Some of you may know that I am an active member in a modding community for the game Mount and Blade, working on a very popular mod called “Prophesy of Pendor”. Now the team took a couple of hits, with the lead designer wanting to step back a little in order to devote more time to his family and work. As such a search for a new lead designer was begun, and after days of frenzied discussions and nervous breakdowns I was chosen to head up the team and bring Pendor forward into its fourth iteration. This is both a great honour and opportunity, the mod is massive; being the most downloaded item on the M+B Repository with over 350,000 downloads. But just how does this link into things I was talking about before, and my plans to create Vinland in multiple mediums?
Well two ways actually, firstly is the invaluable experience I am getting from this, juggling my roles as the big boss, chief lore writer and design lead together with team leadership, organisation and being one of the official voices of for our team to public. Before, all I really was tasked with was writing the lore of the various factions and characters you meet and interact with in the world. This was a part of making the vision of the franchise founder, Saxondragon, appear in the world which is lived and breathed by thousands of players every day. I know that the knowledge I am getting here will be very transferrable to one day making a mod (and perhaps eventually) a game of Vinland, some plans for which I have already begun to compile
Now the second way I get to benefit is that which has held me back for many, many years and that is contacts. I have had numerous ideas on how to create a business and develop a product in order to make some money, the problem was I never knew the right people for the jobs I needed done, particularly in terms of skills I lacked (programming is the big one). This role is letting me interact with lots of very, very talented people, and introducing me to technical circles I never even knew existed. Hopefully now that I have access to this pool of knowledge, turning my plans into reality will become easier.
Anyways, I cannot say anything more concrete for the future of Vinland, apart from the fact that I am now roughly half-way through writing the first book, but I am very pleased with how things could now evolve. I love cross media offerings, and I know that games are a story telling medium which are only just really being realised. Many game developers are now hiring professional writers to create the storyline for them, and I hope that this is a trend which will continue. Film and books are all well and good, but they can only feed you the tale and do not give you the opportunity to actually live in the world being described to you. Games are dynamic, the decisions you make meld the progression of the story and in this way the tale becomes unique to each person who plays through them. This all feeds into what people want out of their entertainment at the moment, in my dissertation the part which came as second most important aspect of a game was the story (gameplay was first), and now that developers are working with writers, rather than against them we are in for some really great times ahead.
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