MitchellS

0 comments by MitchellS on Jan 28th, 2013

Hey guys.
  Mitch here. I know I haven't been here in a bit.
I would just like to say a few things, and attempt to give you an update on something that I don't even know about anymore. 

September 27, 2009
I was just about 10 at the time. Similar to most children, I always wanted to make stuff every day. I saw the PSP homebrew community rising, with Halo Solitude, Left 4 Quake, and a few other inspirations, I wondered, why has nobody ever made a full-fledged, round based, zombie survival game on the PSP? These were the days when Scifinux broke his leg, Korvin was getting in fights with Tyler, and I, I just sat there and played video games all day. My best friend at the time, Gearsguy, was fluent in the PSP modding scene. He helped advertise the game by making a few videos on his channel. He had a fair share of viewers, and I had about 100 subscribers (now 1,500), and a boatload of WMM content. I shouldn't be complaining though, because a simple WMM video is what started the game. [watch here]
A few days after I made the video, it didn't really get much attention. What could you expect from a guy who has no potential viewers? Back on track, Gearsguy sent me a message asking if I posted under the Solitude forums under the name "dropthebomb". I said no, and it turns out, dropthebomb was making Nacht Der Untoten for Quake, for unknown reasons to this date. I contacted him, told him about the whole NZP shabang, and he agreed to be a part of the team. The video eventually got some attention, and blubs joined the team.

October 9, 2009
Blubs made the first ever model for the game, the wunderwaffe. We started the NZP page and posted that as the first image. We got some cool reception on the game, and stuff started to unfold. The video got enough attention, the moddb page had developers seeking a position on the team, and I was more excited than ever. 

A few weeks later
We had a decent team going. We had modelers, coders, texture artists, mappers, sound artists, everything we needed. This went better than I could have ever planned, and the game was really growing. I was interacting with the community, posting updates, images, etc. 

Time passed by, and my connection with NZP slowly faded. My computer broke, I took a few months break from developing the game, although I went on my brothers laptop bribing him to let me download Dropbox so I could see how things were going, and thinks were going nothing more than fantastic. The developers kept going at it, Jukki and blubs eventually kept the team more organised than I could have ever done, and eventually they didn't really need me. I tried making UI Contributions, and just staying interacted at the slightest bit, but really wasn't annoyed at it at the time. Things were going smooth, "my" game was getting around, and they made playable releases. I thought to myself that I was pretty much "retired", and that things would go fine from here.
Never think that way.

Now, I just want to speak some last words for NZP, at least, that is, for now. 
I was watching a youtube video today, on a very popular youtubers channel, and it was about NZP. I looked in the Video Responses, and there it was, more NZP videos. I searched NZP, and I got more than hundreds of content. That pretty much took a slap to my face that this game was more than I thought it was. This game was huge, and I just want to thank the team for developing something of such massive matter. They stood by a game that their own "leader" practically abandoned. 

As for NZP's future, I don't know what the state of the game is in right now. Not all the team members are present, so it seems development has been paused. Paused could mean stopped, or it could mean paused. I don't know anymore. It's just hard to see a game that was once sprung with activity, media, and attention come down to posts asking if it's dead.

I've made lots of friends and foes along this journey, and I can only hope that things get better for the game. Maybe the journey will continue. If you read all of this, props to you.