The Inventory looms...

Organizing and mapping out the final format of the game continues this week. All the "verbal" challenges have been penned, and a system of usable inventory items is being developed. I'm not as familiar with developing non-art assets, but my relatively short experience in the world of professional game-makery taught me a lot about the values of organization and a defined workflow. Nathan and I will be meeting later this week, which will be out last face-to-face meeting until mid August. We've fallen into a pattern of having two phone conversations a week, and meeting in person whenever I happen to be in town. My opinion is that the phone conversations are largely for keeping tabs and passing our own individual ideas back and forth, while the actual meetings in Nathan's office result in the best collaborative creation of "new stuff". As we need to peg down the game's inventory, we definitely need to meet in person. More next week, where I'll be reporting from the greater Salt Lake City area.

Details

Since writing my massive to-do list for the Incident at Long Rock Junction project, I've done a lot of just looking at it. The phrase the devil's in the details has repeatedly come to mind, because it 's the details that I spent a few hours writing down last Friday. Those details represent a very labor intensive, deliberate form of work which, if done right, will all connect and make sense. In hindsight I'm very glad that I took the time to determine a priority order, because I think otherwise I would have spent a lot more time just staring at the document, transfixed. I've found that there's a difference between knowing "there's work to be done" and knowing "exactly what every stitch of that work entails".

4 Month's Later...

As evidenced by the dates on these two most recent posts, the pause in development has been significantly extended! And truthfully, what had been planned as a two week, "get everything you can done" push has evolved into a 4 month "let's make what we're already working on as high-quality as possible" extravaganza. A popular phrase among game-makers is "a late game is only late until it's shipped, but a crappy game is crappy forever".
Taking into account the changes that the Help Desk (and the CITES organization as a whole) has undergone, the longer-then-expected development cycle makes sense. We went from having 3 team members to only 2, and one of those (Nathan) was given a heap of much higher priority responsibilities. This triggered a need for me to get used to HTML, and jump into the world of training content creation (an arena I previously stayed out of). Changes of this type are rarely anticipated, even in the relatively stable world of education, but they do not always have a negative impact. Nathan and I have had a golden opportunity to inject some much-needed love and care into our Voyage to the Unknown game, and I believe that our extra work significantly contributed to it's success when it was recently released to our student staff. So there's an announcement for you; we've got one game in the can.
Additionally, Voyage to the Unknown is also nearing completion. In the interest of good project management practices, I've created a master to-do list, assigning item priorities and tentative "due by" dates. As I'll be in Salt Lake City for most of this summer, our having a clear picture of what we need to accomplish and when is going to be critical. More updates next week!

Game: PAUSED

The new CITES Help Desk game, Destination: Mystery, has been put on hold. Management changes in the organization, coupled with the recent loss of one of our team members means that the future of the training games projects is currently under review. I'll expect to know more within a week or two, and in the meantime will be refining what has already been developed.
It is my hope that work on the games will continue at the very least through the spring of 2008, but the value of the training games program must be weighed against the needs of the organization.
I am looking forward to revisiting some of the work from the past 6 months. The pace we've kept up through now has not allowed as much reminiscing, and this seems to be the perfect time. I'll keep you up to date, and post more when I know more.

Onwards, to ADVENTURE!

The art and written game-content is done for Incident at Long Rock Junction! While I did finish the game, I dropped the ball on blog-updating after the holiday season. Additionally the game development team has lost one of its long time members; Chris Ritzo has moved onto another position at the University, and we wish him the best of luck!
This means that Nathan will be picking up the vast majority of technical issues, as well as designing and penning the games learning content. Despite this we're preparing to launch our first game in over a year and a half! Voyage to the Unknown should be getting its final touches this week. Whose excited? WE are, that's who.
This week marks the beginning of my work on game three, which right now I'm calling Destination: MYSTERIOUS. I really like the workflow I established for the last game, Incident at Long Rock Junction, and will stick with it for the next adventure. That means a couple weeks of writing and development before jumping into the art and technical work of the game. Additionally I'm going to give myself a week to more thoroughly research some of the applications and programs available online that could assist in the game development process. So sadly, no sketches for a short while. More updates next week!

Good Deal!

I'm missing all sorts of exciting stuff back in Illinois - holiday parties with snacks and punch, snowstorms with inches (inches!) of snow. Here in South Florida it's always the same - sunshiny and 70 to 80 degrees. Boring. I guess I'll survive.
Made some great progress on one of the last few images for Incident at Long Rock Junction. Work on the home front is going well Nathan's wrapping up work on the written/fun game elements and our target "release date" is early 2008 (awesome). Incident will done around the same time, so we should have an easy transition to getting it ready for publishing. Here below this text is a sneak peak on the image I mentioned above. True, it's just a desk. But I think it's cool looking.

I'm finding the Rules of Play book to be suited more for those with an academic interest in game design then for people trying to make better games. The authors should be given credit for the thoroughness of their explanations, but the works density makes casual reading impossible. That being said, picking through it with a highlighter has already yielded a few good notions, which in turn have led to ideas for the Help Desk games.
The second book I ordered on game design has arrived. It's called A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. In just three chapters it's managed to change the way I think about how the human brain interacts with fun and games. It's great stuff.
More on the books as I get deeper into them.
My fiancee and I found out we're headed to Fort Myers, FL this weekend! Considering the temperatures there have been in the 80's, we're thrilled. I need to find out if there are any interesting game studios in the area...