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I would like to say that this year has been an extremely trying year. The economy has taken an unexpected extra rounds in the ring with us. As an Indie Company we have felt the pains of hardship along with the rest of our friends across the nation. We have had to regroup a few times over the past 12 months due to friends and employees finding themselves relocating and rediscovering their own lives through unemployment and hardships the recession has brought us.
We lost a writer and our graphics illustrator due to these events. We had a hard drive crash that set us back a bit, but we are hopeful the new year will be better and more stable then this one has been. We did request artist to apply, but were unable to respond and we are sorry. We are looking forward to reestablishing contacts this coming year.
We had to put Hardened Heroes on hold, but it is now near completion. We did find a new editor to help complete the project. We are hoping to release the RARE Edition and CORE-7 soon.
We are also spending our time developing a new idea that will be simplistic in the way of a system. Looking at the way the gaming industry is trying to go, our new idea is hopefully fresh and enjoyable. The future of gaming is headed towards the story being first and the mechanics will fall in behind. Always the trend was to have these deep mechanics that pulled the gamer along by the hand, giving them the direction and the imagination of the writers. We would like to take that creativity and given it back to the players. We attempted to do that with CORE-7 by creating settings that could be used with any system the Game Master desired. The purpose was and is to help develop creativity and imagination in our citizens.
It isn't always easy to discover the likes and dislikes of the gaming community considering how diversified it is. Looking at how D20 has cornered the market for 30 years is absolutely amazing. It's like WoW is to mmo's. I stand amazed at times how the gamers are so divided when it comes to what they prefer to play. Over the years we have seen forgotten systems reinvented and released to much fanfare.
Our goals are simple at visioNation studios. We are aiming at broadening the capabilities of the players to formulate a creative structure within their own groups. We want everyone to see beyond the rules, to break out of the rules mode and formulate their own opinions as to the story and their characters. Our hope is that if you can visualize it, you can do it.
A future endeavor we are working on is a Superhero game that will allow the player to create the hero without any strings attached. Usually you are given a list of powers that you must pick from, but all that does is yield a hero from the mind of the writer. When cramming vast amounts of rules into a system you end up restraining the players to a narrow set of rules, snuffing out their creativity or condensing into a single focused line. What if we released you from that constraint. What if we allowed you to create the powers from the beginning? What if you had the ability to define the aspects of your powers, directing the development of your character, not a set of rules? Now, when a game is totally story driven, all other details of the system become secondary. including combat. In a story combat it but a moment of conflict that lasts a page or two then is over and back to the story. What makes you pick up a novel and read it? The combat? No, the story. The development of the characters and the life they are leading. The events the characters encounter define them. By using a simplistic system we hope to achieve or at least come close to this dream.
As the system takes form we will be asking for anyone who would be interested in play-testing it for us. We want honesty from our play-testers for it is they who help define us as a company. We value to opinions of our community, for it is they we create for. Each and everything we have written was in the hope that the player would enjoy the time they devoted to role-playing. We developed an experience system that solely envelops the role-playing of the players. Without role-playing, you might as well devote your time to board games (not that there's anything wrong with them), which have their place in the gaming industry. They too lend a goo push to imaginative creativity. Some people say we use those words too often, but when you believe in something, you should stand by those beliefs and convictions.
We hope to hear from more of our citizens and friends this coming 2010. Don't hide your voice, use it so we can know your true feelings about the industry and where you want to see it go.
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"To view the world as reality, is giving into the fact that this is all just an illusion. To lose your imagination is to lose your true identity."
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