If you are a creative (specifically a creative with game making abilities), I’m almost certain your HDD is filled to the brim with prototypes, TBD ideas and unfinished masterpieces. Projects that started with the “this is it!” but always eventually meet the same fate of “I’ll finish it at some point”.

Once the initial excitement of a project fizzles out, you’re usually left with an idea that perhaps shows promise but there’s no drive inside you to take it further. Tonnes of them, just sat on your hard drive slowly rotting.

I believe this to be normal with most forms of creativity.

For many, many years now I’ve been tinkering on a project that managed to stave off the “creative rot” - for now we’ll call it GLN. That’s not the focus on what I wanted to talk about today but I mentioned in the previous blog post that Mid AF is currently working on a “bigger” and a “smaller” game.

The bigger game is “GLN”. The smaller game is an interesting answer to the conundrum of creative rot, built in order to serve GLN under the intention it’s going to do well enough to help get some development funds to GLN.

It doesn’t feel great to admit that the smaller projects exists as essentially a sacrifical lamb for the larger project, so I like to frame it within a different context.

This “smaller” project needs to be something that’s uniquely Mid AF and is our lower risk introduction to the world. When I say introduction, I mean it’s the worlds first proper look at how we approach games and the types of experiences we offer.

Whilst the experience started as an answer to the question of “how can we make enough money to give GLN the best chance” - it quickly evolved into setting up some creative limits and using the smaller scale to offer the world something truly unique.

I mean it makes sense - that means creatively we’re satisfied with it, our first hello world to the games market. We also can use to creatively challenge ourselves with specific confinds - as I find creating with limitation produces more innovative results. At the same time, if it can make the money to assist GLN then great!

So what the heck is the smaller project and why the idea we went with over the infinite other possibilities?

Let’s go back to Creative Rot. Starting a project and never finishing it. It happens to most creatives, as I mentioned.

When you add “it has to be successful enough to assist in another project” the pressure to deliver is increase tenfold.

It’s not an official mathmatic equation but I’m confident that Creative Rot + Pressure = More Creative Rot.

So many rough ideas and early prototypes fell the wastes of trying to find that one small “Mid AF” idea that encapsulates who we are and what we are trying to do.

Amongst the sea of dead and dormant projects, I took a step back and tried to look deeper. What was the common link between these projects that made that initial excitement fizzle out? What eventually made me decide these projects weren’t Mid AF?

Funnily enough, there was no one core reason. Each project had its own reason for not making it to the finish line for one reason or another. Gameplay loops that didn’t quite match the intention, scope screep, games born out of nessisity rather than natural motivation. Each one died their own unique death.

So I had to reframe my question. If their deaths were all inconsistent, what was the thread between their lives that helped them to be born in the first place?

This was the first inclination of something. A flicker of a lightbulb.

Out of all these projects that ran out of steam or died a horrible death, I could not find consistent motive for death but I did spot a consistent motive for birth; their stories.

Some of the projects had died because their stories either became too grandeous, too limiting or overall weren’t quite hitting the mark I wanted to hit. But they all started with an intriguing idea of a story that was interesting enough to persue - at least for a little while.

I’m a strong advocate that a game should be a game. It should not be a vessel simply for a story. The story is a key part of what makes a game what it is but if a story is best told in book form or movie form - they should be books or movies.

This whole push for cinematic games in general is completely pointless in my opinion. You’re intentionally throwing away what makes games magical to trick players into listening to your story, completely foregoing what it is to make a good game. For what? To push a narrative you have delivered in many, many other ways? Then why do it?

Games should be something only games can do. We should be constantly questioning what a game is and pushing the potential of what it possible. We should suprise and delight players - not bore them with self-righteous storytelling.

So I took stock of the failed projects and all I began to see them truly for what they were. Stories. Stories everywhere. Small stories, large stories, simple ones, complex. Every size and genre of story lived within these failed prototypes in some form.

