GameCareerGuide has finally published my post-mortem of The Nameless Mod, which they call “one of the most interesting total conversions out there”. I structured it in the traditional form of Game Developer post-mortems, and it starts like this:
If we’d known what we were getting ourselves into, we’d have run away screaming. The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a single-player total conversion, which isn’t the easiest or most popular category of modification on the internet. Secondly, it’s enormous: The Nameless Mod features over 14 hours of voice-over, the average length of a playthrough is 15 hours, and that’s just playing one of two significantly different, mutually exclusive plotlines. Third, and arguably most notably, The Nameless Mod has been finished and released to very favorable reviews.
The project was in development for seven years, two months, and 11 days by an international team of hobbyists who never met each other. It placed enormous demands on communication, leadership, and quality assurance, and to top it all off, it started as that most reviled of genres: forum fan fiction.
And then I go on to talk about the development process and describe 5 things that went right and 5 things that went wrong, in the usual fashion. It’s as honest as I could make it, and I hope you can find the time to read it, even though it’s quite long. The post-mortem may be found here.
tl; but I did read
Unfortunately not much new stuff, probably because I have been following this blog, the TNM website with weekly updates (which I miss from the postmortem btw and the forums for over 4 years.
I’m not sure if I’d classify the weekly updates as something that went wrong or right, since we haven’t had a way to measure their effect. I guess they kept the worst “OMG UR MOD IS DED” spam at bay, but I limited myself to 5 rights and 5 wrongs, so it didn’t make the list
I would consider it as something that went right, because it kept interest sort of alive. However, a bi-weekly update would work just as well I think
I think we’ll go with a monthly newsletter for Project Hyperion, but I haven’t run the idea past Lawrence yet, so it’s all a bit up in the air. For now, it’s pretty hush-hush anyway, because we can’t really announce anything until we figure out what the hell kind of game we’re going to make