Thursday, April 8, 2010

P4: Who We Are and Where We're Going

I suppose "we" isn't the best word to use... But it sounds much better than "P4: Who I Am and Where I'm Going." Of course, I don't plan on it being just me forever. But I suppose you're wondering what P4 is, aren't you? Well, without further ado...

P4: Who We Are
P4 is an acronym for Pro Populus , Per Populus, which is Latin for "For the People, By the People." P4 is (intended to be) an indie game development studio of sorts with a particular development philosophy that is reflected by the name. That philosophy is to put special emphasis on creating games whose contents are primarily player-derived. Games like LittleBigPlanet fits the idea almost perfectly: The players are given the tools to create the levels for the game. Sure, Media Molecule made some levels with the game that you need to play to get the necessary unlockables to get the most out of your own levels, but most of the fun comes from playing the thousands of levels ordinary players like yourself has made and making levels of your own.

Of course, that's not to say that all games by P4 will be so player-content-driven as LittleBigPlanet, but the intention will be to have this aspect so some significant degree in most or all of P4's major projects.

P4: Where We're Going

As I previously pointed out, the P4 Team has but one member: myself. Obviously, I don't wish to keep it that way all the time. However, at the moment, I'm busy honing my C# skills but I don't know enough to be able to actively contribute to the team's efforts. Also, I'm in the middle of working on a solo project called eNations: a browser-and-text based MMORPG nation simulator game that is along the lines of other games like NationStates and CyberNations, which will be flying under the P4 banner.

One of the things you'll find here are progress reports of my progress on eNations. In fact, that's likely to be the only thing you'll see in the near future. My primary reason for starting this is to keep me focused and motivated on making progress with the game. I do work on it each week, but I don't work on it as often as I should. My hope is that a regularly updated blog showing the progress I've made on it will keep me motivated to work harder and faster on it!

And who knows, maybe somebody will get a kick out of this.

This old post from another blog of mine (which I'm no longer going to be updating) tells you more about the idea of eNations. Keep in mind that the post is several months old, though.