to make something someone else loves so much that they cause me to get paid for it.

Can I?

I think so, and then I think back to grade school, and being the quiet one. It's been long years, and I've learned how foolish that quiet child's snobbery and blindness were. But have I learned all the things I needed to about what other people want and need, all the things I turned my nose up at learning while the other kids were scrapping over football and taunting each other to take that first puff or that first sip?

I'll enjoy this year. But to not regret it, I have to make something that other people are grateful for.

And actually, gambling on that is scary.

VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
niobe:
Ha! Yeah, the first fully clothed SG. biggrin
doctor853748:
If you need a critical gamegeek to playtest, you know where to find me smile

I might even have creative ideas to add wink

And I even speak "IT-nerd"

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