Re: Collaborative authorship, was Re: Marketing


7 Dec 1995 20:16:39 GMT

Julian Arnold (raiffaq@arnod.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: I think much of the problem that we face with such specialisation and
: multiple-authors is the fact that, with some exceptions undoubtedly, the IF
: community (i.e., the membership of raif) never actually physically meet.

For the most part, this can lead to setbacks, but in the case of PTF, I
already knew my co-author well enough to make a lot of decisions on my own.
Although we didn't get together to work on it much, we've always had similar
tastes and ideas regarding what to put into the game. Jeff was quite
agreeable to any suggestions or alterations I had, and I did my best to work
his ideas into the code as closely as I could.

: SoG was, IMO, identifiable by its origins -- the game felt very
: episodic, though this is not always a bad thing.

I believe the reason for this was (and correct me if I'm wrong) that SoG
was not only written by 2 authors, but _programmed_ that way as well, which
would inevitably lead to an episodic layout when 2 programmers are involved.
("Here, you can take this scene, and I'll take this one, and you can have
that one...") Again, this is not to say that SoG is a bad game. In fact,
I liked the episodic structure to it -- along with Klaustrophobia and
CosmoServe, it's one of my favorite AGT games of all time.

With PTF, though, Jeff and I split up roles from the start. The game layout
has changed very little from the original design he approached me with long
ago. I felt that, since Jeff had designed the game, he had a better idea of
what he wanted, so I let him do most of the writing (although I did look it
over and make changes later -- but I always asked if that was okay first).
Likewise, since Jeff is not a programmer (not yet, anyway), he left the
Informing up to me.

In a way, Jeff's lack of an e-mail address slowed us down even more than
the SoG authors. I had to gather as much info on the game as I could while
we were together (and because of schedule conflicts, there weren't a lot of
those times). When I had a huge list of questions, I'd call him or snail-
mail him, and I did my best to send alpha versions out periodically so he
could make sure the game was turning out the way he'd envisioned it.

In the end, though, all the trouble was worth it. PTF turned out far
better than either of us had dared hope, largely due to our combined input.
It may be a cliche, but "Two heads are better than one" still rings true.

(That doesn't mean that _all_ I-F should be written in teams; far from it.
If you can get a co-author that you work well with, who can understand the
game as well as you do, then I'd say go for it. But remember, I-F is the
absolute last holdout for the lone programmer/author -- all other forms of
computer and video entertainment require the combined efforts of large
teams. But I-F directly discourages it. That's what I like about it.)

--
C.E. Forman                                      ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
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