thread: 2008-08-31 : Killing Darlings
On 2008-09-13, Joshua A.C. Newman wrote:
So, here's the thing about this process:
You decide at this point if you need the game to be 100% and are willing to accept re-development costs, or if you're satisfied with the game being 96% and are going to roll over these lessons into the next one.
Because particularly with Slash, who's publishing his first game - a boardgame, to boot, which none of us have any experience to share! -??there are still a *lot* of lessons to learn. I don't think putting off those lessons for the design of what would essentially be a *whole new game* is a good idea.
There's a thing you learn when you're studying art, which is that sometimes you have to stop going around the block and just walk into the restaurant already and see if the girl is going to like you. Sometimes she doesn't, but then you can go meet someone else. When you're creating the whole world around yourself, it's easy to meet someone else.
I think what Slash needs to do - I'll invite him into this discussion in just a minute - is to finish the game as it exists (making the little tweaks we discussed), go all the way through publication, and start applying lessons, from turn order to marketing, to the next game. No matter what, it'll be better, and it seems a shame to waste all that effort on one game when it could be spent on two.
