Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Estok, before I respond to your post, will you please clarify what you consider to be the complete list of highest-level topics or 'checkboxes' that need to be decided for a poject of this type, and what you would guess their answers to be from previous discussion and consensus?

The highest-level topics are Central Idea and Theme. These are the same catagories listed first in the Unconfirmed section in the GDTCRM.

Central Idea:
Definition: The Central Ideas are the purposes and messages conveyed by a piece of writing. We write in order to change things. What changes do we want to make? What effects do we want to have on the reader? What do we want to communicate with the reader?

There are many choices for central ideas. Based on the previous discussion your choice of central idea is "Different ways of life is suited for different people, and there is no a single right way of life." My choice of central idea is more like, "Conflict is required to achieve a higher level of understanding and revelation."

The two central ideas are not contradictory of each other. There can be more than one central ideas. Mixing central ideas is not limited to concantenation. For example, a possible mix of the two ideas above can be, "This game story will show the player that different ways of life is suited for different people and how conflict between these different ways of life is required for individuals to achieve a higher understanding of diversity."

Theme:
Definition: The topics and scope of discussion.

With respect to your choice of central idea, the discussed theme is romance. What this means is, "In this game we are going to show the player that there are many different romantic relationships suited for different people, and there is no single right personality or choice that is suited for everyone." The focus here is how 'romantic relationships' is a narrower scope within 'ways of life'.

With respect to my choice of central idea, one of the discussed themes is moral. To paraphrase, "In this game we are going to show the player that one cannot achieve a higher understanding of moral issues without being involved in conflicts pertaining to such issues." Here, 'moral' is the narrower type of of 'understanding'.

There can be many themes and sub-themes.

Conflict:

Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
Aha, thank you for stating that so clearly. You asked about dramatica before - it actually does include stuff about theme and premise (central idea). According to Dramatica, a story's premise is a statement about how the main character solves or does not solve the story's problem.

This definition is clearly not the same as for central idea. If you think that they are the same then you still misunderstand what central idea is.

Quote:So expanding what you have written above, my idea of the game's premise would be "A strategic person finds love and a place in society by approaching the problem of diversity with the attitude of openness." And yours would be "A _something_ person gains understanding and revelation by approaching the problem of mystery with the attitude of pro-conflict."

There seems to be a misunderstanding to what 'conflict' includes. Base on the following:

Quote:Quite simply, these are two different games, which could both be great, but it is my opinion that we should not attempt to combine them, especially since my personal philosophy is that conflict should be avoided whenever possible.

What you refered to as 'conflict' is not the clash of ideas itself, but the form of resolution. What I refer to as conflict is the clash of ideas, the inquries and doubts that are necessary for one to understand in a meaningful way. From what Stimarco said in the PS and what AG said in the pervious post, it seems that they have a better understanding of what I meant by conflict. There are quotes pertaining to the idea that conflict is necessary for a higher level of understanding:

"Conflict builds character. Crisis defines it." - Steven V. Thulon

"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict." - William Ellery Channing

"The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results." - Jung, Carl

"When one ceases from conflict, whether because he has won, because he has lost, or because he cares no more for the game, the virtue passes out of him." - Charles Horton Cooley

"Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash." - Louis Aragon


There is also a quote about the type of conflict that should be avoided. However this is not the definition of conflict I am referring to:

"The peak efficiency of knowledge and strategy is to make conflict unnecessary."
- Sun Tzu

Another misunderstanding:

Quote: You, Estok, possibly with 5MG, should start a new thread and pursue a top-down approach to designing a mystery game. You will probably be able to find more gamedevvers interested in helping make a mystery game because the ideawould probably appeal more to the heavily male population here than the idea of a romance game does.

While there is an emphasis that I favor a mystery game (It is supposed to be a mystery game, it was listed as a genre in the design document), it is also a romance game. There are many types of romance games, of those I do not favor a dating-sim type of game. However romance is definitely a theme and is not excluded by the fact that it is also a mystery game.



The meaning of collaboration:

Quote:So this is what I suggest - I and Avatar God (I talked about this with him over PM) will keep this thread and pursue a bottom-up approach to designing a game about romance, starting by integrating the race descriptions into the design-doc and voting on a title. You, Estok, possibly with 5MG, should start a new thread and pursue a top-down approach to designing a mystery game. You will probably be able to find more gamedevvers interested in helping make a mystery game because the ideawould probably appeal more to the heavily male population here than the idea of a romance game does. Feel free to use anything that has been posted here as material for getting your project started. Of course you don't have to start a newthread if you don't want to, or you could do your project in a closed forum or on a wiki instead... do whatever you want, but I don't want to try to compromise with you any more because I think that a compromised idea would be worse than either original idea.