I was clearly trying to do something with these prototypes - beyond the goals of being a Mid AF game and beyond making GLN the funding it needs. I was trying to tell stories. Interesting.

If the stories were the focus of many of these prototypes, what if I just compiled the stories together. What if the stories were the experience? There we so many in the graveyard.

I could compile them together and the whole experience could essentially just be Mid AF stories. If I were smart about it, I could write a system to effortless bring these stories to life. I could add more stories constantly.

But that little niggle in the back of my brain had doubts; I just told you how a game needs to be a game. Games are not just vessels to tell stories, they need to be games first and foremost.

I didn’t have the complete picture yet but there a dull sensation in my mind. An idea was forming that wasn’t quite formed yet. I felt like I needed to intentionally go down this path and the idea would unearth itself. It’s a strange senstation I’ve never quite felt before that I can’t really articulate very well.

But I knew I had to start putting the story experience together. The idea was there but it was buried and I needed to dig it out to get a proper look.

I began putting the story “game” together. I picked some of the smaller scope stories from the graveyard and salvaged them. I began to break down what I needed to bring those stories to life.

Thinking about the method of delivery of these stories, I began to think about motion comics and visual novels. What if I could build a system that felt almost like an automatic generator for these stories? I’d feed in a simple script and the system would build out a motion comic or a visual novel.

If I went down this route, I could begin to add branching paths, unique endings and begin to make games out of the story. Interesting. Not quite the light bulb moment but a direction to follow at least.

The system started to take shape. But who was I making this for? I’d love if the world was already excited to hear my stories but let’s face it - everyone has a story (usually multiple) to tell. There are master storytellers out there sitting there completely undiscovered. I like my stories, I don’t think they’re world changing but I think they’re interesting enough that at least some person out there might enjoy them.

But the sea of other stories and other storytellers out there is impossible to even fathom. There are so many undiscovered stories, so many already popular stories. What could I do to set my stories apart and have them stand-out in the noise? If my stories were good or bad is inconcequential to being able to cut through the noise of all the millions of other stories out there.

So WHO am I making this story experience for? I closed my eyes hard and tried to imagine. Obviously I’m not trying to hit hardcore gamers with this experience, no. I’d love to be able to reach as many people as possible - maybe people that don’t game but I think could benefit from experiencing interactive stories.

An image started to formulate. A man, specifically a business man, sat on the tube (/ subway / whatever you want to call a commuter train), scrolling through his phone. He has no signal so he opens apps on his phone to help distract him from his mundane commute. He has about 5 minutes before he has signal again, he’s deep underground. What if he could experience a story during these five minutes?

I’m not talking about reading plain words on a white background but experiencing a story - with flashy effects, voice acting, dynamic action? What if he had a micro episode of a netflix show that he could pause and resume at anytime and feel part of the action with his decisions?

I think I know who I’m making this for now.

The game became a phone “game”. Not just a phone game but a phone game for the imaginary commuter guy. It was a game you control vertically on your phone so as to be a part of your routine rather than something that requires to be in “game mode” whilst you’re going about your commute.

That was enough information to get truly stuck in. I began to put that version of the game together, building systems to effortlessly translate the stories into these visual novel-esque experiences that can be consumed anywhere, anytime, for any point of time.

I’m not going to lie, putting together the story game was a blast. It was really exciting to see the stories come to life with minimal input from me. The system I built to “translate” the script into characters and effects and voice work all appearing before my very eyes was lots of fun. It was probably the best part of the experience.

A few builds later, testing it on the phone, something was missing. That dulled idea was still there in my mind, not quite visible yet but the idea the answer could be in the next build or the build after that was incredibly motivating. Things felt like they were really coming together.

But a problem slowly began to grow. With each build I cooked off, the fun wasn’t translating into the build.

Don’t get me wrong - creating the stories was great fun but actually playing them back? That part was less fun.

