The Big One That Got Away

[bvanevery]

Have you ever had a big game project that you were working on, that you committed many years of thought and some years of actual programming effort to, but that you were never able to pin down the game design? And so, the project languished.

Such is my "Ocean Mars," a 4X TBS taking cues from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I've sat down and tried to write the game design on paper. I strip out fat from the Civ genre; that part is easily done. But I am not satisfied with the result. I say to myself, "This is only another Civ game. Like all the others, even though it's leaner. It's not worth doing." Also, when you strip out the fat from Civ, precious little is left.

I have these ideas about character and telling stories. I notice that figuring out where to push your units on hex maps is antithetical to telling stories. It gets your brain involved in puzzle solving, not narrative. I've thought, should "Ocean Mars" really be a RPG?

Then I try to come up with the story of Ocean Mars as RPG. And there isn't one. It's a broad historical scenario, not a story. How do you narrate all of recorded human history? How do you narrate even 100 years of that history? Much easier to do 1 character for 1 year of that history. Or 1 month. I suppose I did just read River God (http://www.wilbursmithbooks.com/novels/river_god.html), a novel set in ancient Egypt that covers maybe 25 years of history. So I guess I could mull over that narrative scope.

What story am I trying to tell? I've taken stabs at "Ocean Mars the movie" at times. I don't have one. I don't care about any one specific thing enough, there's nothing I'm just dying to get off my chest. I have imagined a world and a history rather than a story. I'm fascinated by historical documentaries, Guns, Germs, and Steel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) and Collapse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed) .

Another of my projects, "The Game Of Immortals," I have the same problem. I've imagined the world in which the gods live. They're trapped in immortality, there are no mortals to torture or kick around anymore. They're very bored and they fall upon themselves. But I have a scenario, not an actual story I'm dying to tell. I have a main character, Mallor, who has architected a lot of the misery. But I've tried several times to write his story and I've come up empty handed. I don't have a specific enough idea of what I'm trying to convey through his character. Worse, my mood has changed over the years, so things I thought were important as a younger man aren't as important to me now.

Actually I put down "The Game Of Immortals" because I thought I'd need tons of cinematic 3d animation to do it justice. Nothing stopping me from writing a text version of it though. But again, what's the story?

Maybe I should stop trying to write a game and start trying to write a book. Come back to the game when I have something resembling a book.

[jefferytitan]

What you've got is a map, and you're trying to plot a journey on it. But you don't know where you want to start, or where you want to end. A few ways to tackle it come to mind. There's the classic tour approach of visiting the main attractions. There's the approach of following a person or process, e.g. a famous person's life, or the migration of the animals. You can take an emotional journey - follow a renaissance or a depression. Or you can take the back ways, the magical little paths and villages that nobody's heard of, but which nonetheless give you the flavour of the history by osmosis.

I personally think you should avoid trying to hit all the main attractions. It's normally too long and too rigorous. There's always focussing on the smaller characters in a conflict. The events seem even more grandiose from their perspective because their abilities are limited. Plus it gives room for growth. Or perhaps a main character before they were well-known, for much the same reason. Something which gives people a feel for the universe but leaves them with questions.

Or perhaps there's a question which fascinates you about your own universe? A mystery, something you didn't really look into. Or the ultimate match-up, the unstoppable force vs the immovable object.

Hope those thoughts help.

[bvanevery]

It helps some. I talked about the problem with one of my writer friends today. I have several points in the history where there's some hullabaloo. Like when the Russians first land on Mars, or the UN declares the rights of sentience, or the Ascentionists try to manufacture God. Each of these conflicts could be a screenplay or an episode all by themselves. So there isn't any shortage of possible stories I could tell, if I shortened the timescale to deal with one story at a time.

There's a further problem though. I don't seem to care sufficiently about any of these stories to write them. I'm lacking a passion for elaborating them.

When I think about what might actually get me jazzed up to proceed, it has more to do with modern art museums. I can think of visual inspiration all day long. Why do I run out of gas when it comes to narrative? Is it simply because I have more practice at painting than writing?

Perhaps it's time to do another freeform PBEM RPG to prototype some narrative inspiration.

Or maybe I need to buy a new computer and work on 3d stuff. At least that will be worth money.

[jefferytitan]

Hmm, is it the narrative that bores you, or trying to restrict it to such a short timeframe?

If it's the timeframe you could perhaps try the future history approach, e.g. there is some event in the distant past which has immediate impact on the present, and someone is trying to track it back to understand what will happen. Perhaps an organisation that has become too powerful, or an artifact of some nature which has traded hands many times during the history. Or if you're basing it more futuristically, use relativity effects to have a character effectively living hundreds of years, as several other authors have done.

What kind of visual inspiration have you had? Perhaps some examples will give me an idea. I had an idea for a story/universe based on a single image (in that case the image of a ship with the hull torn open, everybody dead, but curiously hopeful), so I think I know where you're coming from.

I have doubts that coding is going to solve things any faster than writing. Either way you're aiming for a concrete moment of time, unless you have a better approach. Of course treating time less linearly might be interesting, allow you to dip shallowly into a huge bunch of events. Maybe the last old-fashioned human on Earth needs to figure out where the rest of humanity went using computer records and travelling to some of the historically significant locations?

[Applewood]

It doesn't even have to be that big a one.

Our pool game is 90% finished and has been that way for over a year now. We just can't find time to get in and finish it off until we get more staff, and the reason we don't just put a stick in the sand and do it now anyway, is that we can't define a nice interface for it that works across all the games. All the hard bits are done, but the "trivial" bit is stumping us.

My advice would be to let a fresh pair of eyes look at it. It often helps to get an opinion from someone not biased by your own investment in the project. Stupidly, I've not taken my own advice yet! :o

[jefferytitan]

...we can't define a nice interface for it that works across all the games...

Are you working on a whole suite of games or something? See, there's your problem. :P

[Applewood]

Not really, I'm just talking about a control method and basic HUD. Stuff we don't usually struggle with, but this game needs to be slicker than snot and the way some of the supported pool game modes work is non-compatible with just about every idea we've had.

It's nothing major, but it's enough for us to back-burner it whilst more pressing stuff is worked on. We'll be getting a new artist on staff soon and it's going to be his "ease in" job to come up with something that works and looks nice.

[bvanevery]

My visual inspirations have been more in the realm of color, light, and form rather than subject matter. I object to the way a lot of 3d game graphics looks. Most things look "like math" to me. Perhaps I should spend time looking at screenshots of stuff, see if anyone has done better.