David Berg,
Super exciting!
Start a thread, pitch the concept, and poll for the names?
Or would that throw off the whole "mystery" vibe that I'm sure you're hoping to craft?

Hey Jared!

Do we need to send you a file, or just link to where we've got it for sale?

http://www.shrikedesign.com/out_there.html

Out There is complete.

Thanks for the challenge, Jared. That was very cool. I think everybody learned some stuff about making games.

Is it being judged on purchase revenue? I bought both.

I had assumed it would be solely my choice that would spell victory or doom for the games in question, but upon rereading the contest pitch I can't seem to find that passage anymore...(hee!)

Both sound pretty cool, so I can't wait to look them over.

I'm totally going to buy a copy of Out There to satisfy my curiosity, and then torrent it.

(Second half not true.)

I'm going to suggest to Johnstone that we play Sexy Deadly and Out There back-to-back as a little minicon.

I have a lot of feedback for Jared and just reflections to the world on this contest. After sales are over, I'm going to post to my journal some stuff. Learning collaboration skills = really cool. Treating game as product from the get-go = weird and uncomfortable at times.

I know I was actually kinda worried that I was raping Joe's baby as I was working through the design process.

...you know, that just sounds bad.

Anyway, I don't know how Joe felt when he got my rules, but he was really good about it. He was very positive through the entire experience. Maybe he has been dying inside the whole time, and is going to spend most of this month crying himself to sleep for what the rest of us collectively did to his vision, but he didn't show a whit of it.

I'll admit that Joe's right. I know I want to sell all of my designs one day, but treating a game as product is... odd. I didn't realize it before Joe said it, something just felt weird.

David's comments on the collaborative process are also spot on. I may have had very casual contact with Joe, Johnstone and Tony on these forums, but I wouldn't by any stretch have said I knew them before we joined up for this project. Half the references Joe and Johnstone came up with I've never even heard of. More'n half. The archetypes they came up with weren't anything I'd have thought of. Tony's artwork isn't what I'd have imagined for this project. I was thinking line art of girls and guns, not collages with flowers and shurikens.

Were this entirely my project, I definitely wouldn't be selling it yet. I obsess about making sure it's perfect. That every single problem I never foresaw has been stomped out, to the best of my ability. Playtesting, or rather the lack thereof, is what has kept me from publishing thus far. This contest has required that I move forward with the idea without being as certain as I'd like to be.. And you know, it feels good. I believe in Sexy Deadly. I believe that the game can create fun play. I'm sure there are little problems that we didn't foresee, but we did this shit in a month. That we've created something I believe in in less than a month's time is quite an accomplishment. I'm proud of the work we've done together.

(edited because I hit submit before I was finished)

Heh.

I'm personally waffling about purchasing Out There, mostly because I will not purchase a copy of SxDy to artificially inflate our sales number, even to redress the balance.

Of course, I've already got my gratis copy, having, you know, compiled it into it's final format.

Fair enough. I was probably gonna do it anyway. If my one purchase is enough to lose it for us, then it's too close to matter. Mostly I was waffling just to have something to talk about.

...it gets boring at night.

Headin' there to buy now.

Oh, crap. I didn't know that it cost you extra. The paypal account is one I resurrected, and the bank account it's linked to is an old one I don't use anymore. I know it takes time to verify an account for paypal, so I just went with the quicker option.

Uh. I'll add my account to paypal (something I probably ought to do anyhow) and pay the additional $0.36, unless that'd somehow end up costing you again.

I haven't the foggiest idea about being paid via paypal. I've only ever used to to buy stuff.

Alright. I didn't actually figure you were all that worried about it.

I think, really, that the idea is to take the whole process and cram it into a two month period... the whole process including sales, generating sales, customer support et al.

Of course, Jared has been remarkably silent. All we've got is speculation, really. The only questions he's answered are those specifically necessary for us to compete in the contest.

Our project stalled tragically, oh so tragically, due to a lack of a writer.

The writer of Team Dark Ages flaked out. It was me.

Graham

Oh yeah, cramming was the name of the game here too. Jason and I had a cycle where he'd write, send it to me, go to sleep, and then I'd read, type up comments, send them off to him... and then I'd go to sleep, and he'd get up and start working again.

We also had some unforseen techincal hurdles at the last minute between WordPerfect, Acrobat, uncommon fonts and JPEG encoding. I would up submitting the game at 11:58.

Who you calling strange? At least I didn't change my username 'cause Luke called me bad...

But yeah, the end was very frustrating, mostly due to my shit internet connection, for me. Trying to upload and download the files has been a pain in the ass. Because of that, some things were rushed, others were omitted (like the nonexistent character sheet that Johnstone's text still references... ::dies::)

The fact that you and Joe knew each other online was like... well, it's odd to describe it this way, but it was like a ringing in my ears. It bothered me when I let myself think about it, but mostly it was just drowned out. It bothered me because there was discussion going on with the game that I wasn't privy to, and all I could get was the cliff-notes version. In those periods of silence when we were all doing our parts of the task individually and there weren't e-mails flying back and forth, I wondered what I was missing out on.

Of course, it's just as much that there was work going on that I wasn't seeing, completely aside from discussion. I've got a sense of ownership of this project, and I've got a bit of a control freak complex. I hope I managed to push that aside enough that it didn't bother my team mates.

No no, Graham wasn't our writer - we were supposed to do the war game, Natural State. We never got a writer, so never did any major work on the game.

Posted By: WolfeThe fact that you and Joe knew each other online was like... well, it's odd to describe it this way, but it was like a ringing in my ears. It bothered me when I let myself think about it, but mostly it was just drowned out. It bothered me because there was discussion going on with the game that I wasn't privy to, and all I could get was the cliff-notes version. In those periods of silence when we were all doing our parts of the task individually and there weren't e-mails flying back and forth, I wondered what I was missing out on.

Haha! I wondered about that. Funny thing is, after we did the first playtest, there was none of that!
I did have the advantage of knowing how Joe tends to play rpgs, and that influenced the writing, but we didn't actually discuss it.


In fact, the real lesson of this contest is: choose your collaborators wisely! Joe did. Once he gave the rest of us our instructions, he hardly had any work to do! David obviously did, he got his concept finished too.


Then again... maybe we just know who didn't already have plans for christmas... ;-P, as they say.

I second Paul. I'd like to know more about the decisions behind the recruiting. I was casting around, waiting for people to say "Sure Lance, I'll join your team," then Joe just says "I want you, you, and you. Let's do this!"

maybe we just know who didn't already have plans for christmas...

Heh. You know what I did on Christmas?

"Alright, did the first part. Let's check e-mail, just in case.. No, no. It's Christmas, they're doing Christmas things. Of course, maybe they took a moment to make a comment, real quick. Let's check. Nope, but hey, it's Christmas."

"...how about now?"

Okay,

I had a few criterion for picking a team.

1.) First of all, I was like, "The best way to start something is to start it." Criterion number one was that I needed to assemble my team immediately, without delay, without tentatively sussing out ideal people. So I picked people who had posted to this thread already.

2.) I picked people who I knew in some capacity, and whose work that I knew of I admired. Tony Dowler's art is really cool and I've played games with him. Johnstone is someone I regularly play with, and we talk about design and other stuff. Wolfe (Lance) I didn't know well, but I know he digged what I said about Cheap and that if we lived in the same place we would totally play it. And so I was like, "I like your style, kids. Wanna roll with the angels?"

3.) I needed to fill 3 roles (Designer, Writer, Artist). Everyone stated 1 or 2 preferences. I was like, "I can't have you and you, and I can't have you you and you. This combination of 3 works ideally."

4.) I picked one person who I knew was totally appropriate for a game about sexy, violent women (Johnstone). I had no idea if this was a project that was right for Wolfe. It was jarring in an amusing way to have Tony Dowler do this. All of the art I've seen of his is lo-fi and fun and approachable. And I was like, "Can you do glossy, sexy woman pictures?" So, there was a mixture of people who were ideal to this project and people who would bring something different to the project when they made it their own. Or that was the intent.

Posted By: joepubIt was jarring in an amusing way to have Tony Dowler do this. All of the art I've seen of his is lo-fi and fun and approachable. And I was like, "Can you do glossy, sexy woman pictures?" So, there was a mixture of people who were ideal to this project and people who would bring something different to the project when they made it their own. Or that was the intent.

The conversation was hilarious. It went something like this:

Joe: Hey want to do art for my game?
Tony: Yes! Totally! That would be a blast!
Joe: It's about sexy violent women fighting in an industrial complex.
Tony: Er... I can't draw that. Would there have to be sexy women in the artwork?
Joe: Yeah, kinda.
Tony: Hey, how about I just make a collage thing where I put weapons and stuff on pictures I cut out of Cosmo?
Joe: Awesome!

Read the first page of Sexy Deadly. Totally drawn in, both by the theme, and by this surprise:

"Sexy Deadly is a competitive strategy card game with narrative and role-playing elements."

Whoa. I want to see how this sucker plays.

Developers!
Please send me your sales reports for the first week of sales in the indie game company game design challenge.
Just a total dollar amount is sufficient. You have until the end of today (Wednesday, January 7, 2009) to complete this task.

Because surely you knew I'd throw in some wrinkles...

