kbrecordzz
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* Company diary *
kbrecordzz can't, and shouldn't, be a real company, because I would need to spend too much time on really boring tasks that I don't want to spend time on. But I still want to create art & entertainment on the same level as a company could, just without the buildings, the staff, the internal bureacracy and the tax obligations. I want the production capacity of a company but not the administration burden of it. One reason is to surpass my hard limit of how many cool things I can come up with every day to create (they're not very many). There's no real limit to how many things I can make, but there seems to be a limit to how many GOOD things I can make, because the more I try the lower the average quality of them become.
Here's what I said in another post:
"I've made my tools work so well for me that the process of adding content into the game isn't what takes time anymore. That goes relatively fast, and now what takes time is thinking and coming up with all the ideas for what to add. To make sure I'm not just being productive and adding stuff without it being any good."
So technology, debugging and frustration aren't the bottleneck anymore, now it's the actual creative work. So let's tackle that bottleneck!
I think one solution is more inspiration, and most of all more diverse inspiration. To be a fan, not an artist, when enjoying other music, videos, games, movies, books, and so on, to find more new unpredicted things and not just the same favorites or that thing you were looking for. Find all the other stuff. Focus less on production and more on inspiration, that way you'll have more good and unique ideas to actually produce. This is just a good and fun way to not get the same ideas over and over again.
To take the idea of diverse inspiration further, another solution is collaborating (which I'm already utilizing; the story and characters for This Is (NOT!) A Car Club and the upcoming game MANAGO have been developed pretty much together with H. Von Asrik, known from the credits). When I don't have any more ideas, others have. But they have to be as good or better than mine, and fit into the projects I'm making, because someone could be brilliant but in a completely different way that doesn't fit with kbrecordzz and that wouldn't work (unfortunately, this is often the case with brilliant and unique people). This type of collaboration also can't be like work, it has to be fun time with friends, with no strings attached and no goals in sight. Because it never feels like work for me, and if I would start hiring people to come up with things for my games I know that the games would lose their fun factor. So I'm careful when it comes to collaborating for creative ideas, because picking the wrong person means more problems than solutions and then I've suddenly become a company...
But in the best of worlds I wouldn't come up with all areas, all nature, all buildings, all events, all objects & items, all UI and all around-work for a game on MANAGO's level by myself, and instead some of the things could get help from someone who is good in their field and understands the kbrecordzz style. Because I'm starting to run out of ideas for where to put flower pots and lamps inside of the MANAGO HQ building, and I'm sure someone out there is passionate about this in a way I couldn't even imagine.
Collaborating on the production side is easier. While it's hard to find people who can come up with kbrecordzz-like ideas, lots of people are better at art, music and sound design than me. It's much harder for me with my limited time to become a pro at both programming, design, making music, drawing graphics, creating sound effects, etc, compared to one person focusing on just one of those things. So I want to become good at making "mock-up" sketches for others to refine. For graphics, if I draw simple and quick sketches, and learn to communicate how I want the end-result to look, I can get much better graphics for my game without putting way too much time into it (Sachiko Mili, known from the credits of This Is (NOT!) A Car Club, has already started raising the level of MANAGO's visuals one step at a time). Lots of AI generated art from my previous game could also be replaced with more unique and lively art if someone talented drew them for "real".
When collaborating like this there's a risk that I become a company. I like creating things, not managing things, so I also want to become good at grouping material together in "batches" to not put all my time on communicating back and forth with people for every single thing I'm asking for (this is probably also beneficial for the other side of the communication). So I'll try to group similar ideas and sketches together to get much done at the same time. If I don't do it like this, I either won't get as much new cool graphics as I want, or I'll become a company filled with communication and administration instead of art and entertainment.
Let's see if I come up with anything more and make a #2 of this post "series" (who says a series can't consist of just one part? Break free of the mental chains that control you!).
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