Our experience as an inexperienced Game Studio: Chapter 3

Our experience as an inexperienced Game Studio

CHAPTER 3: THE JOG

Having a new image was motivating, and we were ready for the next challenge.  And a big one was right ahead of us.  Going back to our conversations with David Bergantino, we had the issue about the gameplay theme, which meant we were making a completely new title.  There were a few things we needed to keep in mind, though:

First things first. Finding a new gameplay theme proved to bring a lot, and I mean a lot, of stress.  So far, we had already invested a significant amount of money, time, and effort into the original game and now we had to quickly find a solution to this problem.  For several days, we would come back to the office and discuss this topic, looking for that much desired inspiration.  However, none of the ideas seemed catchy enough.  In the meantime, we also had to attend the remaining clients and deliver their projects in record time, and that proved to be a distraction and a source for even more stress.

We brainstormed several times looking for a new idea during office hours.  After a couple of days of doing this, we finally agreed upon a topic that would adjust easier to our original concept. Since we still had in mind the idea of using edgy humor, the chosen one was about college humor and the freaky stuff students do at fraternity initiations.  We’d take the soap and make them do pranks to each other around it. 

We, all excited about it, set up our following meeting with David Bergantino.  We were sure this one would be a great idea and we would be able to save our game.  Well, it turned out to be a horrible idea.  You see, college humor is not appealing to everyone, and it only reflects the mindset of a specific group of people within a specific culture.  It is also too mature for it to be interesting for Apple or Google to get us a feature with them and without any funds for marketing, our best bet is to hope for one of these.

We were worried, and we called it off for the day on that topic, and went back to regular work. After the day was over, Andres and I went out to jog for a while.  Nothing spectacular, just a nice 3 km jog, as a healthy habit. 

Well, it turns out that working out is a great way to clear your mind.  While jogging we were talking about movies, and how some other people would make parodies about them (Scary Movie, Spaceballs, etc).  And that’s when it clicked.  What if we do the same and make a parody of the current video games in the market?  And how can we do that without copying them and infringing their IPs?

We went back to the car and called the rest of the game development team.  We didn’t share the idea right away, we first wanted to know what other ideas were coming out.  A meeting was set up for the following morning, outside the office for breakfast. 

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