My hero, Neill Blomkamp is making a new movie! Matt Damon is the star. Trailer of Elysium looks like social unrest and rich-poor division what was a strong background in District 9 remains. Bring on the revolution!
One must keep your lust for knowledge and achievement in check. I did not. I kept reading all blogs of game-designers and game production subjects i could concentrate on. When i was not reading I was watching game videos, behind the scenes, (especially HALO) as well as new releases.
Why?
Its interesting question. My eyes can't focus, they hurt, light must be dimmed and head is buzzing with all new hot stuff and ideas about how to make my perfect game. But i have not wrote a single line in any of my current projects for almost a month. I needed to see that big picture of how is it in that glamorous world of game industry, simply because writing and developing stuff by yourself is like talking to a mirror: complimenting but not real.
My headaches will pass, but already this informational overdose have done some good things: simple reality check that showed me that being a lone-wolf-freelancer is far far away from AAA world class projects with hundreds of people creating them and millions to back them. The scale and quality of these projects is not a thing to compete against, but a destination to go to. But even these monsters start with a spark of idea and determination of game designer. For now, i need a painkiller....
Because Future does not reveal its secrets easily or
warn us of dangers ahead.
Beyond the Gates of Antares is an extremely ambitions and promising project by Rick Priestly, the father of Warhammer and Warhammer 40000 universes. The renown and legendary game designer left Games Workshop in 2010 to pursue new goals as a freelancer. So far he created and participated in number of successful projects, like Bolt Action (WW2 squad-to-company size wargame) and Fanticide (a homicidal warband tabletop top game). The latter was successfully promoted and launched using Kickstarter, and apparently gave an inspiration and confidence to repeat the experience with BGoA.
For the selfish purposes i will post a video of Rick Priestly, John Stallard and Rik Alexander (Warlord Games) interview were they describe the "sausage" or the bright palns for new gaming universe to the Beasts of War website. In short and to save you one hour of listening i will summarize the goals of project as quite ambitious.
First of all they are trying to merge Massive Multiplayer Online game with table-top wargame, and give players a real-time online mirror of their table top efforts. So while you are playing the game with your mates and feed result to the website, the script (or admin) will change the big picture of entire universe.
Sounds revolutionary, at least. What is comforting is that big picture will be controlled by the company narrators.
Secondly, the game mechanics (so far) is similar to tested in Bolt Action system of activation and units status, though system is still in development to adjust for the far far future, sometime couple of million years ahead.
Thirdly, the combat will be affected by pool of command action and every unit will react to enemy actions according to situation and impact, which promises to deliver a very intense game where both players are constantly engaged in the game.
That is IF the project will find required amount of supporters on Kickstarter. At the moment of writing this post, BGoA have collected 31% of £93.492 pledged money and it had 36 day to go. And if would be behind this project i would be worried. Unfortunately i'm not the only one who sees realities of BGoA.
Blogger Mr. Zweischneid's (dont ask me how to pronounce this name) in his brilliant analysis describes the most obvious reason for worries. Check it yourself, http://pinsofwar.com/rick-priestleys-kickstarter-fail, and you might agree that at the moment, Beyond the Gates of Antares is an incomplete product. To summarize Mr. Zweischneid's post,
BGoA will be funded only if will get at last £5000 in donations each day
if the vision of game universe will suddenly became clear and focused so that people will know what exactly they are supporting
if game mechanics will be finished to at least 90%
Looking at the current situation of definitely an interesting project I wounder what might happen in likely case if project will not get requested amount of support.
Rick Priestly stated: "that this the game I've always wanted to create". We may believe in his commitment to the project, which mean that he will continue working on the game regardless of financial situation. That is promising.
Warlord Games support: John Stallard (the boss) clearly understands that IF this project will take off, and people will start playing BGoA as they play MMOG these day, then his company will become a second Games Workshop.
Arrival of undisclosed investor: frankly I'm speculating, but project of such novelty and potential could attract a third party investor, which means it will get required amount of money and production schedule will be met.
Here it is, the book what was a pleasure to write and research for almost a year. Feel free to download Elysian Drop Troop codex from the link below. Any feedback would most welcome.
I am not even going to pretend to impartial: thanks to Ville Vuorella I've realized that i can create and design games and that no matter how weird idea there is, it might have a chance.
To my readers of coarse it's probably irrelevant, but wait. Ville "Burger" Vourella is the man who wrote STALKER role play game based on original novel by Strugatski brothers. The amount and quality of work put in that book is astonishing.
