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Games That Could Have Been
Gamespot, to accompany a piece on the art of pitching a game has up a companion article on a few good pitches from talented developers that never quite made it into games. My favorite of the three, from Will Wright: "I've always been fascinated with airships, and I wanted to do a game about the Hindenburg. And it was originally conceived as a cross between Myst and a flight simulator, if you can imagine that. You basically wake up on the Hindenburg. You're all alone. It's flying toward Lakehurst, New Jersey. You can walk anywhere on the ship. You can turn lights on and off. You can steer. You can adjust the engines. But every time you come into Lakehurst, it blows up. And you have to figure out why, and it becomes like this weird mystery flight simulator thing. I'd still love to do that."
In the last idea they say they have the code there, they were demoing it to publishers and stuff... Why not just open source the code and let the community run with it?
If the idea was dropped, if there is no way you're gonna get that game published and make money from it, why waste all those man-hours than went into producing that prototype and instead open source it and let people have fun with it.
HAH! Got it in first.
One would be excused for thinking this post is a trolling (which, if you will remember, is tactically trying to stir up trouble for the troll's own amusement). Though I wouldn't mind if I DO stir up emotions, my goal isn't entertainment for myself or anyone.
Okay, the substance of the post:
Let us not forget that Gamespot should still be shunned continually until it at least somehow repents for firing Jeff Gerstmann. Gamepost denied the rumors, Jeff hasn't, and frankly the facts of the matter speak for themselves.
It may well be a fine article (I wouldn't be a Slashdotter if I actually READ it), but we shouldn't forget the apartment policy (of at least willingness) of censorship - especially not just because it's been a little while, and "who cares anymore?".
Sure, I'm blowing it out of proportion, but you should be righteously angry to a relative degree.
Property is theft.
This is sort of a weird issue that seems to come up whenever someone has a game concept, but suddenly become intimidated by the industry and the overwhelming quality of the content they generate. The fact is, you don't need a huge team of developers and technicians to produce a great game. You just need a good idea and a couple people with enough determination and skill to make it happen.
Heck, look at the first person shooter genre. It was initially brought to life by only two people who loved to play games. Now, it's a multi-billion dollar industry and the resulting engines produced each year often creates the standards for which all other games are judged.
Nowadays, you don't even need to be a programming genius capable of juggling dozens of complex equations to produce content. You can now get fairly simple to use game development tools, such as Unity to design prototypes and tweak things until it finally feels right. Even if it doesn't end up being the final product, having a working prototype can make a huge difference in even pitching your concepts to other, larger developers. (The ones in charge of such decisions often need visual aids beyond just a storyboard or sketch, since they likely aren't developers themselves.)
If not anything else, even Flash can work in a pinch for prototyping or development.
8==8 Bones 8==8