Tuesday, August 29, 2006

if at first you don't succeed ...

There's a concept in game design. Maybe it's not limited to game design, I don't know. Anyway, it's called "iterative design" and basically it goes like this:

While you're designing something, you continually refine, redefine, and retest your original ideas in order to make them better, stronger, and more focused.

Or, more simply: by the end of a project, you'll have a billion different versions of the same thing.

So, all day today I've been stuck in iterative design mode. I delivered 12 pieces of audio for a game as originally designed and it turns out the designers felt the audio was too long. They specified shrinking each piece down to 60 seconds. I did. I redelivered. Now they feel that it's all too short. So, I'm spending all day today going through the process of shrinking the original pieces down to about a minute and a half. It takes all day every time they ask me to do this and it's really tedious. Plus, it's for a project that - technically - I'm not even on anymore.

Fun. Anyway, I'm almost done. Here's hoping they're done. I don't feel like editing 2 minute versions of the same 12 pieces again.

3 comments:

EmoRiot said...

That totally sucks. I suppose it's the nature of distance working relationships that could be avoided if the client was in closer contact during the process. For example, if you did the first couple and they could realize they were too short. Such is life, I guess. Enjoy the reworking reworking.

... wait this comment was too long...

EmoRiot said...

That sucks. It could be avoided if the client was in closer. they could realize they were too short. Such is life. Enjoy.

...wait this one's too short...

Bug said...

Oh you ...