Felonius - are you a professional game developer? You SOUND like one, I''ve just read your comments on the design document thread, and now you''re agreeing with me on management techniques...
Are you running a company?


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

ghhhh, I''ll have to disagree here.
"Ce qui se conçoit bien, s''énonce clairement" (what is clearly conceived is clearly enounced).
When you design clearly everything, the actual process of doing it becomes *MUCH* easier. You still need to have constant feedback, but a good design in the first place will leave MUCH much less room for personal interpretation, hence more "stragithforwardness" in the making process.
Now, we are not actually talking abour *art* when we talk about game art, or music, or programming. It''s more illustration, code typing, etc. And that''s a **big** difference.
If you give me some specs for a character, if you tell me that the guy is to be blond, that he is wearing a full plate armor of a late 17th century style. I''ll do that, filling the gaps where they need to. That''s where the design is essential. If the design was saying I shouldn''t be drawing any particular symbols, or patterns on the armor, because they could imply things the designer don''t want, then I don''t draw the fancy celtic patterns I like to do so much, and I stick to a plain riveted metal look.
For an artist, it''s pretty much a straightforward process to do the drawing, if everything is already said and specified through a good design.
For programming, well, it''s the same... it''s engineering after all.
For music, I dunno, I am not a musician myself

As for team management, project management, yuuuk. There are courses for learning that. I did, and I am not the guy who''s gonna get headaches doing it This suck major a*s. But it''s necessary evil if you want to bring your team anywhere near completion.
Yeah, I am gonna be an amateur all my life, I don''t like the constraint of commercial software (not just games).

Ahw ell ... what can I do ?

Actually, I enjoy management, and reading/learning about it. I guess I should be the one to get a team together huh


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

MadKeithV,
No I am not a professional, although I work hard to get the education to do so. Why are you asking? We have mailed personally Joris? You are a CompSci ph.d. student in image processing and I am a graduate student in CompSci and specializing in computer games. It is pretty certain that I will be developing commercial games in a year or two (in fact the censor for my thesis is a developer in a game company - so I hope to get a job offer already at my master''s graduation)

Is it no so strange that we agree. We have the same kind of training, and like you are try to learn everything that I can to become good.

And ahw,
I that is what is meant "straightforward" then ok, developing is more straightforward, but in my sense of the word being "straightforward" == "trivial", in which case the original statement absolutely is not true.
It might be that developing games (*not* being creative that is) is a craft, but that doesn''t make it simple. In my opinion, there is a very thin line between being creative and performing a craft.

If drawing art that is determined somewhat beforehand is craft then making some new RTS and making a good balancing is certainly also a craft. There is no "real" creativity here.

In fact, I don''t really believe in creativity. This is just a personal opinion. Everything we do or say is deriavations of input we have gained elsewhere. Nothing new is created out of limbo, except if you are really talented (or crazy?) like for instance Einstein, Picasso, or Leonardo da Vinci. "New" stuff is made by combining old stuff in new variations to achieve good results. If this isn''t a craft, I don''t know what a craft is.

Jacob Marner

Hrm, just noticed your signature and remembered the name
I guess that our training does indeed mean that we tend to see things more from a practical perspective - "How do I make this profitable".

People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

felonius : I read somewhere that geniuses don''t have bigger brains, as some may think. Rather they have better connected brains, they use them more efficiently, and can make connections between things people would have never connected, hence the cool ideas they can come up with.

As well, I never assumed coding was easy. Otherwise there wouldn''t be newbies, and lecturers, and I would have no hope of getting a job if you can learn everything on your own.
I was just pointing out that as a professional, or at least someone with l33t skillZ, when you know what you have to do, the ''doing'' is purely a question of time, and practice. The ease of the task is of course proportional to the skills you''ve got. But you can''t really say that you are having a hard time doing your job, otherwise, well, what are you doing there ?

I have been bothered long enough by my lecturers to know that most of the stuff we do in computer games is not real Art as defined in schools of Fine Arts ...
now on the same line of thought, Leonardo Da Vinci painted his Mona Lisa as a commanded work ... (not that I think this is a masterpiece, but people like to refer to that one), Michael Angelo was commanded the roof of the Sixtine Chapel, etc.

We are just artisans doing a high tech job. It''s a hard job you have to learn slowly, but it''s just a job. The ideas now ... *that* is another story.
And that''s where you need a creative guy. And a person who can explain those ideas, and put them so that other people, with skills in various domains, can make them come true. Hence, I assume, the overall importance taht LF is giving to the designer. If you don''t design the ideas properly, all the skills of your makers (graphists, musicians, programmers, etc) are wasted.

youpla :-P

But, by that standard, you have only said that designing a game is around the same skill level as actually programming the game, which contradicts the "we''re working on several designs, but only programming one" strategy that Landfish.com seems to be taking. They all (programmers, artists and designers )need to obey the "Clarity of Goal" law - people should only be working towards a single, clear goal at a time.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

I dont think LF said they were designing several games, I think he said that while discussing, some ideas arise that are stored to be used (or discarded) later.
Well, this is what I understood, feel free to correct me if you see things otherwise.