Thinking outside the box

Today I presented a project plan of nano to a panel of business life representatives and teachers. This was the first part of a special vocational degree I’m trying to complete at the same time I’m working on the game. The presented project plan spans a 5 month period, that started in January. So, in the beginning of June I should have a working demo version of the singleplayer game to present to them.

The presentation went pretty well, and the panelists were really nice chaps, but there were some complains about the project plans being a bit fuzzy and about the absence of other ‘independent’ project contributors that have a more significant role in the project. I think they felt a bit that this is not a REAL project (as in business life standards) as I’m doing 70% of the work by myself, and I don’t have to report for anybody. There’s also the fact that we don’t have a real budget and the motivation behind the product is not very commercial. As this is not usually the case in the business world, this project may not meet the standards required by the ministry of education for passing a special vocational degree. But I guess we’ll see how that goes.

The presentation got me thinking about the corporate life again. Certain aspects of all this reporting and absurd spinning of papers to get anything done in the modern world is pretty annoying. Everything is forced into a mold where it necessarily doesn’t fit into. I think that indie games and small developers represent the exact opposite of the highly hierarchical and big software industry. Certain freedom of creativity follows from the more loose plans. Small teams can work with less hierarchy and make things happen instead of spending their time on paperwork.

I know, I know. These thoughts might sound a bit naive. But I KNOW that there’s a lot of people in this world that wish that things were a bit simpler and in smaller scale with more creative freedom. This is what the indie game scene is like, at least at the moment, although some developers have been transforming into a more corporate style cloning factories (mostly in the casual scene). But the heart of indie games is somewhere else. That’s the place where I wanna be.

Now I’m going to have a beer…

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 4:51 pm and is filed under General bs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.