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Do you care more about "what is" or "what could have been"?

Mxthe Blog 1 comment

We decide the importance we give to things. We decide what is important to us.

We decide if we care about things being a certain way, and if we do care about it and have the possibility to change it, then it's up to us to decide if we are willing to do so.
If we do care about it and cannot change it, then it's up to us to decide if we are willing to try and change it anyway, or if we are willing to accept it as it is.

The concept of "caring about a fictional character" in a book or a movie or a video game or the concept of "caring about the past". Caring about historical characters we have all heard of but have never met, or even caring about the past of our race, our civilization or our religion.
Does it directly affect us to know that our ancestors were enslaved by this or that civilization?
Does it directly affect us that our ancestors did this or that in the name of this or that religion?
Do we hold a grudge at the descendants of said civilization TODAY because of it?
Does it matter to us directly?

Will we let what a group of people we have never met has done to another group of people we have never met dictate how we live our lives? We decide whether we care or not, and that is part of what defines us. It's something we must all think about, and not simply take for granted.

What if I told you that if things had been slightly different, your best friend would have killed you. Would you still consider him your best friend?

Would "what could have been" matter more to you than "what is"?

It's hard to keep focus

Mxthe Blog 1 comment

No, I don't mean keep focus as in "Staying focused" as in "Focus in what you are doing"

I mean focus as in, "the image is blurry" or "Can't see a clear picture"

When you are working on a Project, no matter if you are working alone or with teammates, you are assigned (or assign yourself) to one specific task at a time, and even if you multi task some different things at once, you just can't make THE WHOLE project at once.

You gotta start somewhere, and then go somewhere else, and then somewhere else, and those parts that you complete, well you won't really be seeing them again for a while, since you'll be working on the other parts.
Yeah testing the whole project can fix that, but once you "lockdown" a part, you just won't touch it again, and you gotta focus on the parts that are still not complete.

My point is, when you spend 2 weeks working on a tunnel, your view starts narrowing down to that tunnel and sometimes, you might encounter yourself feeling "this is it? Two weeks for a bloody tunnel."

It's important to sometimes, step back from that tunnel, and look back at the project in it's entirety, because looking just at that tunnel that just won't look as good as you imagine it, well it can demotivate you pretty badly...

So sometimes step back, and see the whole picture, look at your whole project, and try to piece the ENTIRE thing in your head, to see where you are going.

This helps getting out of that tunnel...

The problem is getting back in, but once you are motivated it gets easier.

Dialogs just write themselves...

Mxthe Blog 1 comment

When developing characters, their backstories, their personality; they end up taking life somehow, you know how they'd react in any given situation, you know them pretty much like yourself, since you came up with what makes them who they are.

So when you couple those characters into the story you are working on, give them a context and mix them with other characters you developed the same way, you don't even have to THINK about writing the dialogues, they just happen.

You know what they would say, and you know what they would do, some events will just pop up and enrich your story, sometimes involuntarily, if those events come in conflict with your story then it's best to rethink about the characters in play or to find something that would make this character act differently.

So many times in movies or TV shows they make the characters change radically and make them act against what was shown to the audience about that character. The point is it's better to give a reason for a character's action, to just make them do random things that end up serving only your storyline and not the character's agendas, it makes them one dimensional, hollow and make them look like...actors...

The most interesting thing is thinking of a narrative structure that puts YOU (the writer) into a situation where you wonder what the character would do...If YOU wonder what he would do, it means the character himself would be wondering at this precise moment.

And at that instant, if you truly want to make the game interesting, give that choice to the player...

Making a teaser is not easy...

Mxthe Blog

No really, making a trailer is easier than making a teaser for a lot of reasons, but it comes down to only one:

Trying to show enough without showing too much. (for a teaser)

First off, what is a teaser ?
Full term is "Teaser Trailer", and to put it shortly, it is a short trailer, to "Tease" the audience, hence it's name.
One thing to avoid while making a teaser (in my opinion), that a LOT of movie teasers do, is to NOT show the same shots as in your trailer.

A teaser should give an "idea" of the ambience, the mood and the style of the content, via what it shows, via the music or added texts.
A trailer is there to let the player know what the product is about, which is why it usually contains clips of dialogues announcing the main strings of the plot.
The problem with trailers and teasers is that they tend to show the BEST parts of the movies, I will always remember that 2012 trailer that contained EVERY single heavy special effects shot of the movie.

Showing good stuff without showing the best, trying not to spoil, and trying to keep it short while fitting the right music...so yeah, making a teaser is not easy, especially when it's the first and you really do care about the project...