Transitioning from a concept to a final product is no easy task. Let alone a country-wide game that is played by 10-40 people everyday (peak active players were around 100). What we’re looking at is 2-7 sessions everyday, that means 2-7 GMs that need to be briefed in advance. It also requires those players having their characters ready and possibly a session tailored to their tastes. That doesn’t sound like an impossible feat right? Well it isn’t, provided that we are discussing a finished product.
After 2.5 years the game is still in development, with parts of it being redesigned every couple of weeks and new features still rolling out. Game design, web application development, class balancing, GM briefing, loot handing, character leveling bonuses, feedback receiving, session managing, group moderating, bug squashing and so many more are required for the game to operate smoothly. I am not trying to make it sound harder than it actually is. It is hard! Especially for a single person to pull all that off!
The game’s owner/designer/master admin that will from now on be reffered to as “A.” wanted to make it happen all by himself. And by “all” I mean everything that he believed wasn’t straight out of the question for him (i.e. programming). So take another look at the above requirements without wondering anymore why “web application development” was striken through. And no, that’s not one less job for A. because mister A. will now also need to communicate with the web developer, graphics designer and suddenly we’re back to square one.
I could type a whole encyclopedia of reasons on why A. should have never, ever decided to go down that solo creator path, but the point here is to reach useful conclusions through examples and critical thinking to avoid making the same mistakes that others made in the past. So without giving too much away of A.’s mystery-shrouded past life (some parts I was told sound almost like urban legends). A. is a guy that has a wife, a job other than the game (arguably less demanding than the game), has a Master’s degree (not sure if subject was mathematics or management), is a tabletop rpg enthusiast and has made another attempt at a game of same concept earlier in his life, which he ran for a couple of years before players took over the lead organizing roles.
As you see A. is not a random guy with a sudden idea and no fitting background, studies or epxeriences. Yet despite all these he made what I believe to be his worst decision ever, trying to solo everything. The only reason I presented a portion of his background is not for offending or ridiculing him (there are far better places and mediums for that) but to show that he’s a guy that is
- educated and smart (did England’s education system really teach an idiot?)
- experienced (previous attempt at such a game and years of similar games)
- successful (at his other business that has been profitable enough to sustain him for years now)
And yet he still either overrated his abilities, underrated the project’s demands or both. He was too carried away by something. Was it a dream? A need to spread fun to the players? An idea of a second profitable job? Even now he might himself not know.
As harsh as it sounds a dream or an idea is not enough. Skills, funding and time are needed. In the end it seems that A. lacked more or less in all 3 parts. Had he been more careful when starting though, he could have compensated for what he lacked with things he had. He had the community, people that helped with funding. GMs that created content that he didn’t have time for. People willing to give and gather feedback. People willing to organize the rest of the players and even create promotional content for free (original songs by players that sang semi-professionaly, promotional ideas).
A., instead of getting all those for free by the community, chose to pay outsiders to do them. It’s not that everything could be done by the community. For some parts especially getting outside help should have been prefered (web development) but that is a point of a future article. It took A. a year and a half until he was forced to accept that he could not be designer, community manager, scenario builder, session informer, etc alone. He was both lucky and unlucky when he finally found through the hard way someone he could trust. And at that time the one man army turned into a two man army.
We still can’t be sure if it was too late or not. What we do know, is that the evidence up to that momment points to the one man being unable to lead such a project all by himself. What I want everyone to keep from all this, is how important it is to
- know your limits and abilities
- have a crystal clear idea of what you are getting yourself into when starting a project
Sure one could argue that you can’t trully know your limits until you reach them. On the other hand most people sleep 7-8 hours a day for a reason. I’ve worked with people that even failed at talking if they slept for a couple of hours less than normal. What results in even bigger failures than not knowing one’s limits is one overestimating his abilities. The fact that I’m too familiar with C and C++ doesn’t certainly make me a successful operating system developing team member, let alone a solo operating system developer. To make an operating system one would need first to understand what an operating system is, isolate the core obligatory parts, decide on any extra features desired, have everything perfectly mapped and defined and only then look at the needed skills that will result in the making of it, so that he could see what he is missing and look for it in other people.
There is no recipe for success (apart from mom’s cooking ^^). What we have plenty though, are examples of others, both failing and succeeding, to act as warnings and inspiration respectively for our own projects and dreams. May we all take the best of each and succeed, cause then even other’s faillures will have more meaning.
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