I attended the GDC conference in San Francisco. A real geek-fest. My people!
I went there with a singular goal. Catch up with the fast-moving tech of immersive audio.
Of course, a conference with 25,000 people all talking (sometimes at the same time!) you run into some interesting things.
One was a detailed conversation between the creators of Wayward Strands.
I think the game genre is called 'Conversations.' You follow people around, and listen in on their conversations, and talk to them. You can buy the game on Steam ($19.99) for the PlayStation or Xbox platforms, and I'm looking forward to playing. But that's not what I'm talking about here.
The two creatives took us through their process. And I found it fascinating. Process in creativity. New ideas were flowing.
First of all, they needed a ton of voices, from all over the world. In the end I think they ended up with something in the region of 3000 session!
This meant they had to hyper-organize. They had to standardize the technical aspect. And they had lay this whole process out to create consistency for their game.
That included standardizing mics, eq, room sounds, engineering specs. They even rehearsed every session to check flow and time.
They had a slide that showed their session build and it was massive. I've never seen anything like it. I went up to them afterwards and said I found their entire process inspiring. They looked at me like I was crazy but I did.
I've always been a process freak. I love organizing and watching a well-thought out process come together, a team humming as the job or project comes together. For me it's been everything from unloading and setting up bands in concert halls, to working on developing productivity software.
And I was not kidding about those women inspiring me with their detailed process plan.
I went back to my studio to work on a project I've been developing, and honed the entire process. I drove myself mad with it. But now that's it's coming together it's paying off.
Iincreased flow and creativity by focusing on process