Wizardry 8 Design History

This is no ordinary design log. It’s a very brief summary of how the game that’s right up there on my to-get list, the RPG Wizardry 8, was born and the story of one man who was in part responsible for this amazing looking game. His name is Alex Meduna, and RPGVault has the complete scoop. I’ll extract a bit from it here:

Things were moving ahead very rapidly now. All the groundwork had been laid down, and we could focus on adding content, fleshing out details of everything, and actually being able to playtest the game as something more than just a 3D engine walkthrough. While a hundred little tweaks and additions were being made every day by everyone, we all began to sense the same thing: It was going to work! It was Going To Be Fun. This is a very key moment in the lifetime of a long project like this one. You spend an awful lot of time up to that point busting your buns on something that you recognize is essentially an experiment, a form of R&D, without really knowing for sure that in the end it will turn out to be what you’d hoped for.

You know, I’m not a designer (yet) but I really have the feeling that what he just said there is the essense of being on a development team, the climax of knowing it’s all going to work. After that it’s the good feeling of rushing to get everything perfect for release.