#specialism

The 'polymath' had already died out by the close of the eighteenth century, and in the following century intensive education replaced extensive, so that by the end of it the specialist had evolved. The consequence is that today everyone is a mere technician, even the artist.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

He’s not going to say he’s disappointed when they’re paired up together. 

He expects that this isn’t quite what she meant, when Musa had stormed up to Saul and demanded she be given the physical training, demanded she be more useful in armed situations rather than in prevention and conflict resolution. 

But again, Riven’s not complaining. 

After Saul pairs them up together, she steps obligingly up onto the podium, and huffs in mild-irritation. 

Riven grins at her. “Am I not your idea of a good time?” He asks, and it’s a brutally hot July, and he’s already gone two rounds with Dane in the warm-ups and his hair is sweat-slicked to his forehead. 

“I like my partners to take things seriously.” She says with a faux-sweetness, picking up the dulled swords and getting into the starting position. 

Riven shrugs, moving at a much more leisurely pace back over to his side of the platform. “I take things very seriously.” He calls over his shoulder,  “Like the way you look seriously hot in that get-up.”

Musa scoffs, but he thinks he can see a spark of humour in there, he just needs to tease it out. And damn if she doesn’t look fine. In those sports leggings and the criss-cross of her skin-tight mesh shirt, her hair pulled back into two braids that drape over her shoulders. 

“Go!” Saul calls, and Riven’s a little too caught up in his daydreaming it turns out, because Musa is across the stage in three swift leaps, there’s a sword at his throat, he’s kicked to the ground, and she’s got him pinned in less than ten seconds. 

“Brilliantly done, Musa.” Saul calls, and Riven can hear a few other students chuckling at how easily he was taken down as he tries to regain his breath. 

Not that he’s complaining. God, there is nothing to complaint about here. Musa’s thighs spread across his own, her body on his, her elbow to his throat, and that gorgeously smug look on her face. 

“So, that’s how you like it, is it?” He asks, winking at her, still wheezing a little, “you like being on top? I can accommodate that.”

She rolls her eyes, presses down on his neck once more for good measure, before she gets off him. “Fuck you.” She says, a smile on her lips, as she holds out her hand to lift him up. 

He takes it, uses the momentum to swing in close to her, lean down and whisper into the shell of her ear. “I wish you would.” He murmurs, and he swears he isn’t imagining the hitch in her breath, or her dilated pupils. 

Her eyes flash purple, and then widen in surprise. “You’re being serious?” She says, reading his emotions, and he steps away from her.

“You should be careful in my head, little mind-fairy,” he warns, “I promise thoughts about me and you are not very PG in there. I’m not sure you can handle it.”

Musa lifts her chin haughtily, and goddamn it if he doesn’t like her. “The way I just took you down? I can handle it.” She says.

Arsi Patala was the initial main developer of ULTRAKILL, before later taking additional help with programming, 3D graphics, and concept art. He still remains the Lead Designer.

Hakita started as a game design student, like myself, before progressing to make his first commercial game, getting publishing help by NewBlood Interactive. This is really cool to see because it shows that indie development is a possibility out of education.

Hakita has had a few interviews online, and I read all of the ones I could find:

Again, there was one line in these articles that stuck out the most to me:

"Art is an interaction between the artist and the audience, so it’s very exciting when [an] interaction doesn’t end up just being one-way."

Paul Morse was a designer for the Risk of Rain series, which I've taken heavy inspiration from for a lot of my projects so far, so I thought it was fitting to do specialist research into his practices to help me in the development of my own.

This article is focuse on the relationship between the developer's and modding community. This didn't really interest me, but there was one line Morse said when asked about implementing all of the features he had in mind for Risk of Rain Returns that stuck out to me:

"Each idea affects the integrity of the original game and is worth a conversation."

Coffee Stain Studios:

Coffee Stain Studios (CSS) aligns with what I am trying to make as they are the company which made goat simulator which mine is based on with the world map, characters and wacky concept. This company is like me in the way they develop as they wanted it to be wacky so released it as a purposely buggy game to take advantage of ragdoll physics.

They have made a variety of games that aren't all just idiotic, wacky titles as they created Deep Rock Galactic and BloxBurg too so in a way they are quite diverse like me as I have had games made about Mental Health and Tanks rather than just wacky titles like Larry the Leprechaun.

Looking at CSS has shown me that making wacky games constantly like Goat Simulator doesn't work for business there needs to be some variation with what is made so if I were to go into the industry I would need to come up with some varying ideas.

RARE:

Rare aligns with my views of what I am trying to make as it uses personified characters in titles such as Banjo Kazooie and Viva Piñata and Conker's Bad fur day. This is a lot like what I have created in some of my titles like Larry the Leprechaun and Otto the Octopus.It also aligns with what I am trying to make as it uses puzzles and open worlds which are zoned into separated areas which are features I am using in my game.

There is one more thing I want to do before fully focusing on development- look into people in the same fields as my chosen specialism and see if I can learn anything from them. This is to improve my own application of my specialist practice and in turn the result of my Final Major Project.

LocalThunk is the developer of Balatro, which has been an incredibly successful indie hit. What interested me the most about them is that this was their first published game- they didn't really have an online presence before Balatro. This got me curious to see *how* they managed to create some successful, and as they were a solo developer (as seen in the Balatro credits) I thought I might be able to take something from them and put it into my own design philosophy.

Fortunately for me, since the release of Balatro Localthunk has had an active social media presence on Twitter and Bluesky, and from there I was able to find their blog:

There's not a lot on there at the moment, but there is one really good post, detailing the entire Balatro development timeline, from conceptualization to release:

The post goes into most areas of game creation, but there's one specific line that really resonates with me as a designer:

"I wanted to make mistakes, I wanted to reinvent the wheel, I didn’t want to borrow tried-and-true designs from existing games. That likely would have resulted in a more tight game but it would have defeated the purpose of what I love about making games."

This idea of actively limiting yourself to be able to create something more unique and special, even if it's just to you is really inspiring to me.

Now that I know how games use collectables, I want to go deeper into the why- why do player's feel compelled to pick up the things games give them?

This video showcases a concept called Bartle's Taxonomy- wherein a player's motivation is divided into 4 categories: explorers, socializers, killers, and achievers.

The point of a collectable is to satisfy the explorer and achiever parts of a player.

Small, satisfying collectables help the achiever to increase their number, grow their level, buy the next weapon. Larger and more important collectables are for the explorers and achievers: they encourage and reward a skillful understanding of the game mechanics while progressing a completion number.

My collectable system is designed mostly for the achiever kind of player, however I feel like I could use it in a way that would appeal to an explorer too -Although this needs more research- so these kind of players are part of my target audience.

I also read Bartle's paper itself: