Beyond the eSper

27/03/2013 Tzunami /Writer's Corner, Frozen Frame, 1

As we all know, S4 is a pretty interesting and unique game, without a real rival to its mechanics and overall design. Throughout years of events and contests, S4 has its fair share of creative players that express their love for the game in many different ways, including the popular S4 Summer Event from the past couple of years. It makes me wonder exactly how many eSpers live alongside their creativity and stumble upon inspiration when they play.

Considering S4 manages to bring in new players every now and then, and we don’t have any actual numbers on the amount of players that have joined the various creativity contests S4 has hosted, from the Summer Events to designing Season 3, even the old winter writer contests (if I remember those correctly), I could imagine (and hope) there are at least a thousand or so players (old and new, to save myself from comments about dying population) that have some sort of creative output they can look to if they’re ever struck with an idea that they just need to get down.

From a personal perspective, the second I get struck with inspiration, I usually act on it as fast as I can before I forget the raw idea that I came up with. Compared to other forms of creativity, music composition and writing (a script) tend to have various complex steps along the way to achieve the best results. A certain aspect of writing is conveying a sense of emotion as the ideas come out, drawing the listener to feel certain ways when they hear or see the material. A romantic movie or a horror flick have an equal balance of clever writing and a strong soundtrack to complement each other, bringing out certain emotions when the time is right.

As an example, looking back at my entry for the 2012 Summer Event, I looked at the current condition of the game and wondered where it could go from there. The players are the ones that make or break the game, and with the general attitude that you’d see everyday, one could only see the game going downhill. The idea of an impossible battle popped up into my head, where it would take everything the players had to change the outcome, sort of like the story when Season 2 rolled out, but instead leaving the possibility of victory open to the listener. A deep and trance-like song with players feeling some form of sorrow or sadness as the (incoming song title) fate of the NetSphere was in their hands.

Before this continues into longer paragraphs, I’d like to ask a question to the creators out there: What is your course of action when an idea pops into your head? It would be interesting to see how other people evolve and progress their ideas.

Until next time~