headlongdownhill

He's lying. Priority 1 is to implement a hat-based ecosystem into Rodina. Items are replaced with hats. New hat-rack elements for the ship interior for storing your hats. All-new hat-based story content. Trade hats with your friends. Planets are gigantic hats. Hats.

My take:

From my experience: I think it's pretty similar to how writing happens for other media, but the features/limitations can force some creativity or hard choices. Brendan has a very specific vision for the ongoing story of Rodina that I really think will, as he is fond of saying, "blow [your] dicks off" in the future. Part of the challenge (and the fun of it) is fleshing things out in a believable way using the technology and assets that are available.

Work wise, Brendan and I spent a significant chunk of time hammering out the general storyline, themes, and arcs of Rodina before actually writing anything. Say 25% of the overall work. Probably 30% of the time was generating ideas and writing the individual things you find in the game and the main storyline. 30% of it was second drafts, third drafts, re-writes, cutting or expanding, reviews with Brendan for content, tone, etc. 15% formatting everything to look as pretty as possible within the game engine.

As far as collaborating, the thing I would say is: keep in mind that the witty, compelling, perfect little gem you wrote that you love so dearly is completely worthless if it doesn't fit the overall game designer's vision. The stronger stuff in Rodina's writing is because it fits the overall bones that Brendan laid down, the weaker stuff is anything I loved too much to murder like I should have.

Source: I wrote the word-type stuff for the thing.

Maybe the ability to set an item adrift in your universe, along with a message, and it appears in another person's universe message-in-a-bottle style?

Although I get the feeling there would lead to a lot of 3D dickbutts orbiting other people's planets.

Anecdote: I once went to an outdoor concert with Brendan that was attended by several Bethesda employees, including some higher ups. I remember asking something about rumors of a Fallout game, and all of them, like six people, from the intern to the lead, made the exact same pained secretive half-smile facial expression at the exact same moment. Like a chorus of "I can't, but I really, REALLY want to answer your question because HOLY SHIT BRO!". I got the impression that it was like having a crazy supermodel threesome and then being sworn to secrecy about it, and then someone asking "so what did you do last night?"

I'm pretty sure he was using the nic "raptormeat" way back when we were playing Warcraft 2 over a dialup connection in high school. So it's been a while.