Thursday, June 6, 2013

Lego Big!

The one question I get asked more often than Can you build structures in game* is How can you make a game this big by yourself? Or, if phrased less diplomatically, Dude there's NO WAY you can make a game this big by yourself. Crash and burrrrrrn, that's all I'm sayin!

Part of the reason I'm running the crowdfunding campaign is because, frankly, they're right - I need to outsource some art and writing and possibly programming tasks to get this thing done by January. (Thank goodness the game is modular enough to permit this.)

But in another sense they're wrong, not because I'm somehow doing the impossible but because the game isn't 'big' like they think it is.

Oh the scale of the world is big - I've said so repeatedly - and there's a lot of stuff to find, and I've already talked about the structures, etc. But the game is 'big' in the sense that a basement-sized miniature medieval town made of Legos is big. The size is imposing and it's not something you see every day - you'll have a ball peering into all the little windows and down all the streets and marvel at what an obsessive freak (er, I mean hardworking artist) the creator must have been to put so much detail into the all the little buildings. And holy crap that's a lot of Legos. But there's no trick there. No special engineering knowledge or exotic materials. It's just a lot of Legos and a lot more free time. Any impressive qualities boil down to persistence.

Compare this to Skyrim. Skyrim isn't just 'big,' it's BIG in the way a full scale medieval town painstakingly recreated at Renaissance fair is BIG. On top of knowing the historical details you've got to know carpentry and roof thatching and glass blowing, plus costume design and weapon design if you've got live actors, plus backstage coordination and animal wrangling and food preparation... it is literally impossible for one person to make something like that on their own.

So when people tell me there's no way I immediately know I've done a bad job of explaining what it is I'm doing. You're not going to play this game and constantly wonder how did he do this the way one does with Skyrim. You'll know how I did it - it's Legos all the way down.

*No, you can't. But you can do other fun stuff.

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