Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Pixel Lincoln: Assembling the Team

Originally posted at http://www.islandofficials.com. For more developer blogs on Pixel Lincoln and other games in-progress, visit http://www.islandofficials.com

When it was originally decided that we were going to make Pixel Lincoln into a video game, myself, George Tagmire, and the Ryans from Island Officials started to assemble a development team. We needed a medium sized group made up of artists, designers and programmers.. and it all started to come together quickly.




I was new to the group. My background in game design was only tabletop games at this point (with a little bit of RPGmaker thrown in), but these guys all went to school for game design. They’d previously worked together as a team, so everyone was comfortable from the start.
The team was made up of: (pictured from L to R)
Jason Tagmire
Nick Passamonti
Jordan Hample
Brandon Kavitsky
Long Nguy
George Tagmire
Tom Ash
Jon Fisher*
Jason the Intern (not pictured)*
and since then we’ve added:
Marty Cobb
Paul Weinstein a/k/a Chipocrite

Although we were working under Island Officials, we still wanted to come up with a unique name for our group. We tossed around a lot of ideas and ended up with Faux Robo. Three of us loved the name. Most hated it. I convinced our illustrator (at the time) to come up with a logo to help sway the votes to Faux Robo. It definitely helped and after a lot of back and forth, Faux Robo became our name.



But it could have been much different. Here is a list of the names that could have been.
Antumbra
Ascendant/Ascendancy
Atomic Engine Games
Atomic Fueled Games
Atomic Wind Creations
Blast Door
Cannonball
Data Parade
Deep Impact Studios
Deep Space Games
Discrepancy
Epic Year Games
Exosphere Productions
Faux Robo
FryWave (1950 scifi blaster shooting frenchfries)
Full Force Games
Holoverse Studios
HyperGo
Ionosphere Games
Jump Kick Studios
Known Space Creations
Lazy Leviathan
Lionship
Lost Knowledge
Mesosphere Games
Realityscape Games
Sensory Deprivation
Shadow Ware Studio
Taxiderby
Thirsty Viking
Timescape Productions
Turtle Tank
Typecast Games
Warp Speed Studios

Turtle Tank was really close to being our name. So was HyperGo.

A few months after we formed.. after all of that work, we ditched the name and started to work as Island Officials. The week that we wasted coming up with a name seemed more of a waste than we originally thought. It was fun though, and it was our first project as a group. We still bicker about things as tiny as a single pixel, but it’s because we’re all really passionate.. whether it’s an awesome name (“Faux Robo”) or a terrible name (most of the list) it was definitely a glimpse into the future.

And speaking of the future.. next week we’re talking all about the game. What is is actually all about?!? Check back next week.

http://www.islandofficials.com
http://www.championland.com

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