I engaged in this project because it promised a collaboration. What you have just said is a reflection of incapability and unwillingness to undertand and face diverse ideas that are inherent in a healthy collaboration. With respect to AG's experience on how a former collaboration failed, reverting into a two-person group, there are also quotes:

"A good manager doesn't try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you're the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong - that's healthy." - Robert Townsend

"I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic." - Abigail Adams

The idea of collaboration is not to cower in your corner clinging to the ones that do not disagree with you. Disagreements are essential. And I think that your reaction to them shows that you are not ready for collaboration.

"A true friend stabs you in the front." - Oscar Wilde

"The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know." - Bonaparte, Napoleon


Having an open-mind is a premise in your story design. I wish that you would exercise the same ideal in the reality of this collaboration to understand the misconceptions, instead of avoiding and ignoring them.

Quote:In fact, this thread is an excellent example, if you hadn't noticed. We had conflict that was so detrimental that no progress could be made, creating a good deal of "waste, injury, and confusion." So, sure, at some level conflict is good, in fact, necessary. But not to the extent we've seen it. And not in all situations.

This thread is an excellent example of how conflict is required to understand the meaning of collaboration, and the failure to see conflict in a contructively blinds you to reach that higher meaning of collaboration.

To begin a thread promising collaboration, but to be unwilling to understand, and to reject others' ideas before understanding, is an irony and a betrayal.



Breaking up:
Breaking up, on the other hand, is a logical resolution if the high level goals do not match. There are high level goals besides the central ideas that we didn't talk about. For example, in your game review, you mentioned how the game story is a 'gem'. What is it that makes a story a 'gem'? I don't think that we see the criteria the same, which can be seen by my emphasis on integration between metaphors and meanings, the techniques used to present the meanings, and the complexity and novelty of the meaning itself. Suppose my goal for this project is to write a 'gem' and these qualities must exist in a story that I call a 'gem'. Then it is logical to leave if it is clear that the story cannot provide what I want. It would actually be irresponsible if I do not state in the beginning of the thread that, "I want this story to be such a gem in my definition. Due to the structural complexity and compactness of the goal, it is impossible to achieve without a shared vision and dedication to such vision. Therefore, if we do not share this vision or are not dedicated, I am not going to engage in this collaborative writing project."

However this is not the goal I had when I entered this project. The reason was to see how it can be done. I wanted to see how different ideas are discussed and incorporated.

The first signal that things weren't going right was when the summary of the initial survey was posted. In that post, our answers for question 5 were listed. At that point I felt that the answers to other questions were simply ignored. If you have not realize, some answers to question 5 were more elaborated than others. The way the survey was handled was almost like first come first serve. Just because some members said something about the conflict and the plot, it was incorporated. I was actually waiting for further discussions but it was non-existant. Then there was 5minute's idea of what the backstory is about, which was pretty much set for the rest of the entire thread. Wasn't there something that was missing? Like a brainstorm or an overall confirmation that we all know what the game is about. Or was the survey it? At that time I was in the passive seat. And I regreted that.

To be objective, it wasn't that long before I raised a flag. It was only day 5 (page 3) when I said maybe we should slow down. But we never did. Why the rush?


For those who left:
I always wanted to know the reasons why some of us left in the beginning. Especially Terlenth and TraderJack, the ones who survived the summary of the initial survey. I said survived because many posters who did the survey simply vaporized after doing just that. I want to know whether there was there a cause or they simply forgot. The only one who left and I think I knew why he left was Gamegod3001. It seemed to be the insecurity that his ideas were exposed that made him leave. I don't know why onyx left either, that would be educational to know.


For those who stayed:
In the beginning the discussion was mostly between S/S and 5M, then it shifted to S/S and me. During that time AG entered, and after that onyx entered for a short period and left. So, most of the time, there were four members of this thread.

Statistically, AG's, 5M's, and my views are similar. When I am not in opposition to s/s, AG in general agrees with my view. When we are in opposition, AG is usually side with s/s. And when s/s is changing position, or when her stand is unclear, AG is usually absent. Therefore, I think that AG is a yes-man.

5M comes and goes, sometimes his ideas are similar to s/s, sometimes to mine. Sometimes it seems that he was gone for too long and the content of his posts were out of place. His position is not very clear and unpredictable. He expresses his individual ideas and thoughts but sometimes he disagree with us but his comments show no differences. I think that 5M is mysterious and distracted.

