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[Trollvottel]

Hmm. I'd say 'amateur' games writing is just another form of culture production parallel to a mainstream ...

We have the professional magazines industry with large, managed teams ... and some small single-person publications for a tiny, if often very dedicated, audience.

There's a professional book industry with large managed teams (many authors' names are really franchises. Does anyone belive Tom Clancy programs three computer games a year and writes five books in his spare time? IMO it is more likely that there's an author who decides the basic structure, a team of editors, several hired copywriters for filling in fluff, and a team of marketing experts to make deals with game developers.) There are also thousands of hobby writers who, if their novel ever gets printed, get almost no money for it. And people willing to pay for self-publishing.

There's a pro movie industry, and lots of no-budget productions, some of which are excellent.

Now games are a new form of cultural product, and being a one-man team in games is IMO a bit similar to (though probably more difficult) one-person-shows in movies, mags, or other media. In all these cases doing it takes a huge amount of dedication.

(Some success stories that started in no-budget productions include Peter Jackson, who started with absurd horror/splatter spoof movies and later filmed LotR...)

(What continues to amaze me is the similarities between successful tiny projects and successful big games. Blizzard's Diablo is essentially Nethack with graphics. Dwarf Fortress is a kind of, uh, Evil Genius only without as many bugs and a lot more attention to detail ...)

[Sowelu]

quote:Originally posted by Gigalith:
<STRONG>If something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly</STRONG>

That statement is probably one of the most important statements ever made.

Trollvottel:  Trust me, Nethack has had more people work on it, and has taken more man-hours in development, than all Diablo's programmers/designers/artists all put together.  Nethack was NOT done by a tiny team.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

In most cases, novelists are just solo people or a couple of them collaborating as co-authors. Tom Clancy is somewhat unusual for a novelist in his practice of putting his name to several lines of books written by other writers. The Tom Clancy games are done by large teams, but it's not totally separate from him, as he actually co-founded Red Storm Entertainment, which is named after one of his books and is the company that was behind the Tom Clancy line of games prior to being purchased by Ubisoft.

Diablo was basically designed to be a real time high budget roguelike, so it's not surprising that it looks like a lot of open source games, as that genre is rarely touched on by the professional games industry. It doesn't have the depth and detail that games with decades of development have, but its real time and high graphics approach to the genre were unique at the time, and aren't easily matched without a team like theirs.

I think the similarity between Evil Genius and Dwarf Fortress is more of a coincidence. It would be, if anything, due to a common inspiration source in the older commercial game Dungeon Keeper. From what I've seen of Toady's interviews though, Dwarf Fortress doesn't have its roots directly in Dungeon Keeper as much as it would appear though, and slid kind of laterally into the "carve a base out of a mountain" genre.

The interesting thing about the industry today is it's so young that the veterans and leaders of today are still those who built the industry as it stands from the ground up. Twenty to twenty five years ago, everyone was independent by today's standards, and even EA was a cute widdle company trying to figure out how a person can make a living doing this.  

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

quote:Originally posted by Gigalith:
<STRONG>"If something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly"
</STRONG>

I think you might've just snapped me out my jaded musicians coma with that. Thanks.

[Keiseth]

Gigalith, that was inspirational!

[Jayjayjuhwetplane]

Battlecruiser 3000! I bought it on CD a loooong time ago. I'll have to look it up. Such a strange game in some respects. Huge.

[Cthulhu]

I was obsessed with it for like two days, once I got the combat and mechanics down, I realized that there was nothing to keep me playing.  It's a huge game, and it is really cool, and I've heard there are huge battles, but you don't know when they're happening, because there's no news, radio, or any communication.  There's one "Mission" and it's basically the same as the freeplay goal.  Battleship-on-battleship combat is cool, but dogfights are so impossible, the computer can't even win.

On the moods thing, I have sensory integration disorder, which is associated with autism, but I don't have autism.  I do have these moods though.  Mainly on Warcraft 3, because its mapmaker is so intuitive.  I'll have an awesome idea, work on it obsessively for several weeks, and then completely lose interest, abandon it, and never look at it again.

[Katawa]

OP: http://www.adom.de/blog/

[Kogan Loloklam]

Toady One has taken on the aspect of one fey!
Toady One has taken over a COMPUTER!

...

...

...

...

Toady One has gone beserk!

