Space Station Managing, Post Mortem

M0b1u5 writes "Mistaril is a small company with an intriguing product: Space Station Manager. It's a finalist for the Independent Games Festival and a follow-up game is planned: Luna Base Manager. However, the SSM project has a developer post-mortem which is well worth a read if you're thinking about launching a game development company, or are just interested in game development."

Re:What's so intriguing?

[Graelin]

Project: Space Station [lemon64.com] was an excellent game. But it doesn't seem too similar to this one. The C64 game focused a lot of it's time on the ground managing all kinds of NASA resources, financial, human and equipment. Also launching satellites and manually launching and landing the space shuttle.

This game seems more like a sandbox environment. Still very cool looking and probably much more fun but not like the NASA-sim. (That's what they should have called it, instead of Operation: Space Station.)

Re:What's so intriguing?

[BW_Nuprin]

I believe what you're thinking of is "Project: Space Station" by Lawrence Holland, published by Avantage. I couldn't find any good websites for it (but I didn't look very hard), but apparently it also came out on the PC in 1987. The C64 version was a ton of fun, and I think I'm gonna try and dig it out of my basement right now.

Re:What's so intriguing?

[BW_Nuprin]

Actually, I did find a good site on it:

http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/apple/stat ion.html

EOS: Earth Orbit Stations

[DaRat]

I believe that the title that you're thinking about is EOS: Earth Orbit Stations [the-underdogs.org] . I played EOS on the Apple long ago and had fun for quite some time. The idea behind EOS was to run a company building stations in orbit. There were different types of stations that could be built depending on the number and type of modules included.

Xtreme Programming

[Jodiamonds]

It may of interest to note that they used XP, and talk about it some in the Post Mortem.

Re:Love it.

[Jodiamonds]

Yeah, it's probably because you've never worked in the industry. ;)

Really, what you seem to be describing is MUCH more related to small startup companies. Being a small startup GAME company does allow for some more freedom and zaniness to go on, certainly, but there are big, old, monolithic game companies, too. =)

I've worked for both small startup (non-game) tech companies, and game companies of a few different sizes. It's really being a small startup that makes the workplace -feel- exciting. The work at a game company itself is sometimes more exciting, but sometimes it's really just ... work. At a small startup, everything you do is magnified greatly, because you are such a large percentage of the company (including making decisions on what you are going to do!), and The Rules haven't been established yet.