S/s does the most formal works. She is the most persistent in terms of presenting her ideas. However while she is persistent, she is also locked onto a set of throughts and fail to see thing in other ways. She has a clear goal that she wants to reach, and is impatient to reach it. She sees disagreements as obstacles and is willing to rid of those lagging her politically and strategically. Fueled by a yes-man, I think that s/s is the most destructive force in a collaborative project. It is not an intentional force however.

To settle the emotions, I am the ass. I apologize for the harsh comments that I made non-stop like machine-gun bullets. I see myself as a reformer. I see this project as an organizational nonsense, and there is a need to change. However the presentation of that message is mishandled. In terms of my ideas, there is a discrepancy between the tone I present it and the tone of the idea. There seems to be no way you can tell the softness of the ideas from the hard descriptions.

I missed this:

Quote:I understand that, that's not what we're talking about. Estok is taking the philosophical position that conflict is a process through which progress and understanding are created, and I am taking the opposite position, that conflict is a process which obstructs progress by causing waste, injury, and confusion. We can't support both of these viewpoints in one game story.

For the definition that I was using, conflict is not a process. It is a state. It is the very general definition of conflict. For example, if you are Catholic since you were small, and your boyfriend is not, then there is a conflict between your believes and his believes. Through this conflict, you can learn more about your faith and maybe strengthen your faith. This is the definition of conflict that I was referring to. It does not have to mean that there is fighting, arguements or anything. Just the mere presence of two contrasting states that invokes thoughts and examination.

Quote:I feel that I have been more than patient in trying to understand your point of view, but it is necessary to make progress

What you call progress is not a collaborative progress. That is why I am telling you to slow down. You are following your own way and breaking up, breaching the original idea of collaboration which has its foundation of understanding among the members. Aren't you ashame that you started this collaboration project, but you are the one that has no capacity to understand other's ideas?


Now, with respect to this earlier comment:

Quote:Aha, thank you for stating that so clearly. You asked about dramatica before - it actually does include stuff about theme and premise (central idea). According to Dramatica, a story's premise is a statement about how the main character solves or does not solve the story's problem. So expanding what you have written above, my idea of the game's premise would be "A strategic person finds love and a place in society by approaching the problem of diversity with the attitude of openness." And yours would be "A _something_ person gains understanding and revelation by approaching the problem of mystery with the attitude of pro-conflict." Quite simply, these are two different games, which could both be great, but it is my opinion that we should not attempt to combine them, especially since my personal philosophy is that conflict should be avoided whenever possible.

In the post prior to this, you asked me to state what the answers were that I think we had. And that was just what I did. In this quote, (the right here above), not only you avoided trying to understand why the two central ideas can coexist (a fellow members' view), you staged it as an opposition to you own idea, and used that opposition to justisfy you action of breaking up. That was a strategic breaching of the very meaning of collaboration.

All I have been saying was that we need a way to show our differences, to understand, and then to make a decision. That is collaboration.

What I did in the pervious post was to show you that there were two central ideas. I was saying that we need to list them, and decide. I never said that the final design had to have my central idea in it. How do you know that we will not end up choosing your central idea, or that my central idea won't be chosen. And what do you think will happen if in fact we voted and my central idea is not included? Do you think that I would just break out? Of course not, because that was what collaboration is about, to achieve some thing as a group .

You are attacking the very idea of collaboration, do you realize?

Quote:You are, in point of fact, asking for the exact opposite of progress when you ask for a complete top-down reevaluation of the few compromises we have managed to come to so far, and i am not intereted in throwing away more of my time and effort by starting over.

It is not an re-evaluation. Anyone who followed this thread would know that there is a clear goal of having mystery in the story. It is even in the design document, the document that you wrote yourself, the the genre includes mystery. There is a discrepancy between the way you call mystery and what 5M and I call mystery. And that is something that needs to be settled as a group. There was no compromise for this topic. There was a vision conflict that I have identified that caused this discrepancy, and I was proposing a way to resolve it in order to preserve the collaboration of the project. It is okay that we don't share the same vision in the beginning. It is part of the collaboration process that will create such shared vision. Why do you attack the process of this settlement, does your vision mean that much to you that you would rather betray the effort to collaborate to go your own way? If we vote and the result was that the story is not a dating-sim, would you just quit? Is that what you are afraid of? What kind of sportmanship is that?

