Brainstorming Dust Has Settled! [Editorial Update]
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It turns out that a brainstorm in a room of fifty people blows up pretty fast. We set a hard time limit of one hour, which we somehow burned through in what felt like 10 minutes of idea slinging. Structure falls mostly to the wayside with everyone tossing out ideas for their favorite mechanics, character ideas, and storylines. We don’t have time to weigh each call carefully in a 48 hour game cycle, so ideas become canon based on how much momentum they drive the discussion with. Getting the rest of the team excited becomes the best way to be heard. The things that stick in our minds make it into the plan, and each individual team will need to iron out their own details as we get to work.
We spend five minutes talking about how Kled could be the main character. We spend five more talking about how we don’t know where that idea came from and we don’t like it. “Ziggs” bubbles up from the other side of the room and inspires snowballing ideas.
“But Ziggs is the bad guy in arcade.” “He’s not our bad guy, he’s just misunderstood.”
We’re making up this lore as we go, but whatever the reason we’re rooting for the mad little yordle now. He picks up a lot of steam because we’re all excited about bomb lobbing and explosions and destructible environments. “Hold on,” someone says, “That’s not going to be easy!” A lot of us (read: me) don’t know if that’s true, but we have to trust that when someone raises a roadblock in their area of expertise, we might not have time to knock it down. We pivot again.
http://i.imgur.com/9rlfF49.jpg
We talk about how to do more with less. At the end of these two days, what we will care most about is if we’ve actually created something functional and fun (...Fun-ctional…? As the hours go on these jokes are only going to get worse). Someone makes takes a sharp turn and suggests killing the sidescroller idea that has been bouncing around the room.
“Making a 2D sidescroller forces you to fill the game with a lot of progression, environmental shifts, enemies, etc. [translation: we don’t have time for that shit]. Keeping it to interesting engagements with deeper mechanics in a smaller space, you can do more with less.”
Artists rejoice.
Now we have mostly accepted that we’re all thinking about Ziggs running around a single-screen environment doing…. something. Probably something with bombs. Our time is almost up so we try to tackle a few more specific questions - do we have a boss? “Yes we have t-No! We can’t in tim-I disagree!”. We don’t decide, but we do decide that if we have one it will be Brand because we like fire. That’s probably going to be an issue for someone in a few hours.
“How hard is this going to be? Should everyone be able to beat it? How do we show if we’re good at this game?” We really like the idea of everyone being able to beat it after a few tries, and using high scores as a way to show mastery. We’re trying to create something that a lot of different players could enjoy, but we’re competitive folk after all. We reach the end of our hour and we feel as though some sort of vague shared vision ties us loosely together enough to set off running in the same direction (mostly).
http://i.imgur.com/IynIKRp.jpg
Artists set off exploring concepts for environment and character style. Designers band together and draft up initial mechanics. It’s markedly energizing to be in a room full of people doing what they do best under a cloud of happy chaos.
With teams plugging away in exploration, we should know more about how successful our direction will be in a few hours. I’d say that we’re building the plane in the air, but I think we’re still figuring out ‘is this even a plane?’ while hurtling full speed ahead. More updates on this unidentified airship coming soon!
