Marche100 creator of Obama RPG confesses to creative burnout - RMN

I just stumbled upon this today, so I apologize if this is a bit late, I thought this was interesting nonetheless:

On 08/16/2013, Marche100, creator of the RMN cult classic "Obama RPG: Magical Quest 3 HD - Future Legend of Superhuman President Starring Barack Obama" provided a fascinating confession on creative burnout. It sounds very similar to Badluck's struggle with ARA FELL - my question is, how do we avoid this?

I'll probably add a couple of pictures to this and a download, later on, if I can find one.

Either way, he recites his particular ordeal below.

"...Back when I first started making Obama RPG, I had visions of grandeur, an RPG that would try to soar high, like Barkley Shut Up and Jam did. At first, the story was simple, but it expanded. And expanded. And expanded, until I had what I thought was a good game. Then, the first hiatus hit. I had lost the motivation to go on, and yet...I felt like I owed everyone. I felt like it was wrong of me to just up and leave it. Like it was my masterpiece and I needed to complete it. It gnawed at me. Day after day after day. Month after month. Yet, I still didn't want to make it.

(Spotted) Dark Sword - RM2k3 - RPG Atelier

Via RPG Atelier

(Spotted) Carnage - RM2k3 - Oniromancie

via Oniromancie

Badluck shares Ara Fell's development story with RMN - RMN

I'm posting this here, because in this blog post, Badluck briefly touches upon a couple of the pitfalls that comes with working with rpgmaker2003 and indie games overall - something I think everyone should eventually read and be made aware of while working on an independent game of any kind:

There are a lot of stories like this one, that we don't get to hear, that raise awareness of certain issues, that we really need to learn how to avoid, while developing games.

You can read the original post here on RMN.

"I've been asked this before by several people, so I thought I'd explain things. This is the story of how I got here. I'll make another post about the Ara Fell remake another time. This isn't about the remake. This is about why I'm remaking it.

Fair warning. It's a little sentimental.

Ten years ago (it seems crazy to even type that), I made Ara Fell. It was my third game, after Tarion Star and some unnamed but serious RPG Maker 95 project, and the first one that was any good. Ara Fell was a huge, complicated project, and far too ambitious for what I was capable of at the time. More than a few people warned me of this, but I enjoyed the challenge, and decided to just go with my first instinct, and let the chips fall where they may. I had planned for Ara Fell to be a 10 part series, with "The Legend of Dirisetsu Hollow" as the first installment, parts 1 and 2. That's a hell of a project. By the end of it, I was probably looking at something twice as big as Chrono Trigger, and Chrono Trigger is a big-ass game.

GamingCX: GameCenter CX - Episode 136 - Gradius

(A word of cautious - gamingcx.com is one of the last remaining fan websites, where you can actually watch gamecentercx episodes in their entirety - Most of the content found within these episodes, such as the arcade trips and developer interviews, will never make it to the official dvd release in the west, either due to copyright or licensing issues.  So I very graciously ask you to try to not spread these links around too much, as certain segments of the show - while invaluable - are becoming more and more difficult to find.)

An episode of GameCenter CX has recently been translated into english and uploaded onto Gamingcx.com!

(picture taken from http://gamecentercx.tumblr.com/)

GamingCX: GameCenter CX - Episode 136 - Gradius: In this episode, Arino closes off Season 15, with the strict but very talented Assistant Director Takahashi by attempting to beat the rather difficult Konami Shoot-em-up, Gradius.

The Secret Developers Of The Industry - [Polygon]

"In July 2015, developer Comcept launched a Kickstarter campaign for its game Red Ash. It didn’t go well.

Despite raising over $500,000 in pledges, the campaign missed its target and critics pummeled its approach — pointing to Comcept launching the campaign before seeing through a previous one, announcing a console port without identifying which console and continuing the campaign after finding external funding.

For production studio Hyde, which had teamed with Comcept to develop the game, the campaign presented a new problem.

Hyde has been around since 2002, has worked on over 200 games and has had a hand in some of Japan’s biggest franchises, including Final Fantasy, Persona and Yakuza. It just can’t talk about most of them. The team often works in secret, doing its job but not appearing in the credits or mentioning the work publicly. Speaking with Polygon, Hyde President Kenichi Yanagihara estimates that he will never be able to talk about 70 percent of what the company does. And that worked fine until Hyde asked the public for money..."

Continued on Polygon