One of the big issues I personally have is, the feeling I get when I feel as though I cannot communicate what I am trying to say. We all have that issue at one time or another. It leads to frustration, and mires you in feeling as though you’re ineffectual when it comes to sharing ideas.

Double Cluepon is a fairly diverse group. We have several pen and paper geeks, outside the box coders, and some really talented artists. One thing we all do, often and out loud is dreaming up what we want to do, and then poking holes into the little cloud. We don’t mire ourselves in established convention, unless its a wheel that does not need to be re-invented. We take care to separate usable wheels, from raw material.

We know we are just another little underground game development house on a prairie littered with them. While we have great ideas, and we intend to act on them…one of the things we just do not get is: where are all the dreamers in game development? While none of us are quite as extreme as fake Peter Molyneux, one of the things driving us is a desire to see what’s in our heads play out on a screen. We don’t accept that just because something is done and established that it cannot be done better. Or at least explored to see if it can be done in a way that taps into the player more effectively, and produces something fun.

What we often see, and what really bothers me at least…is the predilection towards driving discussions toward established norms, or accepted convention. We get it: some mechanics work. We also get it: people bigger than us have established some of these tenets that we now live by.

But one of the things that really bothers me, in all this is…those giants were once small. They once challenged conventions. They once asked “why does it have to work like this? Why cant we do this instead?” That’s innovation at work, and there is not nearly enough of it going on. Oh, we see a lot of different for the sake of it. But just once I would love it, if instead of retreating to an established norm…someone would simply say: “interesting, what did you have in mind?”, and approach things from a discussion standpoint to perhaps innovate, to explore different thinking or ideas.

It’s easy for us to all say: “Why use X when we already have Y?“. It’s quite another thing to say: “Okay, Y sounds nifty, tell me more, and how can we evolve Y using some of the good things about X?” and/or “Perhaps you should elaborate, I don’t see how this can change, but lets get it out where we can see it, and perhaps come up with something…” I see too little of this thinking. It’s somewhat discouraging. I can’t speak for the others here, but I am betting at least some of them probably think along these lines as well.

In the end, I follow one big rule from Raph Koster: “Design on a bike, riding down the street. Or in the shower. Or on a canoe. Design somewhere else. Worry less about what you might lose because you cannot write it down, than about keeping the core essence of what excited you. A change of scenery drives creativity.” I prefer to design on the bike. Sometimes development says no, sometimes the P&P geeks say: that wont work. But, none of them retreat from exploring it first.

I find it troubling that people are far too wrapped up in conventions, and mechanics…I think more folks need to get the canoe out.

Just my $0.02.

– Azrael.