Cintura Cafe is pretty much a dating-sim. Why did I included it in my original game review? Because I understood that we might end up with a story strongly based on mystery. It was a possible alternative outcome from our collaboration. It is okay to make a dating-sim if we as a group decide to. Unlike you, there is no story or idea that I strongly hold that must be included in the story. And unlike you, I can't include a story element by just saying that it should be included because I want it.

Frequency has wings because I know that you want wings. My opposition to such idea is that those traits are superficial and have no deep meaning. Instead of fighting against that idea or flee from it (like what you are doing now), I incorporated it in my design of the character. I said that wings have no meaning, therefore I gave meaning to it, a metaphor, that encapsulates the character.

A compromise is not a suck-up. It is only a suck-up if we as a group lacks the intelligence and faith to transform it, to see that our values are understood and shared through collaboration and inherited in the collaborated work.

Quote:Collaboration is only possible between people whse artistic visions are akin, and yours and mine are not. I am DONE trying to compromise or argue with you because it is apparent that we are starting from to far apart to come to a good compromise. I competely agree with Avatar God that:

Quote:In fact, this thread is an excellent example, if you hadn't noticed. We had conflict that was so detrimental that no progress could be made, creating a good deal of "waste, injury, and confusion."

The visions are what we are trying to understand among us because in the beginning of this project, we didn't say that this project has to follow a certain vision. I doubt that there were many in the beginning that share the same vision. In fact I doubt that any two of us shared the same vision. It would have been a valid arguement if that vision is stated in the beginning, but it was not. Therefore it is the group's responsibility to create a shared vision through understanding.

A collaborative project is not about joining the group, finding the one that share the same view with you, and then ditch the rest of the group. In our case, by the way 5M is absent, you are in effect ditching just me, so that is actually not that big a deal. But conceptually it is a shameful thing to do especially you were the one starting the project. What did you think we were? Just pawns for you to evaluate and select, and they break out when you have gathered enough for your own purpose? If that is what going to happen, this collaboration is a scheme, a joke, made by a moderator to gather ideas for her own purpose.


Emotion aside.

What I have been saying are these:

1. There is a difference between the visions that we had for the game and the story;
2. Due to the fact that we did not explicitly express the differences, and the fact that we were working on the individual story elements, we assumed that we shared the same goal;
3. S/S assumed that we shared the same goal, while I told her that we do not;
4. S/S thinks that it is a waste of time to go back, eventhough that it was a false assumption that the goals were shared;
5. Instead of going about resolving the differences and creating a common goal, s/s recommended breaking up so that we do not hinder her progress.


Now.

I understand that it seems to be a waste of effort if we go back and change. That would actually be a valid argument against going back. I personally do not mind having s/s declare the vision and we agree to work on her vision as a group. Because I do not have an idea that I must include (just look at the rate I crank out ideas, they are disposable).

However, the reason for such agreement has to be understood, that we made a mistake. In the development of a collaborative story, we had made crucial mistakes, in which we failed to establish a shared vision, and let too many assumptions escape.

In any cases, this does not speak for 5M. By the way, what did 5M do to get kicked out? I can dig it that you want to kick me because I posted a vision that is different from yours (even though I didn't say that I can't work with your vision, you kind of just assumed. If you read carefully, I wasn't arguing for the existent of my central ideas, I was arguing for the existent of a collaborative effort to come up with the ideas, instead of having one member just assume that it is set, and as use that as a weapon to eliminate other members), but 5M hasn't done that yet. What did he do?

Quote:So this is what I am doing: I am going to complete this design as a dating sim, with anime-style art. As I said I would, I have updated the design doc to include all the information about the races and the characters I created. Please let me know if you would prefer that I not use Frequency in this game design. I have already had an offer from someone interested in producing this design as-is, although I'm not yet convinced that they are experienced enough to succesfully produce a game of this complexity, so I'm going to investigate further.

S/S you are probably better off as a monarch with some servants on your side. You seem to focus more on the details than on the overall form. Someone made a similar comment in the Visual art forum about your sketches. The comment was something like 'you seem to concern more with getting the lines right than getting the form right.' This is the same thing I would say in terms of your story creation, and the way you participated in this project.

Frequency is from this project. There is no way I can claim credit of it for myself. The idea that she had wings is not something that I would advocate myself. The idea that there were techno and magicals and the fact that she was an alien are not something that I would choose myself. She is a product of the conflicting ideas of this project, created because I have faith on our collaborated ideas. You might understand her personality, but you might not understand her spirit. It is the abstract representation of a spiritual forged by the conflicts surrounding her, the spirit that endured the pain, the valor that stood for what she believed. The spirit of frequency

Human PC - Might as well, it was drawn solely for this project anyway.