Shep Korvin - Blog is the new Black

N.F.J.B.M.W.Q (part 2)

...Being the second installment in a series where Nubile Female Journalists bombard me with insightful and illuminating questions.

And dirty pictures.

This week, our Nubile Female Journalist bends seductively over a lucky chair, and demands that I give her exactly what she needs...

Good, hard, vigorous, ANSWERS!

"How long did it take you to think up the idea of the original Lucky Chair? and did it give you many headaches whilst putting the idea into practice?"

The first Lucky Chair was originally designed as a relatively minor (!) component of a much more elaborate in-world puzzle/rpg game that I was designing (and before you ask: no.. the rest of the game was never finished... I guess the Lucky Chair led me onto a major career re-think!).

I wanted to build a viral entry-point into this game; something that would give the initial players a strong incentive to introduce _other_ players ... so I came up with a task that involved convincing a sequence of people - whose names began with randomly selected letters of the alphabet - to sit on a "magic chair". I envisioned players pulling in people from their friends list, or just asking random passers-by to help them get through this task .. and these people who had been drawn in would all have their interest piqued - "hey, what's this magic chair thing all about anyway?", and maybe join in with the rest of the game too...

Then, while I was thinking this idea through, another idea clicked into place. Something along the lines of "hey, wait a minute... what if I used this same technique to pull people into my store!"

I ratched around in my inventory, and found a nice throne/chair that my friend - Funaria Moose - had built, and put together a really simple, no-frills, Lucky Chair script. It probably only took me 2 or 3 hours to physically implement, but the "thinking-it-through stage" had gone on for weeks... so the total time involved is a bit hard to quantify, in retrospect.

(BTW, that original chair is still rezzed - now with a commemorative plaque(!) - at the back of LapGirl Boutique)

As I recall, the implementation went pretty smoothly. The hardest part was thinking of a name for the product - (I *hate* coming up with names for things!!). I remember thinking - at the time - that the name "Lucky Chair" seemed a bit weak, but I ended up just going with that name anyway, purely because I was spending far too long stewing over alternatives.

Retrospectively, it seems odd that I could have ever considered calling them something else... ;)

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Are you a Nubile Female Journalist who'd like to Bombard me with Questions? Simply drop me a notecard in-world. And don't forget the pictures!

N.F.J.B.M.W.Q

Last week, I aired my sick, perverted fantasies about nubile female journalists bombarding me with exciting interviews and deep, thought-provoking questions about the creative process. Incredibly, after posting that item, I did actually get some questions passed to me in-world!! I haven't been able to personally verify either the nubility or the journalistic qualifications of all the parties concerned yet ... but, it's only polite to reply to these things, right? And it could keep me going with inspiration for blog postings for weeks! :)

So, without further ado, here's episode #1 of "Nubile Female Journalists Bombard Me With Questions..."

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A Nubile Female Journalist writes:

Have you ever designed, built and scripted something, decided you hate it and scrapped it immediately?

Shep Replies:

Yes, many times. In fact, I tend to design, build, and script *many* more inventions than I eventually release.

Generally, my creative process tends to run something like this:

1. Inspiration strikes. Usually - inconveniently - at around 1am in the morning (seriously ... my brain tends to be at its most fertile at *really* inconvenient hours!).

2. I spend a couple of weeks thinking the idea through... how it can be refined? what kind of presentation/theming would work best? who would it appeal to? Plus, for most the Lucky Designs stuff, there's a lot of thinking along the lines of "how could somebody cheat at this game? / how do I counter that?", and "what kind of social interactions is this going to generate? / Do I need to steer those in any particular direction?". In other words, there's a _lot_ of mental work involved before the idea gets anywhere near SL...

3. Somebody brings me back to earth. With a bump. If I still think the idea is workable after it's been rattling around my head for a couple of weeks, I sometimes bounce the concept off a friend for a second opinion. This is the stage that probably kills more of my plans than any other; it's strange how an idea that seemed *perfectly* workable while it was still swimming around in my head can suddenly sound completely insane and crazy when I have to describe it in terms that another human being can understand. Fortunately, I think my friends are getting used to me telling them that I have the "greatest idea evah!" ... and then talking myself out of the whole thing, within the space of about 10 minutes...

3b. The beast that would not die. Some ideas - no matter how crazy they sound to others - refuse to die... and progress to the next stage...

4. Prototype! Prototype! Prototype! SL is *wonderful* in the respect that you can prototype most ideas really quickly. I find that throwing together some kind of "physical" manifestation of your idea - no matter how rough and ready that prototype is - can be a great way to find out if there are any other kinks in the concept. Seeing a concept part-realised is *really* conducive to new thoughts about the invention... and by the time the prototype is up and running, I usually have a pretty good idea of whether the project is worth a commercial release, or if it should be relegated to my personal junkyard of half-baked creations ;)

5. PROFIT!! Assuming the idea got past stages 3 + 4 ... build the product! ... and SELL!!!!

But yeah... it can be very difficult to bail out on a project at stage (4) when you realise it's fundamentally flawed in some way, or just isn't going to be as big a hit as you thought it would be - especially if you've already poured a lot of time and effort into it. I think that being able to recognise the point where you should just walk away from something - and direct your energies to a different project - is an *extremely* difficult (but necessary!) discipline to master.

On the flip-side - despite the frustration that comes from wasted effort - having the confidence to dump your "not quite working" ideas can also be pretty liberating ... and I think that doing so is an absolutely essential practice when you're trying to build a reputation for quality products. I'd never release a product that I didn't have faith in, so I figure there's little point to seeing *any* project through to completion _purely_ for completion's sake. All the time you spent trying to rescue a "failing" project could usually be more profitably spent doing something different - being idea-rich but time-poor seems to be a common problem for content creators in SL... so it's only logical the make the very most of the time you have, right? ;)

The good thing is, most ideas - even the outright "failures"  - usually involve elements that are worth salvaging, and recycling into future projects. In fact, sometimes the "junk" left over from a failed project can inspire an entirely new idea. Keep collecting the junk, and before you know it, you have a whole library of useful routines + objects, just waiting for their moment to shine...

(Mr Sculptie Dragon. On a rare trip out from my inventory, waiting to find his true purpose...)

 

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Tune in for further episodes of "Nubile Female Journalists Bombard Me With Questions" soon!

(And if you're a Nubile Female Journalist, feel free to bombard me with questions. Or just pictures if you want. I'm not fussy).