Article Time!
May 7th, 2007Yippee! The first in my Adventure Architect series of articles about Chivalry is Not Dead is now up on Adventure Gamers. And for your personal enjoyment, here’s a paragraph from said article:
“Now, first things first: before I decide to create a game, I find it absolutely necessary that I know the scope of what is possible for me to achieve in a given period of time. You don’t need to look very far on the Internet to find examples of ambitious, epic-length projects-to-be that simply never get finished because the person or team responsible for the project took on much more than it could handle. Admittedly, it may take the development of a prior game or two to fully assess one’s capabilities; however, putting at least a bit of thought into the questions of “What can I do?” and “How much time am I willing to spend doing it?” is definitely useful in the long run.”
Well, what are you sitting here waiting for? Go read the rest.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
HAha! This article is great. Really interesting to hear how another artiste goes about preparing for their work. You’re very level-headed and seem to have a really good idea of what you’re capable of. Much better than I was at your age (or maybe even am now!) I think your points about teams were really smart.
One thing I fear in taking on projects like this, where you’re also updating on the project, is that ‘what if I don’t finish the project?’ I think games lend themselves to being completed more than, say, a novel, because you can just sit down in a chair and start a novel, but a computer game takes more preparation. In fact, I’d argue novels SHOULD take a lot of preparation, but realistically you don’t need to do much to just sit down and do them, other than an impetus to write. Also, because I work on multiple, multiple projects at once, with no strict goal of finishing them (which has its advantages), there’s a lot of stuff I don’t finish (disadvantage)…so I’m wary of serializing stuff in progress. I think it’s very cool that you can do this. I look forward to your next article!
May 14th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Thanks, Leopold.
Actually, it is possible to just sit down and create a game, depending on your chosen engine’s ease of use. (Of course, it’s not necessarily advisable.) As for not finishing, well, I find that such a feeling tends to go away after you’ve already finished one or two projects and have a better idea as to how long it’ll take. But then, I don’t usually work on too many things at once…
May 14th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Maybe it’s a difference in work styles. Of course, you can just sit down and write a novel too, but it will probably not be very good! Let us know when the next article goes up.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:59 am
>>Of course, you can just sit down and write a novel too, but it will probably not be very good!
I’m not much of a reader myself, but I do know that some, of not many of the well known masterworks have been written just like that.
I do know Hergé (Tin tin) worked like that, and he’s been called a genius by some.
I guess it depends on what kind of story you’re trying to tell. The Sixth Sense could not have been written like that, for instance
May 15th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
I’m of the persuasion that there needs to be a sort of balance in spontenaiety and planning, particularly when I’m the one writing something. The former is there to keep the process fresh and new, and the latter is there to keep me on track in the right direction. Coincidentally, I’ll be writing more about this in my next article.
May 16th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Comics are a different medium. Because it takes time to plan and draw each panel, I find you can plan as you go. The process is slower. Writing, for me anyway, can get ahead of your planning and then you find yourself stuck! The problem with writing too is that you have only words to express yourself and something are hard to express well with just words. A comic can tell so much in a panel that words are only necessary as dialogue.