A totally gutted quote from Shigesato Itoi, the creater of Mother (AKA Earthbound, AKA We’ll Never get the Third One Legitimately so Play the Translation):
A game isn’t something that can be made by one person alone. Well, it’s possible that a really hard-working game creator could finish a game all alone, but even then he would still need a player.
Games grow and mature when they’re created, played, and conveyed over and over…
…The truth is, in the end, the player is the one who completes a game’s creation.
Original (and full) quote can be found here [earthboundcentral.com].
It’s a fairly good question, I think. When does a game become a game? When you first come up with the idea? After the tech demo? Perhaps once feedback and advancement appears during “gameplay.” Through the course of development, there have been lots of times where Scott and I said “Holy shit, NOW it’s a game!” But you have to wonder, when did that actually happen? Was it really not a game before? Which one of them is correct? In our case, it was the moment we basically hit feature completion and had a save system in place. And I quote:
Scott: I know we’ve said this a lot
Scott: but saving and loading
Scott: …
Schild: ok
Scott: it’s a game!
Schild: jajajajajajajaja
Turns out, he was right. All those other times we said it, it wasn’t a game. It was just a work in progress. I’m pretty sure most developers have that moment where life is finally given to “that thing” they’ve been working on so long. A watershed moment, perhaps. It’s also amazing how fast something will fall together. We went from what couldn’t be called more than a tech demo to something that is legitimately “a game” in roughly 2 weeks. I think we both fully understand now why so many projects are dropped before that crucial “thing” happens. Where all of the art and programming and design falls together to result in something that is tangibly “playable.” Sure, we could “play” it before, but we really couldn’t play it if you know what I’m saying.
With all of that out of the way, I suppose I can say we’ve made it past the hardest hurdle in the lifecycle of game development. It’s really a point of no return, and I would wager every developer out there knows what I’m talking about. With roughly - and I’m guessing here - a few more weeks of tweaking, balance, and bug-fixing (and the addition of sound, haha!), we may actually have something to show the public at large.
Maybe we’ll have a proper beta in a bit, maybe not. It’s not exactly an MMOG or some AAA PC Game, so it may just be something we let out of its cage and see what happens. For now though, I just wanted to assure you that we’re alive, decently fed, and still working, but updating the blog is and will continue to be one of our lower priorities.
