Ironwood Omnimedia

Development is like the tide. It ebbs and flows. Creative development is largely only as productive as your inspiration.

So how does one stay inspired to create something, which in reality, has already been created? When you begin to look at the fundamental truth behind the content of Modern you see a good portion of it is a rework of the same content from Fantasy. There are a significant amount of changes, such as new skills, and such. But systematically speaking it is the same game. That’s a good thing! We want players to be able to keep moving within settings with the exact same set of rules. But it’s the aching feeling like I have been here before that sometimes slows me down.

Writing, for me, is like exploring undiscovered territory. Each new product is like taking a step into a new frontier. There is, typically, a mystery to it. How will the final product play out? What will it look like? What can I find new here? Modern Sagas is not a new road to me. Sure it has an entirely new look and feel. The scenery has changed, but the road seems to travel the same.

I know the truth to this is that I have to finish the part of the road that resembles The Fantasy Sagas first. This is the hard part. Adding new skills and building new equipment is still similar enough, due to the mechanics, to feel the same. However, I know there is a part of this road that will be completely new to me. I know that even the road I travel is similar in parts, but even those parts have new territory as well. So while I am building another skills chapter, it has completely new skills, and while equipment is still an equipment chapter, there is an entire range of new equipment I couldn’t develop for Fantasy. This doesn’t even touch the chapters that are completely original for modern (vehicles, computers, lifestyle stuff).

One might think that developing the new stuff first would be the best way to go. I don’t necessarily believe that. The stuff that slows me down will still be there when I get done. It may take even longer for my inspiration to kick in because I had gotten the new stuff done first. The new stuff is my reward for getting through the rest.

It will definitely help once I get through some of the business side of things which have also taken up a lot of time these past few weeks. With that almost out of the way, I can almost feel the flickering light of inspiration just over my shoulder, waiting for me to turn and confront it, embrace it, and wield it. It is my inspiration after all, and its there. I just need to grab on and hold tight to it until the end.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Developer Blog, Modern Sagas Development Log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.