Ville Vuorella has been designing games for more than 8 years (full-time). He holds a English Philology degree with Games Research & Design and Academic Entrepreneurship as second specializationachieved in University of Helsinki. In addition he posses variety of skills and studies outside of ordinary curriculum, but very useful forthe designers flow of art and craft, like Archeology, Medieval Irish and British studies. He also has EU Specialist Certificate in Game Scriptwriting. Vuorella has been not only game designer, but also an IT consultant and game design lecturer.
Though during his career (up to current moment) he has not worked (yet, i hope) on multimillion projects but he retains individuality and thoughtful approach to his work. One of the cornerstones of his work is a well structured design documents and concepts, which allows player to immerse into the game-worldwithout the fear of being disrupted by the glitch or inconsistency. I'll just point out some of the 25+ games he was working on:
Stalker RPG, - a single serious RPG on stalker universe, complete with 5 Zones and unique game system. (https://www.facebook.com/StalkerRPG)
Burnout, Mobile phone game, for the company called Electronic Arts
Need for Speed: Carbon, mobile phones version.
Crown of Byzantium: a MMO games based around combatachievements not pig farming. Unfortunately by the time of writing this words game ceased to be. HAX:MMO-cyberpunk game of freelance hackers(coming soon). http://www.haxgame.com/en/
Vuorella's full CV in blog format could be found here: http://www.burgergames.com/notes/summer11.htm#220611 What's more important for me as an aspiring game designer is his blog, and honesty Ville is writing about creative process, his ups and downs and life as freelancer. I have never met him or visited his lessons, despite living in Helsinki for some time, but I cant stress enough how important and influential his working notes were for me while I was trying to understand how and why RPG systems work, and how to reach a certain understanding of what you creating. Again, I'm being personal and affectionate, but it's my blog, after all.
Most creators and designers rightfully hide the workflow or kitchen of creation, Vuorella is not an exception, but the detailzation, thoughtfulness and openness of stuff he puts on his game-related part of the blog http://www.burgergames.com/notes/content.htm is really under appreciated.
Last but not least, there is a healthy portion humor, rudeness and self-depreciation which only truly strong characters may allow themselves without the fear of being mocked. So that is my first entry of important game designers: Ville Vuorella.
Human perception is a strange thing, we love stories and things which resonate with our emotions, but rarely we care about who created this story we just consumed. Unless this person have created numerous stories or something which became a main stream of our culture. Cinematography is perhaps one of the biggest examples of that, James Cameron received a PhD degree in oceanology for his work on Titanic, but what most of us care is poor chap played by Leonardo di Caprio and tragic love story between him and redhead. Most people who like games are no exception. Who created Doom? Quake? Starcraft? Total War? Dungeons and Dragons? Warhammer? Axis and Allies? Settlers? Panzer General? Need For Speed? Tetris? Minesweeper? (I am going a bit over the top with some games). Civilization series are probably the lucky ones: they proudly carry name of Sid Meier who actually wrote and designed only first game. But thanks to his marketing department his name became well-known, and In a way a mark of quality.
In posts labeled Game Designer I will try to look at some inspirational figures in game desing, their careers and lifepaths, probably to justify my own dreams and avoid anonymity of Wikipedia, and acknowledge people who's games made an impact on my perception and flow of ideas.
There will be hardly place for popular culture discussions, or weather, or politics. At least i really hope so...
This place is born for my weird need to tell what i think about games i love and hate, about my attempts to create and all the fuss associated with that. Feelings, plans, jokes of fate and final products of sleepless nights.
Games!
Card-games, table-top, computer games, life games, role-play games, books about games and may be some psychology behind the games. Perhaps some distraction in the way of reviews on various cultural feeds. I generally avoid doing something in well-established manner, so it will mostly be an experiments, attempts to understand something by writing it out, by feeding it out.
So the first step, the beginning. Definitely as strong as first step of a child. Unsure of how to do that, looking over the shoulderon others, but stepping it, making it, falling and raising again, and again to walk. To step firmly and easy toward the goal. To go through darkness and light of journey. To stand on its feet and keep going.
But it all begins with small first step, today, now!
Ville Vuorella has been designing games for more than 8 years (full-time). He holds a English Philology degree with Games Research & Design and Academic Entrepreneurship as second specialization achieved in University of Helsinki. In addition he posses variety of skills and studies outside of ordinary curriculum, but very useful for the designers flow of art and craft, like Archeology, Medieval Irish and British studies. He also has EU Specialist Certificate in Game Scriptwriting. Vuorella has been not only game designer, but also an IT consultant and game design lecturer. 
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