Frustrations Abound!
Since the end of November 09 and the beginning of December 09 I’ve been working on a game being developed in the Game Maker engine with the project name Crazy Guy. Since then the game has been delayed like you wouldn’t believe.
A game that is suppose to be about 20 minutes long has been delayed for two months. Some of you may be asking yourselves the question “How is this possible?”. Well in the early stages, I began coding for it, mind you I had little experience in the Game Maker Language. While my knowledge with it has increased it’s not the best of the best. I asked my two team members to do various different things, one was in charge of music and the other was to help me with coding and art. I originally had one other person on the project but he had to drop out to due to other projects. I struggled with coding for a long time, my team member who was suppose to help me code and do art had to drop out due to personal issues which is completely understandable.
After a few weeks, I dropped development of it because of finals and playing “WW(C)D” an ARG that one of my friends created which consumed my evenings. Eventually development picked back up but then I stopped shortly after as the semester was beginning and I figured this would be a great time to see who was still interested and get a team going again. I sent a message out to the two team members, along with sending a message to a friend who’s interested in writing the story and some one who I was put in touch with to do art. I got messages back saying everyone was on board except one person. “Awesome! I finally have a team!” then two more people joined on. More and more it started to look like I could have this done in a few weeks, I couldn’t have been more wrong. With in about a week everyone (except for my one friend and the one person I was put in touch with) bailed. I’d bring it up and the attitude I pretty much got from everyone was that they aren’t interested and have no plans on ever contributing to this game.
I suppose I have no one to blame but myself. I mean I am the lead designer of this project, I’m the one that’s suppose to be holding all of this together right? I didn’t do such a great job with doing that especially with holding myself accountable with this game. But now I’m trying to change that, I’m trying to get this done but it’s extremely hard when your the only person who’s doing all the work trying to push this forward. I’m beginning the process of reaching out to my friend who is doing the story and the one person that was reccomended to me who said they would do art. I just wish there was more support behind this from everyone else who said they would help and then just bailed. Like I said before though I can’t blame them though for being skeptical about the project or even annoyed when I bring it up. It would just be nice to not feel frustrated and know there are people who actually give a damn about it as much as I do.
So here I am exhausted, annoyed, frustrated, confused. Why simply because there seems to be no support behind this besides myself. A lesson to be learned from all of this for those that are reading, don’t do what I did. If you are on a project and are the lead designer stick with it and stay on top of everyone it really makes things so much easier. Right now at this moment, I’m writing all the code with some input and help from many different people who are helping with understanding the Game Maker Language. If any of my team members are still interested, I’ll gladly let them back on but guidelines are being put in place. One more drop off and their out. I’ll keep the status of this game posted on here, as much as it’s been frustrating to develop I’m still excited to get this completed and release.
