Development Hell

[Bigace360 38]

"Development hell" is media-industry jargon for a film, television screenplay, computer program, concept, or idea becoming and remaining stuck in development and taking an especially long time to start production, if ever. The film industry buys rights to many popular novels, video games, and comics, but it may take years for such properties to be successfully brought to the cinema, and often with considerable changes to the plot, characters, and general tone.

 

Example:

In the case of a film or television screenplay, the screenwriter may have successfully sold a screenplay to a certain set of producers or studio executives, but then new executives assigned to the project may raise objections to all the scripts and casting decisions they oversee, mandating rewrites and recasting. As a director and actors become "attached" to the project, further rewrites and recasting may be done, to accommodate the needs of the new talents involved in the project. Should the project fail to meet their needs, they might leave the project or simply refuse to complete it, causing further rewrites and recasting. At any point, a project may be forced to begin again from scratch.

 

This process can last for months or years. More often than not, a project trapped in this state will be abandoned by all interested parties or cancelled outright. Hollywood starts ten times as many projects as are released, so many scripts will, of necessity, languish. Many times, this "hell" is caused by the lack of foresight and competing visions of those involved. This revolving door in the film or gaming industry happens most commonly with projects that have multiple interpretations and affect several points of view.

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This is what i feel like i've done with my game. New ideals pop in and old ones look like crap and i have to start all over again. I mean if you look at the first time i started this story, it was unorganized and i was throwing things together that didn't make sense. That was 2007, it's 2011 and we'll it's moving slow but a lot more thought has been put into it then before.

 

So have any of you been in Development Hell before.

[Bigace360 38]

Wow, so you guys are telling me that none of you had any stories of messing up or having to go on hiatus because of lack of material, work, school, social life, etc. No, no i forgot everyone here is perfect and release a game as soon as the ideal popped into their head. I'm just saying, something that happened would be nice instead of just glancing at the thread. <_<

[rgangsta 43]

OK. I'll bite. :P

 

I've had that happen to me many times. A few games like Black Wars 13, Metal Gear Solid 5: Paradox and more recently, Assassin's Fury, are some of the few games I haven't been able to finish. Usually it's because of my computer and not resources and stuff. The game I'm working on now, I've made several backups of it this morning and hope nothing goes wrong with it. I have all the scripts I need so far and they're all compatible so I know there wont be any future script errors that'll delay production. As for other resources for my game, I just need sprites and a few more tiles and I'll be good to go.

...I might start Assassin's Fury again and see where it goes.

Edited January 17, 2011 by rgangsta

[Free To Play 3]

I've been working on the same game for 4 years, but the title, storyline, characters and events have changed nearly 20 times.

[rgangsta 43]

I've been working on the same game for 4 years, but the title, storyline, characters and events have changed nearly 20 times.

 

 

Whoa, man. 4 years? That takes patience. One of the things I have little of.

I generally come up with good storylines but they turn out longer than I planned which puts me off of game production sometimes.

[madanchi 18]

I have a few times, I think of an amazing idea which then slows down and i think of it as standard but with a twist. The actual idea is still pretty good to everyone elkse, but not to me and that is mainly because of what you said in your post Bigace. I start off good, but then run dry of time, patiance, inspiration and overall interest to the game/ project i'm working on.

 

It's only recently that I've stuck to my project, obviosuly other factors have kept me at bay, for example university courses, jobs, socialising etc but it's feedback and comments made to your project which keeps me moving and motivated. Eeven if it's 1 individual leaving feedback, that's all I need to keep going, just for someone to recognise my work.

 

One key factor that inspires me is music, music is endless, new pieces can be released so in theory I can keep hearing new music that could inspire me.

[Bigace360 38]

Ya :clap: , people posted.

Did ya'll know that Dr. Dre seems to be in development hell. Every year, he has new artist on this supposed be released Detox album.

First it was supposed to be released in 2004

then 2008

then 09'

then 10'

then this feburary.

Yet it will be another year before he actually completes it. However at least this time around he has 2 songs completed unlike the other times. I just hope the album is worth this extremely long wait. Then again, reading all the blogs, i see that he's not even writting 70% of his own songs, which doesn't supprise me coming from Dr. Dre, since his other 2 albums snoop dogg some other dude wrote half the tracks.

Edited January 18, 2011 by bigace

[Dark Den 4]

OK. I'll bite. :P

 

I've had that happen to me many times. A few games like Black Wars 13, Metal Gear Solid 5: Paradox and more recently, Assassin's Fury, are some of the few games I haven't been able to finish. Usually it's because of my computer and not resources and stuff. The game I'm working on now, I've made several backups of it this morning and hope nothing goes wrong with it. I have all the scripts I need so far and they're all compatible so I know there wont be any future script errors that'll delay production. As for other resources for my game, I just need sprites and a few more tiles and I'll be good to go.

...I might start Assassin's Fury again and see where it goes.

 

 

Yes assasins fury do it lol. We were working on it before and i miss working on something lol. I think i still got the previous game at the pc at home maybe we could continue or something.