Dropped Projects

[Fawn]

@Wright1000 Sounds like you haven't had many quality friends, then...
Also, actually my friends and I make games together and help each other out a lot (one of my friends recently made a mini-rpg I beta tested for her). We also give eachother advice on school, ect... They're never a waste of time If your friends seem like they're wasting so much time for you, get new ones.

[Silvere]

Also, actually my friends and I make games together and help each other out a lot

I envy you :<

[clannadman]

@Wright1000 Sounds like you haven't had many quality friends, then...

Agreed. What's with this negativity about friendship? I think people irl take precedence over a virtual game.

[LVUER]

Depending on the person, chatting with friends (socializing) is one of important necessity. Some people get really lonely fast and some even need to meet people face to face. So socializing with some friends, no matter how "useless" it seems, might be not a waste of time after all.

[Sapphi]

Since we're on the topic of friends vs. projects I'm just gonna jump in and say that I sort of purposely dropped chatting with friends in favor of working on my project. I used to sign into an instant messenger while I worked on my project so that I wouldn't feel lonely, but they were constantly sending me links to distracting things or telling me about their life problems. It's not that I didn't want to help them with their problems, I did. But every time it was my turn to whine about my issues, nobody seemed to care.

On top of that, every time I accomplished something in relation to my project and wanted to show them, I would usually just get a "cool" at most, which was honestly really discouraging. So, I just stopped signing in, and we hardly talk anymore. Do I feel bad? Not really. Am I abnormal? Probably.

If I had artist or writer friends who really wanted to improve and help me improve, I feel like I would be much more apt to socialize with them. It's not that I don't get lonely, I get extremely lonely. But I also get depressed when I try to socialize and the communication isn't meaningful enough to justify "wasting" time on it compared to other things I could be doing.

[Fawn]

I completely agree, Sapphi. It's hard to find friends who appreciate hard work and aren't self centered when you're younger. Many of my friends are older and/or are wise beyond their years (they were hard to come across). No offense to your friends, but immature people often don't appreciate things like that or have empathy to care, it's "me me me". Friendship is about quality, not quantity (Speaking of quality, we should talk outside of the forums sometime too!)
Not to mention, when you have friends who also make games, you can collaborate with them easily. No matter how independent you are, when you're working on a project it's always great to have support and help, and also to be able to give help and support to others. Most professional games are made with the collaboration of a group of designers and developers. It'll acitually make you project more likely to succeed it if it is a product of collaboration! (though it's hard to satisfy everyone in a project)

[LVUER]

I want to meet you guys too ^_^ Too bad there's hundred of kilometers separating most of us. I routinely meet up with my DA group-fellows (devmeet). We learn together and talks about lots of useful things. Definitely more productive than just speaking or working together online.

Back to topic, IMO, project would be less likely to be dropped if all members routinely meet up with each other (perhaps once or twice per week). The problem though, you have to live close with each other.

[Fawn]

Aha, well, my collaborator friends are actually all online hahah. My in real life friends... well let's just say pretty much of all them have no interest in game making. They love anime and manga, but the most creative work they do is Hetalia yaoi roleplays and fanart.

Work online can work well if people can understand eachother and have common ideas and goals. It's definitely more easy to transfer files, in real life it could get a little hard to do xD

[Jacket]

Well, if I had a team of anybody besides myself, ( )I would probably socialize. As in, I would post/message/IM those 'distracting links and stuff', 'cause I don't plan on working on X every hour, minute, second, millisecond, nanosecond.

I mean, while I am working on the project, it would be annoying, but MSN and Aim (or whatever the hell you are using) have Away messages for a reason.
And, clearly, they're just not interested in your project. There's no need to take it offensively, just because they don't share your interest in VNs. I mean, that just doesn't float their boat.

Unless, of course, they're members of your team. In which case they're douchebags and their boats are probably made of rocks. Ignore everything I've said, if that's how it is, and find a new team.

There you go, Life Lesson #1:
Screw your friends.

[Samu-kun]

A dream would be having a real office and working with people face to face. That would be every flavor of awesome, since MSN communications is clunky, slow, and pretty inauthentic I think. =_= I write stories too much, so I don't really trust anything I don't spontaneously speak to be how I really feel. ._.;

My real life friends are pretty cool people, but I'm afraid they wouldn't know how to make visual novels. XD They come from the other things that I'm interested in life outside of visual novels. Usually, I just have to juggle between all the other things I have to do... @_@

[LVUER]

Meeting people in RL/ face to face really feel different compared to chatting online. Really, it's very different. About file transfer, you could buy a USB flashdisk for less than US$7 (4GB) or buy a decent netbook (less than US$ 300, already got 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD, ATI VGA Card, which is more than enough for RenPy).

It's also my dream to have an office (or home office), but making a company cost lots of money, so... (reminds me to how many studio went bankrupt only after releasing their first game) T__T

[Sapphi]

I mean, while I am working on the project, it would be annoying, but MSN and Aim (or whatever the hell you are using) have Away messages for a reason.
And, clearly, they're just not interested in your project. There's no need to take it offensively, just because they don't share your interest in VNs. I mean, that just doesn't float their boat.

Well, that's what I'm saying. Since they didn't share my interest and try to help me towards my goal, and it was depressing me, I just quit socializing. (I realize it's pretty selfish to cut friends off just because they don't benefit me in the way I think they should. But, for me, if it's not going to be a deep/thoughtful/meaningful conversation, it would be better (for time and effort's sake) to have no conversation at all. This is also why I don't have a texting plan for my phone. Again, I realize I am weird. )

I want to meet you guys too ^_^ Too bad there's hundred of kilometers separating most of us.

The other day I thought "Wow, it would be so fun if all of us Lemmasoft regulars could get together at a hotel some weekend and produce a small game together." Then I remembered... we're scattered all across the world! ;_;

Meeting people in RL/ face to face really feel different compared to chatting online. Really, it's very different.

This is true! I almost feel like I'm better suited to online communication, especially when it comes to talking about/working on projects. I'm much more eloquent in text. Face to face I just sort of blush, avoid prolonged eye contact, and stumble over my words like an idiot.

[Camille]

XD Couldn't we all just get in a Tinychat together sometime or something? It's almost the same. ... almost. But there's text and video! Not sure how productive we'd be all together, though.

[Silvere]

Face to face I just sort of blush, avoid prolonged eye contact, and stumble over my words like an idiot.

So basically you are not very experienced in it, extremely shy and not able to lead a conversation - therefore shutting yourself in, as chatting online is going perfectly.
Seriously, try to get out and talk with others or this will stay with you for a long long time !

[clannadman]

Face to face I just sort of blush, avoid prolonged eye contact, and stumble over my words like an idiot.

Is this just when dealing with people you're not very close with? Because most relationships with others start this way. It's all a bit awkward and formal, but if you find somebody you really click with, it might be that you open up more easily and find it easier to maintain physical social relations.