Missing what might have been: a thought about meta-spoilers

An 8 year old sketch. A pretty decent
Geoff Darrow bite if I say so myself.

The neologism "meta-spoilers" is intended to get after that peculiar issue common to both game developers themselves and hardcore game fans: nostalgia for the path not taken. For game developers it is a constant companion, sometimes threatening to grind game production into endless series of retrenchment, feature creep, muddled design, etc.

But because I am pursuing a policy of open development, modeling after the pioneering work of Mount & Blade's development and current peers like Wolfire, this also applies to fans. I think open development is absolutely the best policy for small developers, and might actually do some big developers quite a lot of good as well, if they could only wrest their freedom to speak to fans back from their marketing departments. But there are some downsides as compared to the traditional model.

Meta-spoilers don't even require knowledge of the game development while in progress. I know a lot of people who appreciate Half-Life 2 very much, but have effectively meta-spoiled themselves by perusing that Raising the Bar book once too often... a game that triumphantly exists is overshadowed by the knowledge of what might have been. And quite honestly I have exploited this very dynamic explicitly with my Design Reboots.

Open development means sharing the heartbreak. In the coming months my posts will not be lying to you--if I discuss ideas here, or post concepts, or respond to a suggestion with "hey that's a really good idea" I am not blowing smoke if it doesn't end up in the game.

Rather, it's just a part of how games happen, or get caught in an endless loop like Duke Nukem Forever's original development cycles. There's no way out from that trap. At some point the game must collapse down from the more attractive, purely hypothetical realm of possibilities into a finite game that actually is.

I am really looking forward to people getting to know what's been inside my head for a year or more, but I thought this should be said first.

Also, with some mulling it over, I will be posting devblog updates to this site, rather than spinning off into yet another page to maintain (and sooner than later stop updating as a result). All posts will be tagged, so a simple filtering will allow you to view exclusively the development updates.

Discuss this post in the forums

Reboot Reboot: 1-800 HOW'S MY BLOGGING?

If you're reading this, I consider you an important part of the site, some element of it's now-forming nucelus of commenters/contributors.


Articles have been posted over the past months but I consider the site newly live and active, and it's time for some critical assessments and adjustments.
Your input on the following is greatly appreciated:

1.) Nomenclature

Some of you may have noticed by now that the title term "design reboot" gets flung around an awful lot, but the majority of the content I post is not actually about doing a "reboot" of a francise or IP at all, it's spinning out a new idea using the old game as a point of departure. What should I call these? design sketches?

I reserve the right do to "proper" design reboots, I'd just like to clarify things. Should I just tag the posts with design reboot/design sketch and just title them differently?
"Design sketch" is a lot more accurate for what most of these posts are about, and likely will be in the future. I don't like starting off every post title with "design reboot," it's redundant information if that's how most of them start. I'll just better use of the tagging system.

(I still think "Design Reboot" is a perfectly good title for the site so don't worry. I'm far too lazy to go about redesigning that beautiful header--and hopefully there will be more content that is worthy of the inspiration for the site's name)


2.) Content

People seem to be interested to read the game comments, but the level design primers and other design discussion related posts seem to draw interest as well. What is your favorite content? What would you like to see more of?

What about update regularity--would you prefer more frequent updates, as they are now, even if the writeup isn't all that thought through, or would you rather see more developed write-ups?

As I just hinted in at in the comments section, I think I'd like to start "iterating" on design posts. There are so many interesting and worthwhile ideas posted in the comments, I would leave the original posting up, and then periodically revisit it, probably with additional artwork, with the commenter ideas factored in and elaborated.
This could then in turn spawn fresh discussion which, with enough momentum, gets rolled into another update later on, and visitors at that point can click back through the idea at different stages.


3.) Tone

This is one of these things I'll probably have to iron out on my own, but input would be appreciated. For instance take the most recent update. It makes fun of Alone in the Dark and then segues into an original idea. I'm concerned that this comes off as glib or disrespectful, especially in close proximity to a game idea writeup--I'm not trying to give the impression of superiority or "knowing better."

It's confusing because it's not a reboot and is labeled as such (see item 1), which has lead some people to think I'm disrespecting the talent and ability of those that worked on the games I'm re-imagining. Nothing could be further from the truth; the one major title to my name is Darkest of Days, a game that was not received charitably. I don't need to be adding to the general pile of flippant remarks posted on the internet. It's not what this site is about.

I guess there's not much of a question here, so much as a resolution to be careful about tone. I like to be funny, but it's bricks and glass houses when I'm talking about other developers. I need to keep my deprecatory comments limited to my own work, and address criticisms of other games more respectfully.


4.) Presentation

The other issues I wanted to bring up would be the formatting for the game idea posts. I've received comments that the hypothetical Metacritic ratings are distracting and the youtube embeds come off as amateurish--what do you think? The youtubes came from initially wanting to just embed some music for certain posts, and I got that all wired up but I didn't have a solution for hosting the mp3s. I agree that the embedded youtubes are probably distracting.

Are there any elements to the regular design write-ups you'd like to see? More art, even if it's rougher sketches?


DIAL 1-800

Any and all comments would be invaluable. If you enjoy this site, take this as the Public Broadcasting "viewers like you" moment.

And if you've made it this far: tune up all your gripes about fantasy gaming tropes and dust off those melee combat paradigms, because we'll soon be exploring the overripe world of western fantasy RPGs.

GAUSSWERKS goes live

Unlikely as it seemed in my mind that I'd ever get three different sites up with unified layouts online, it's happened, and what's more I've gotten my portfolio back online.

So for those counting at home:

http://designreboot.blogspot.com (the site your are on.)
http://gausswerks.blogspot.com (design+concept image site.)
http://www.gausswerks.com (newly relaunched portfolio.)

You can also navigated through these three sites with the links at the bottom of every page. Because you know, everyone goes scraping round the bottom of a website for more links, naturally.