M.A.Z.E. - The Team

Ok, so work has now officially started on M.A.Z.E., as from this Tuesday.

Much can’t be said on the gameplay yet, as it is mainly in my head and it’s the other people’s job to ask the heck out of it, until everything’s been explained to everyone in everyway possible.

These are the people I’ll be working with:

• Yvan is the other game designer on the team. Yvan is a good friend of mine who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, but maybe because he is also 4 years older than me… He has already proven to be quite valuable thanks to his godly ActionScript powers, allowing him to prototype any concept in less than an hour (beats cutting paper and moving things around by hand). His main task for now is to question everything I say and write on the game to force me to come up with a valid explanation. If I can’t come up with anything, then we know we hit something interesting, and get to work on it right away.
• Then, I want to speak about Meng. Meng is our ergonomics expert. The project being about maze exploration, which is a very “cognitive” task, Yvan and I decided to let him in in the early stages of the game designing, to avoid stuff that would ultimately hurt the game. We have asked him to test and attempt to validate a method we came up with empirically that would allow us to calculate the overall difficulty of a certain path, which could prove extra-useful in higher-level game design tasks.
• I’ve already worked with one of our programmers, David. He helped me with the heavy programming of Poésystème, that is everything not gameplay (I/O, optimization, etc). David is brilliant, but quirky… He once told me that he didn’t comment his code because if he did, “that would mean the code requires explanation, therefore proving it is bad code”. Also, you should see his apartment. Actually, you shouldn’t.
• Guillaume is the other programmer. He is very quiet, but by having worked in the same room for a few months, I can tell he’s fairly serious. He is now learning XNA with David.
• Fabien, one of our artists, I’ve worked with on Poésystème too. He is a person I get along well with, personally and professionally.
• The other artist is called Julien. He has a great sense of humor and a style that I think goes well with Fabien’s.
• Samuel is our sound designer. He has strong electronic origins, and fairly good DJ-ing skills. He is young though, so I’m afraid he might get easily distracted. The other thing is that we have to share him with another project, which could be a real handicap if we don’t plan ahead well.
• Lastly, Bérénice was appointed as the project manager / producer. She has great communication skills and should help push the project forward.

So, that’s all. 9 people in total, maybe one programmer and artist short, but you do what you can with what you’re given. I can predict some problems already, knowing well the personalities of half the team, but I reckon they won’t be very severe.

And, as we say in France, “Quand le projet va, tout va!”