After we recovered from our loss on the Make Something Unreal Contest, we sat down and talked rationally about what went wrong and how to fix it. The general concensus is that while we were making our game, we forgot to put some actual game in it. It's a sub-par simulation of golf, but as a game, it's not much fun. I for one have a much better time going out to a real golf course, even though I currently suck.
Also, artistically, we would never be able to reach the content goals we set for ourselves with our current team, and given the state of the mod community, we're not going to be able to add to our ranks anytime soon. We need to stay within our capabilities both gameplay and asset-wise.
So, we've decided on a new approach. I don't want to discuss the details here, considering we're very early into the development process. Suffice it to say that it's being built upon the Duffers codebase, and we're using the knowledge and experience gained during that whole process. Hopefully it will turn out better than Duffers 1.0 did.
As of today we have just a bit over three weeks until the Phase 4 deadline. That may not be enough time to achieve our goals, but I'm not sure it matters much at this point. We've resigned ourselves to the fact that unless a miracle happens, we're not going to win the grand prize. However, if we're only in this to win money (which we never were, but I digress) we shouldn't be doing this at all. I for one am in the modding game to get experience creating games, so that someday I will be able to do this professionally. Dealing with hardships and disappointment can only help refine me, so I'm looking at the contest with that attitude. Clearly we're not ready for prime-time, so our goal must be to continually press on and get better. I think we have some good ideas, but that's only a small part of success. The vast majority of what it takes is perserverance and hard work. We're learning a great deal about both.
Posted by mix at August 18, 2004 02:30 PM