7th OctoberFamous Mortimer wrote:Could you imagine one of those being done today? How dull would they be?
Clocked into work at 9 A.M. Today they had me working on the textures which will eventually rendered onto the enemy soldier's pants. I also cleaned up some grass textures. I seems the project is still on schedule. Write more tomorrow.
As others have said, it wouldn't really be feasible now, because modern development teams comprise dozens of people. The whole point of a 'Diary' is that it's the personal view of something, but today a single person would only be working on a small part of a project.
Back then, one person could negotiate a contract with a games publishing company, then write the game themselves in their own time. That seems almost ridiculous when you look at what the industry's become now.
For me, the reason those diaries worked so well is because they perfectly captured the small, informal, underground-ish nature of games development at the time.
Anyway, the Paradroid diary was my favourite, followed by the Citadel one. The part in the Paradroid one where Braybrook caves in to user feedback and rips the crosshair aiming system out of the game, after months of trying to make it work... that should be required reading for anyone working in the games industry today.
And Martin Walker's was great, as other people have said, because he really lets you into his world. It was a bit sad to see it end, almost like your favourite TV show being cancelled. I saw an article by him in a recent issue of Sound On Sound, and immediately thought of his nylon socks .