A productive business-style meeting

Today was the first of perhaps several important business-type meetings between myself and fellow game-man, Jonny. Unlike meetings we've had in the past, this one was very productive and contained only a little bit of playing Super Meat Boy (and even then, it was for reference purposes).

This is Killer7, the best worst game around.

A thing I always worry about (or neglect to think about) when designing games is arguably the most important thing: the fun factor. Usually the first element of an idea for a game I have is the mechanics, and then the story, and then how the story and mechanics interact. Fun is more of an afterthought if anything, and I feel that sometimes providing an interesting experience is a higher priority than a fun experience. Although having both is what makes great games great. There are many great games that aren't fun in the least, but are so thought-provoking or unique that they are leagues above your simple fun time games. Two examples of this would be Passage and Killer7, which I would recommend to everyone to play (although you may hate me after playing Killer7, it has horrendous gameplay).

During this meeting we were able to fix and tweak a lot of my code, which resulted in a much more fun game. New design decisions were made that accommodated the new sort of control the game had after simple variable changes, which would have never happened if for this meeting. So I must say that having gameplay meetings can really help guide a project into a favorable direction, one that may not have been seen otherwise. I've been reading a game design book (not so much about design as it is the philosophy and meaning behind games), and in one of the early chapters, it said that a playable version of the game was to be ready at 1/5 of the end deadline time. The reason for this was that a few simple concepts may look good on paper, but in practice they may be completely different, and there could be new, better avenues in which the game can grow. This philosophy turned out to be true (although it is way more than 1/5 through the project for me), and I should use this book's information more and try to actually remember what it tells me.

So in summary, the game meeting was both productive and fun, and it makes me even more excited to make this silly Walrus game. There will be a demo sometime next week, maybe even by the end of this week (probably not though), and after that and some tweaking, the boss fights will be made, which should only take another week. Given another week for general assembly and level design, and the game should finally be done. This is just a general estimation, but I hope the project doesn't extend any further. But I feel I have pretty high standards for stuff I like working on, so it definitely won't be released unless it's good.

3 WEEKS IS A DEADLINE I HOPE TO MAKE. THANKS FOR READING.