The process of creating something from nothing is non-trivial. In fact, just as constraint breeds creativity, an open slate of infinite possibilities invites room for choice paralysis and stagnation. And yet, the opportunity to create anything at all is an incredible opportunity with boundless fulfillment. To that end, that is why this project exists. To practice the process of creation, and gain experience handling the associated challenge of deriving clarity from a collection of nebulous ideas.
Prior to the actual start of the project, we received bits of advice about how to start off on the right foot from various ETC faculty. One piece of advice that was surprising was to not ask team members what game they wanted to build. Doing so inevitably gets team members attached to their own concepts, which makes it difficult to get the team to converge on a singular idea. Instead, it is advisable to ask the team what games they’ve played and enjoyed, and what type of concepts they like and use those as constraints for our initial direction. This ensures that the entire team is working in a shared interest space, and helps to mitigate situations where multiple team members feel ownership and want to take the project in different directions. Armed with this advice, it was time to start the project.
In our first meeting, we started out by creating a Google Jamboard where we would put down games we’ve played, aspects of games that interest us, and any other feelings we had about games. Part of this process was done synchronously over Zoom where we were able to bounce ideas off each other and spark each other’s memory, but we also left the Jamboard open overnight so that thoughts could marinate.
The next day, we came back and had each team member talk over their board. From the collection of various inspirations, we were able to consolidate reoccurring concepts and themes. Some of these concepts were broad such as “Adventure” and “Sense of freedom”, whereas some were more specific such as “Staying away from complicated RPG mechanics” and “Interesting environment traversal mechanics”. By talking through our boards, we were also synthesize various other ideas, such as “Inside the body of a beast” and “Your world is impacted by the actions of other players”.
From our few days of work, we landed on this concept of an atmospheric adventure game on the inside of a beast, where you work to fix the ecosystem within it. However, it was doubtless that each team member had a different interpretation of that initial concept. Thus, we drafted a short list of questions that would help weed out spots of ambiguity. Similar to the jamboard exercise, we let these questions sit overnight, and discussed our interpretations the next day. We also used this time to land on our team name, 7 Seasons Studio, which is inspired by the potential for diverse ecosystem and environmental effects within our concept. With a strong name and a compelling concept that was growing clearer, we had a strong foundation going into week 2.