The Pitch and the Pitfall

Hello again interwebs.

I speak to you now, after a long day of cleaning with roommates and DnD with buddies.  I meant to post something earlier this week and now my friends have been asking why nothing else has come through, so, seeing as how the couch is currently occupied and therefore unavailable for me to sleep on, I thought I should take this moment to level with you.


When it has come to my ideas for games in the past, I have tended to be tight lipped.  I am constantly worried that anyone I tell could imitate the project, and hastily finish it faster than I could, and thus beat me to the punch.  In software, this isn't an unreasonable fear.  The industry moves fast.  Often the first person to an idea will be able to get a better hold with their product during the short time during which they have a monopoly until a competitor gets a product released.  This is part of the reason that Facebook and the iPhone are so established today.


So naturally, this fear has been in the back of my mind regarding this blog.  I'm not so much that worried a triple A studio will run with the project (it would be WAY too risky), but more that a fellow wannabe like myself who was more motivated, more skilled, and have more time, and thus a better chance of realeasing the game.  Long story short, I really don't want to have my game cloned before I can even get a demo out the door.


This leads to my current dilemma.  I want the blog, and I want the game, but how much of the game am I comfortable sharing with the entirety of the internet.  Do I share only the underlying programming and creation process?  Or do I show the game I am trying to build on top of it and explain why I am building the systems I am?   At first I was going to try to go the former route, but after talking it over with a couple friends, a few things became clear to me.


Firstly, the internet is REALLY big.  My grandpa had a trick for when he was going into a coal mine and feared its collapse, since it could happen at any time.  He simply reminded himself that he wasn't important enough for the mine to pick that moment to come crashing down.  Likewise, my humble blog is unlikely to get the kind of attention that would be necessary for even one person with sufficient malice to pirate the entire project.  And my ideas, as much as I love them, are not solid gold.  There's no reason to think I have anything really worth stealing.  I'm just not that important.


Secondly, a lot of designers are as attached to their own ideas as I am to mine.  They have their own dream projects and aren't likely to drop them so they can steal mine instead.  The passion just isn't there.


Thirdly, I can't really claim to have invented any of these mechanics.  Other people have played the same flash games and strategy games that I have, and may have just as easily found the same inspiration as I did.  Anyone still could.  So treating them like I somehow own them doesn't really hold up.


Lastly, constantly trying to hide what I was creating would make my writing dishonest and really difficult.  It's hard enough to describe things to someone who's never seen the game (which is everyone at the moment), but trying to describe making it without telling them what it was, that's just a headache.  I want this to be fun.


So I've decided to take a leap of faith and take the second option.  Here goes:


Stratagem (actual name pending) is intended as a medieval strategy game (which there are already plenty of) in which players will control a small squad of soldiers by submitting their orders concurrently, as in Diplomacy, then watching as the computer resolves the orders one by one.  To be successful, a player will have to predict their opponents actions, and plan their own accordingly.


 And that's the gist of it.  I guess that wasn't so hard.  I could go into greater detail, but it doesn't make much sense in this context.  For now, I think it's best to just give out the details as needed, for brevity's sake.


That's all for now.  I should have another post up pretty soon to talk about what I've been doing the last week, but I wanted to handle this separately.


And to you indie designers out there, this probably goes without saying, but please, don't burn me on this.  I'm going out on limb here.


Anyhoo, the couch is finally free , and I'm dying to go to sleep.  Night!