Infinitap Games

matt wrote:I strongly disagree with your statement.

Which statement? the one where I said IMO it's better to let a game grow organically? Or the part where I said it seemed like you guys shot for conservative when proposing NeN? is that to imply that you plotted this project well outside of your comfort zone and you had really lofty/high expectations for the final product? And if so.. do you feel you managed to hit all of those goals, or did you end up having to cut a lot out to be more realistic and within the budget and timeline?

you say it was ambitious and you worked a lot of long hours, and well, for making a game thats sort of a given. My point was more of the scale of the project and initial intent vs final capability. I guess it is a matter of :

Did you make the game you originally intended, but it was far tougher a process than originally intended?

or

Did you shoot for a really ambitious project and struggled to achieve what you thought you could achieve because it was so ambitious?

there is a difference, subtle as it may be. The first implies that you tried to make a game you thought was within your grasp (more or less) but upon development it turned out to be harder and your team less capable than originally anticipated.

The second is a matter of shooting beyond your teams capabilities outright, hoping for the best, and then the final game was "as good as we could do" with some compromises and cut content due to being too big a project.

I disagree with this:

For Infinitap it seems you shoot for the more conservative side of risk, where you shoot for a project that is well within your capabilities (or even lower) so you can deliver on time what is initially promised, and still have some buffer for mis-steps and delays. At least that is what it seemed like for NeN.

I think we were very ambitious in terms of creating a game that is focused on recreating the feelings of struggling with mental illness as well as experimenting with branching narratives, no hud and removing other game-y elements.

I really like the game Lone Survivor, and it was based on the creator's de-make of Silent Hill. I'm sure he had to solve lots of problems unique to the game, and it is a great game, but I think it was less ambitious than Neverending Nightmares because it was relatively known territory.

Ambition does not just mean trying to make a lot of content or long playtime. We were very ambitious (perhaps too ambitious) in trying to make a game in a style that has not really been done before.

I can't answer your questions because what the game was was constantly evolving over the development of the game as we conducted more experiments and figured out what worked and what didn't. If you look at our original design doc, there are a lot of unanswered questions. As well, we took the game in a different direction as we figured out what worked and what didn't.

matt wrote:Ambition does not just mean trying to make a lot of content or long playtime. We were very ambitious (perhaps too ambitious) in trying to make a game in a style that has not really been done before.

I think I understand now. Ambition is trying to take on something, ANYTHING, that is well above and beyond you're normal capability/skillset/expectations. So in this case, what we see in NeN is pretty ambitious for you and your team.

I think i am understanding now. This gives me a lot of insight into your team, their skills, and what to expect in the future. thanks for that!