Ironwood Omnimedia

Last year at this time I posted a 2008 plan that I was not able to hold up to. This was partly due to the overwhelming changes that occurred in 2008 to both my personal life and my professional one. 2008 did bring about one decisive an monumental path to fulfillment of ambitious plans. However, it came a bit late to help my goals for that year. So, while I am willing to admit that 2008 was a bad year for Ironwood and its goals, there is a decisive victory that promises to make 2009 a much better year. So what happened in 2008 and how does it affect 2009? Read more to find out.

In 2008 I had hoped to release more large scale products and adventures as well as to launch some new game lines. Modern Sagas is still in beta largely because I haven’t found an editor to take up the task of finalizing the product. Furthermore, the scope of the products I wanted to release were very large and ambitious. Many game companies have teams of writers and developers to assist them. In 2008 Ironwood became a one man job for the most part. New artists like Marco Morte joined the development of products that are so large we are still testing them today. 

It is the scope of my ambition that is killing the releases. I want to release large and well developed products that require teams. However, teams are not available for us at the moment. So the development takes a long time. It became obvious mid-year that I would fail in my goals. I( accepted that but I needed a strategy for solving this problem in the future.

I fell back to DPnP. This product envisioned years ago was the platform from which I had planned Ironwood would do all of its development. Sadly, it did not get developed as I had planned at the beginning. Furthermore, it looked like it would not get developed at all.

Then I met a man named David Lawnicki. He is a programmer for a company that develops software for salons of all things. When I found out he was a programmer I began picking his brain. That conversation led me to the realisation that I could develop DPnP for myself. This is the spur I needed to meet my goals.

So I stopped development projects for the time being. This was a necessesity and a short term loss for a hopeful long term gain. The idea is that with DPnP I could use the tools to basically become a development team. I could, in theory, develop the products more quickly and with better quality. This will allow me to release material for existing lines quickly, and start developing new game lines. That was Ironwood’s initial goal for RPGs anyways. Now I could put it into effect.

So starting around October I was in full swing with the first DPnP product (which is now in testing and nearing a full release announcement). The CRM is the tool that I have needed to reach my goals. Other tools will be need too, but the base content creation was a real hangup for me. I needed to create new content for my releases but I needed to test them so thoroughly because I am human and my mistakes are wide and varied. The program fixes a lot of this. It makes sure that everything is balanced and uniform and I don’t have to site with books in hand and create everything myself. I don’t have to sweat calculations or ballance levels and beta testing can focus on the game elements rather than ballance. This makes the testing go faster.

I also invested in software I can’t produce, such as map making software which I have become quite proficient at (skill level at about 7+). This gives our products a much higher quality than we were capable of before. And again, things can be developed faster. To put it into prospective, I released prophecy with only a few maps because it took so damned long to develop the maps I wanted that I had to give up to get the product out the door. Now, good maps take less time to make than the story elements that surround it. 

So, could 2009 mean a new year of accomplishments that 2008 promised but couldn’t deliver? Well, I am wise enough now not to make promises. However, it looks like that can be the case. At least, I hope so. The projects I want to release are really great products. Now, with the tools to make it happen, I think 2009 could be the year for Ironwood.

Happy New YEar, and Happy Gaming!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Developer Blog, DPnP, Overall Development, Personal Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.