(Why, oh why didn't anyone see Him drawing pictures of shiny new keyboards? Now there will be no more Dwarf Fortress  )

[Keiseth]

quote:Originally posted by Muffles:
<STRONG>
On the moods thing, I have sensory integration disorder, which is associated with autism, but I don't have autism.  I do have these moods though.  Mainly on Warcraft 3, because its mapmaker is so intuitive.  I'll have an awesome idea, work on it obsessively for several weeks, and then completely lose interest, abandon it, and never look at it again.</STRONG>

I do that too, to some degree. I've been working on my own little game in Sphere (http://www.spheredev.org) in Spidermonkey Javascript (as an introduction to programming, I thought of it as a learning experience.)

I've been working on it for almost six months now and my desire to put time into it waxes and wanes. I'll go on a week-long spree of experimenting with concepts and throwing stuff into it, then burn out for some time, and back and fourth. I've been *forcing* myself into working on it because otherwise I'd surely lose interest and never finish, like many projects prior to it.

If only we could harness that initial spree of inspiration and not lose it after a time, you know?

I've always wondered how Toady can work on one game for so long and keep the quality so high. (Last minute edit: Or so "beyond". *grin*)

[Stromko]

Trouble with autism, especially high-functioning autism, is how easy it is to self-diagnose. Any nerd can self-diagnose themselves with asperger's syndrome, just because they're very passionate about some very obscure things. If you spend 12 hours a day playing videogames for most of your youth, you just might be an awkward person.

I've been through a self-diagnosed autism phase, you could say I'm still /in/ that phase some days. But what occured to me, was that the idea that one has a cognitive or emotional disorder that justifies being weird and 'special' can be destructive to any effort to improve. It's also a seductive idea, as self-diagnosed mental disorders tend to be.

When you ask yourself, "Am I autistic?" you have to also ask, "What does this mean I can't do?". You might dislike doing certain things, but that's not the same thing. I /hate/ talking to people on the phone or meeting new people and I don't need real-life friends, I'm a terribly shy person and a shut-in.

However, even though I start from what I perceive as a below-average level of social talent, I can and have improved from practice and experience. My 'limitations' logically follow from my choices and interests. So, perceiving myself as autistic, believing that I will always have a disadvantage, would be unnecessarily limiting.

Forgiving yourself for your current limitations is a good thing, believing that you are special is (arguably) a good thing, but believing you will always be 'retarded' in some axis of your life, even one that you don't value that much (socialness), isn't helpful. It's not even a matter of whether you're right or wrong, you might very well have Asperger's but over-estimate your limitations.

Though I must say, "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly." is an excellent axiom and made this thread worthwhile.    

[ March 30, 2008: Message edited by: Stromko ]

[Kholint]

Stromko's right. Just because you read it on the internet doesn't suddenly mean you have green monkey disease, or autism or dyslexia or any of the other numerous made-up illnesses*.

Rule of thumb: if you've just spent 3 hours wiki-binging on [insert mental disorder here] and found yourself going, "That's SO me!", you definitely don't have it.

If I had a quid for every time I convinced myself overnight that I was a schizophrenic borderline transgendered cocaine addict I'd be a very rich guy...   :p

*just kidding, green monkey disease is a real, very serious condition that affects thousands of suffers every day.

[ March 30, 2008: Message edited by: Kholint ]

[Kagus]

I've wondered from time to time if I am mildly schizophrenic and/or psychotic...   I'm sure that I'm not, but I'm not so sure about me.

Now that that's taken care of, I have to state that although it has crossed my mind that I'm somewhat batty, I'm most likely just a bit weird.  I think it has something to do with me being profoundly curious, and so I wonder about certain oddball things at certain oddball times.  I have absurd urges from time to time, and although supressing them is simply the next thought, it is somewhat troubling that I get them in the first place.

Like standing around in a conversation and then wondering what would happen if I bit that person's nose off.  What would their reaction be?  What would it taste like?  What would the bystander's expression be?

These things occur to me in a fraction of a second, and are never given any real thought.  But still, it is undeniably freaky that I'm getting them in the first place...  

I find insanity fascinating, particularly schizophrenia.  I don't really believe that I've got it, but reading about the disease itself and about the people who have it makes for a really nifty bedtime story.

Heh heh...  Fun stuff:  look up the word 'Kagus' in the 'language_GOBLIN.txt' file.

[Jreengus]

quote:Originally posted by Kagus:
<STRONG>

Like standing around in a conversation and then wondering what would happen if I bit that person's nose off.  What would their reaction be?  What would it taste like?  What would the bystander's expression be?

</STRONG>

Note to self: Keep Kagus at arms length at all time and be ready run.

[Cthulhu]

I do that too, Kagus.  I enjoy reading about psychotic disorders and imagining what people would do if I did something inexplicably insane.