WRINKLE #1: THE WIZARD'S BASEMENT
Game Company 2 exhibited the highest sales thus far, but a wrench is being thrown into your financial works. Due to unforeseen costs associated with a collapsed distributor and unpaid sales, your total sales figures for Out There up until 1/7/09 have been reset to $0. Meaning you cannot count your sales thus far toward your total.

WRINKLE #2: SUPPLEMENT TREADMILL
Game Company 1 has the lowest sales thus far. Because of this, the publisher needs you to spike your sales with a quickie supplement. It doesn't need art apart from a cover but it does need to be at least 25% the length of your original game, Sexy Deadly. You may charge money for this supplement (it will count toward your final total) but you must finish the supplement by the deadline.

WRINKLE #3: THE NEW BLOOD
The independent games community is now a viable source of competition. Indie game designers (singular) can now throw their hats into the ring and publish their own game for the challenge. You may work on your game alone, as part of a pair of as part of a team of three or more. Your game must have a cover of some kind but no internal art is necessary. Your only real constraint is the 1/31/09 deadline. Not only must your game be completed by this date, but you may only count sales from now until this deadline.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Wait, what? There's a contest going on?

Why do I feel a terrible urge to participate?

Sorensen, I now see that your cunning depravity knows no bounds.

I find this much funnier than I should.

Graham

Thanks for the word of encouragement. You're right.

I'm still gonna panic a little though.

Wow, this is what I miss for not having been paying attention to SG as much over the end of the last year. Great contest, Jared.
FWIW, I have purchased one of the games (Out There) after the financial collapse, and I look forward to seeing how this develops.

Well, now i'm all sorts of interested in this.

Dammit, now we have a 2nd David in the thread... I thought Lance was talking to me for a while there. I was like, "Give you some competition? I'm trying, man..." Heh. I'll try harder once I get another playtest in. Current plan is for next Tuesday. Tremble in fear!

Posted By: David Berg
I understand collapsing distributors, but what does "unpaid sales" mean? Can you give me a few examples? I'm not objecting to your decree, just curious.

The distributor never gave you the money for the books you sold. Sound far-fetched and horrible? Ask the guy who published FVLMINATA and didn't make any money off it.

I declared my participation a few hours ago and I already feel like I'm stalling.

Ok, I have a title and a concept.
--

The Life of a Falling Star

Humanity moved off Earth a century ago. Now they are scattered across the stars. A nation only extends as far as the hull, loyalty is to unions, corporations and industrial groups. Into this you are born, one of the elites known as Sparrows. You have lasers in your eyes, nanomachines for blood and you can survive in the vacuum of space.

And your lifespan is a single year.

--

Wish me luck.

Jared,

Clarification: You said we MAY charge money. We don't have to charge $1 if we want to do a free supp, right?

Okay, since I've just managed a playtest I guess I have a game in the cooker. Hence I can declare that Team I've Watched Ninja Scroll Too Many Times (or Team Weeaboo for short) is looking for:

A writer; a native English speaker to keep my Swegrish in check, help bring clarity to the rules and inject some awesome weeaboo fluff.

An artist; to produce cover art, any additional art is of course welcome. The game is supposed to have some kind of dark and edgy aesthetic and that's more important than wheather or not your style is weeaboo or not.

Uh... so yeah. Have a blurb:
It's the beginning of the Tokugawa period. Japan is starting it's path to seclusion. Little does anyone understand the real reason behind it: we cannot allow the monsters to spread into the world. Killings have gotten worse for years and it hasn't been this bad since the 7th century. The country side is no longer safe and no one dares speak about what might hide in the mountain castles. That's why we need you.

Monster Marionette - a game where you kill monsters

You'll have to forgive our esteemed opponents. They've recently gone through a massive financial problem. Rumor has it that as a result, their writers and artists aren't getting paid, and are striking. In the lead up to the release, their designer was hospitalized, for reasons, according to our esteemed competition, completely unrelated to this product. Which is to say that our opponents *claim* that their product did not put their designer in the hospital, and is completely safe for the every day consumer.

The former is a mix of truth and fiction. To get to the bottom of this, you would need to use the rules of Out There, which I have, and you do not. Since you do not have them, you will be unable to determine what is truth. In this case, you will simply have to assume the worst: GDC#2 is going out of business as a result of fiscal mismanagement and the fact that their product is carcinogenic.

JuddG,
Sorry about that, man. I just checked my Spam folder and that's where your emails have been going. I have no idea why. But, I'm glad you spoke up: now I'll be more diligent about checking "Spam".

The email in my Outbox has the game attached, so I don't know if there was some server error on Yahoo or Bellsouth's part. I'll send it again, and I'll check my Spam box for your response. :)

True Story: I look to my right, and I see classified government technology. I swivel the chair to use it.