Going public

As I write this, it's half past midnight, Tuesday night. We're set to go live tomorrow,

Wednesay, the first of May. And the pressure is on.

And it's not just the fact that there's a lot of work to be done between now and then. A LOT of work. The site is not ready, I haven't even started working on the Facebook page, and will I be able to get a mobile site up as well by tomorrow?

Lots of tiny things piling up at the last minute. Details. Things you never thought of. Work.

But that only adds up to a small part of the total pressure. The bigger part is the coming out part.

New Retro Studio has been up and about for a few months, but up until now, it's been kept a secret. Only a handful of people know about it. And tomorrow - the world will know. My friends. My family. Co-workers. Strangers. Everyone.

Tomorrow they'll be able to support, encourage, ridicule, mock, help, ignore...

Tomorrow they'll know.

It was easy keeping it under wraps. As long as it was my secret, I had no commitment. Now, the eyes of the world - for better and for worse - will be watching. And judging. And I'll have to accept that. And live with that.

So, yeah, tomorrow's a big day. Let's hope it will be a good one.

-Shay

2 games?!

Is is possible, really?

At it's base - New Retro Studio was created to make games. Not one game, but games. Plural.

But when it was created, no one thought about more than 1 game at a time, at least until we'll make something of ourselves.

In the last couple of days a new idea came up. An idea for a new game. One that is completely different from our main creation (the space sim). But can it be done? Can we make 2 games at the same time? Especially considering our small production team?

Well, that's a question I've been debating on for the last few days. There are pros and cons for each decision.

The main problem will be the allocation of resources. If the developer is working on one game - he's not working on the other at that exact time. Same goes for the artist, the writer, and so on. In a small production team, the people are our most valuable resource. That's the resource we have the least, and therefor, the one that'll create a bottleneck in every production cycle.

There are other issues. Focus, for example. You want your artist to focus on one game, and not two, otherwise things may effect one another. Let's say you have 2 games: one a child's game with lovely pink unicorns, and the other an adult dark story, with blood and gore. Working on both, at the same time, you may find your pink unicorns a bit too dark and scary for a children's tale.

The sulotion is simple: more people. Have 1 artist working on one game, and another on the other. But in the real world, where money (and therefor - people) is scarce, that is not a real option. At least, not for now.

So, what to do? Give up on the second game? Delay it until after the first game is released?

Well, turns out the answer is a bit more complicated.

The first game - the space sim - is already planned out. Right now, an artist and a developer are working on it. The second game - an interactive story - is simple to program, and won't take much of the programer's time. Most of the work will be done by the writer, and the artist. And turns out - our artist can't do the type of work required for that kind of game, so another artist will be required.

That lead me to believe, that although it's a completely new game, there won't be a loss of focus. The programmer will be working on game 1, and artist #1 as well. Artist #2 will be working on game 2 with the writer. 2 games, but with different people working on different tasks.

So, the decision is this: we're working on 2 games!!!

Stay tuned for more details on both games, coming up soon.

-Shay

P.S. - sorry for being away for the last month or so, but I've been dealing with work issues. Those are fixed now, and we're back in business. Expect more frequent posts in the coming weeks.