There was a moment in one of the later builds where I was testing either the third or forth story and I had a thought that froze everything in place.

This whole experience felt so self-rightous if that is the right word. It felt like I wasn’t building a Mid AF game but an excuse to get my stories out there. But there was nothing special about my stories compared to the sea of other ones out there. The only thing unique here was the method of delivery.

I started to get that niggle that it was starting to come across that this was some sort of ego excercise where I trick people into using the cool game to read my mediocre stories.

Was this Creative Rot about to take hold? Normally, this would be the moment. I had the realization moment that whilst creating the stories was fun, actually reading them was falling flat. The idea of basically having a “Read Mid’s stories” felt so arrogant and ego driven. That wasn’t why I wanted to do this but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

The project could have died here and now from this - I simply couldn’t shake the feeling. But that’s when it finally happened.

Remember that idea dulled in the back of my mind? As if waiting for me to beat the boss or solve the puzzle, it undulled just as the project was about to enter the graveyard.

I’m not the only one in the world wanting to tell stories. If the creating stories part is the best bit… why not make this game a story making game?

It was perfect. It’s something you could only really do in interactive form and allows for creative minds to craft beautiful stories. I’d much rather read other people’s stories rather than my own.

All the systems I had built to express my stories could easily be retooled for other people to bring their stories and worlds to life - branching paths and all.

Instead of being an app to deliver my stories to the world, it could be one for anyone to craft visual novels / motion comics to share with their friends and the world. This was it! It was the lightbulb moment. It happened!

I quickly got to work retooling to test if the idea was fun.

One of the ground rules I put in place early on was the fact it had to be easy to use. I don’t want menu after menu. Things like Twine and RPG Maker exist but they are very technical and serve a tech-savvy audience. I still wanted to appeal to the imaginary commuter man.

So he still needs to hold his phone with one hand (vertical) and needs to be able to craft stories without too much effort. He may only have 5 minutes per day to build his story and the workflow of making a story with the game should support that.

I looked at games like Mario Maker and other “kid friendly” tool-like games for inspriation.

The game has to be simple, played vertical on phone and needs to allow users with barely any technical knowledge to build full stories with.

I put together a build and began to play. This was it. This was that fabled magical idea I’d been searching for. This is why all those other games died in the graveyard. All those stepping stones were important lessons to get to this end goal.

The game ticks all the boxes we originally set out with; a “simple” idea that uniquely Mid AF whilst also being scalable enough to hopefully raise funding for the larger Mid AF project.

Since that point, I’ve been hard at work bringing Project Storytime to life. I really hope when it’s ready people enjoy it because it’s been an absolute blast to work on. I’m really excited to read other people’s stories and I think we’ve done a pretty good job in making the story making part as “effortless” as possible.

It’s been quite a while since that initial pivot to a storymaker game and creative rot is nowhere to be seen. It’s just been an absolute blast to put this experience together and I’ve never been more excited for people to check it out when it’s done.

This blog post has gone on for a long time, I apologize but I thank-you for reading. Hopefully there is something useful here, maybe inspirational - if 100 projects have to die for one good one, I think that it’s all been worth it. My aim with this post was to show how a phoenix rose from the ashes and hopefully give those people out there suffering from creative rot hope that all it takes is one tiny variable change to save you from yourself!

Seriously though, thanks for reading to this point, I hope you enjoyed. The next few blog posts will be development logs of the Storytime experience coming together so please look forward to that.

P.S - Please remember that this secret blog is our little secret. Please keep Storytime just between us for now. When it’s closer to release, it’ll go through the usual advertising campaigns and all that so I’d hate for the surprise to be ruined early. Who knows, if you can keep these secret, maybe I can be more forthcoming about future Mid AF projects down the line? We’ll see.

Until then, as always, thanks for reading and good morning, evening, noon or night, or whatever it is where you are and I’ll see you in the next post.

Cheers, Midafir.

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