Friday, November 4, 2011

Inspirational Talk, part one


Pencils from the recent "Oblivion" game. Elder Scrolls 5 is seven days away! So, basically, I have to get all the work I'm planning on doing for the next four months outta the way before the week ends.

Game development! If you're a gamer, then the chances are very good that at one time or another, or quite possibly several times, you've thought to yourself, "Hey, why don't I make my own video games?"

Answer: Because they're a crapload of work, that's why.

You remember those documentaries you saw when you were a kid about filmmaking, where they'd tell you how, after three days of grueling labor and the creation of a full-scale giant alien prop and hot lights and temperamental actors and shooting permits and such, they'd end up with about two minutes of usable footage? Well, game development's like that, except for having anything usable at the end of three days. 

Usually, at the end of three days, what you have -- if you're lucky -- are a set of problems that are at least moderately different from the problems you had three days before. If you're not lucky, you're still working on the first problems, and can only hope to see the day when you get to work on new, exciting issues. And where do these problems all come from? Generally, they're the result of poor or incomplete planning. Is there a way to avoid poor or incomplete planning in game development? Of course!

It's just that nobody's discovered it, yet.


2 comments:

  1. I once saw the code for a very simple isometric RPG. It made my head spin like nothing before or since (well, except the Large Hadron Collider).

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  2. And working out the semantics of code is just one piece of the puzzle. Design's one of the larger headaches, because it's not just the stuff you want to draw attention to that you have to document, it's -- literally -- EVERYTHING.

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