Seeds of Chaos is a good example of what often goes wrong without someone with experience in control. It's the "kid in a candy store" mentality. Game development goes one of two ways; either you've got a project that no one puts a lid on and the scope goes wildly out of control, or you have someone ready, willing, and able to say no to the many things that the creative types on the project want to do.
The candy store problem is exacerbated in Seeds of Chaos due to the nature in which content is delivered. You're on a map that is far too large for the amount of story content, with events that are not guaranteed to spawn, with stats that play a part in whether or not certain events will spawn, in between specific events tied to locations that are in some cases reliant upon whether or not certain events have spawned. So we're left with a development team that has to create a lot of largely irrelevant content to fill in the map, and then there's the events that are tied to the castle, and Alexia's job, and her alignment, and her allegiances, and Rowan's alignment, and his allegiances, and what he's done in past events, and so on and so forth. All of this is further exacerbated by the fact that as the game developed the actual game mechanics eventually required an overhaul because, well, they were shit and kind of still are.
All of this is indicative of a development team that does not understand how to maintain the scope of a project. If we're ever going to see this three act play completed then they're going to need someone with the knowledge of how to direct a project. They need a detailed design document, a project bible that contains the intended content, and a director who maintains it and has the objectivity and authority to keep the scope from going out of control by cutting content. The inmates are running the asylum and that is and will always be a problem for game development.
The candy store problem is exacerbated in Seeds of Chaos due to the nature in which content is delivered. You're on a map that is far too large for the amount of story content, with events that are not guaranteed to spawn, with stats that play a part in whether or not certain events will spawn, in between specific events tied to locations that are in some cases reliant upon whether or not certain events have spawned. So we're left with a development team that has to create a lot of largely irrelevant content to fill in the map, and then there's the events that are tied to the castle, and Alexia's job, and her alignment, and her allegiances, and Rowan's alignment, and his allegiances, and what he's done in past events, and so on and so forth. All of this is further exacerbated by the fact that as the game developed the actual game mechanics eventually required an overhaul because, well, they were shit and kind of still are.
All of this is indicative of a development team that does not understand how to maintain the scope of a project. If we're ever going to see this three act play completed then they're going to need someone with the knowledge of how to direct a project. They need a detailed design document, a project bible that contains the intended content, and a director who maintains it and has the objectivity and authority to keep the scope from going out of control by cutting content. The inmates are running the asylum and that is and will always be a problem for game development.
