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GH:
I understand Lori does most if not all the writing in the game? That sounds like a monumental task! How do you manage it?
Corey:
"Total game text is on the order of the largest Harry Potter novel - Order of the Phoenix - 255,000 words and climbing."
Lori wrote essentially all of the dialogue in Quest for Glory with just a few contributions from me, and she is doing the same on Hero-U. This is possible only because we've stretched the schedule - she's been at it for over four years and is *almost* done. I had planned to write all the non-dialogue text, but that's been a challenge. Fortunately, Josh Mandel joined the team and has taken over the lion's share of writing descriptions and object interaction text. I doubt you'll be able to tell his writing from mine in the game; we have similar styles. Josh previously contributed much of the writing in our Shannara game.
GH:
Because your team seems more dynamic than one might find in a smaller project, but also markedly different from some AAA game dev studios or when you were both at Sierra, what challenges has that presented for you, and how has it enhanced the (near) final product?
Corey:
It's been very challenging. Many terrific team members left the project for better paying or longer-term opportunities. Each time that happens, we've lost knowledge and expertise, and had to search for new developers. I'm very happy with the team now, and I'm hoping they'll all make it at least to release. If the game sells well enough initially, we hope to keep most of them on for the rest of the series.
At Sierra, when it became clear we needed more people, they assigned more people to the team. It's much tougher as an indie long after we paid out the Kickstart funds. Now Lori and I are paying team members out of personal loans and our own rather shallow pockets. Once the game releases, we might or might not make some of that back. That's a lot different from working for a company on a fixed salary.
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