bizarre.

So, one of my New Year’s resolutions was that I was going to grab as tightly as possible to any opportunities to get into game design. Whether at work, or for next year’s GBA competition, or whatever, the point was that I was going to take *any* opportunities that arose, or do my best to make them out of whole cloth.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Today, I ended up with basically the responsibility for finalizing the design, and executing at least one of the core systems for next year’s game. I thought there would be more involvement from the official “design team,” but strangely, I’m basically in a team by myself, with one new designer to vet what I write (he’s hosed with work from other teams, so he basically said to go wild, and he’d make time to help me get up to speed on the process, and make sure I wasn’t going completely crazy).

What’s weird is that in some sense, now I’m in over my head. Still, I know I can swim, and it’s just a matter of really putting my mind to it, and then creating prototypes, and making sure that this system is as tuned, and as versatile as possible. It’s pretty interesting – though I know that the system’s so central to the gameplay that I’m not going to be allowed to fail (if things look bad, I’m sure additional help will just “appear,” but still – my goal is to get as much of this awesome with as little necessary help as possible. But, of course, input will be good, and I’ve gotta make sure that I talk to the people who know the individual things that this system will affect inside and out.

I think it’ll be fun, it’s a great stepping stone, and quite frankly, shows that I’ve been given a lot more trust than I could have hoped for. Time to kick some ass.