The Best Part of the Curve
At Reality Blurs, we’ve been consistently working from the master plan I laid out back in 2004. As you can imagine, working through a catalog of ideas takes time. When you sit down to work on your own materials, you have to ask yourself if your idea is sparkly or not, and if it will hold up to the test of time.
Some folks like to jump into a system based upon its hotness, and this is not, by itself, a bad idea, but it certainly isn’t a good idea either. If you’re trying to grab onto a system when it’s achieved a certain saturation level, you have to execute quickly, and hope the system you’ve chosen has staying power, or the ideas your incorporating have some sort of staying power as well. Timing is everything. If you try to develop something rapidly, you run the risk of sloppiness, or an entire gamut of other problems such as whether the ideas you’re presenting even work. That’s not to say you shouldn’t move forward, but realize you’re developing towards a particular window.
The best question is to ask yourself if this system and setting work well together. If they do, you can proceed with confidence knowing you’re creating something which has an additional possibility of surviving in the long run. Ultimately, you have to realize, it’s the setting which demands the bulk of your work, and not the system. If you’re wanting to get into some new territory, you’re probably better off expanding from existing works, or you can certainly leap off and develop your own system yourself.
This is a topic I’ve touched on before–whether you should roll your own system or work within the parameters of another. I think there comes a time in the growth of every company where it’s probably prudent to have some properties wholly created in-house, or at least have the license(s) required to develop the work within your own scope. It’s definitely a balancing act of where every bit as much as it is when.
Ultimately, the best part of the curve is the one where you can execute a solid addition to a system or a setting while it is still in the throes of popularity. Your support for a system, as defined by product releases, can help expand and extend the popularity of any particular system. The audience may be sleeping, dormant, waiting for the next release, and the next release can be from you. Or from us. We’ve got many irons in the fire, and we hope to quench them in the blood of your desire this year. I so want to give revelations and reveals, but the truth of the matter is a number of things are still up in the air. We’re closing in on things, and I’m quietly optimistic and will keep you in the loop as we proceed. Go forth and do good things. Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!
