Yesterday I was preparing myself for another long Wednesday at the office. You see, Wednesdays are release days for our former video game project, which means we have to come up with a playable version to send off to the Executive Producer for scrutiny. I say former video game project because, unfortunately, we were informed yesterday that our project was canned.

“Well technically it’s on hold” said my producer while rolling his eyes even though he did admit that there was a chance the project might be picked up by another group in the near future. He also assured us that we did a good job and that no one was displeased with the project itself, they just couldn’t sell it to any online cell-phone carriers. In other words, good job but not good enough.

I was so saddened by the news that, when I woke up this morning, the first words out of my mouth were “They canceled my project”. I’ve worked on this project for 3 months and I still believe in it. I can only imagine how people working on year-long (and longer) canceled projects must feel. That’s a big chunk of someone’s adult lifetime with nothing to show for.

Still, we were less than a month away from Beta, we were always on time, we had weekly positive feedback, and the project was really looking interesting and unique! Maybe that was our downfall. Maybe the industry isn’t mature enough for unique yet. Maybe we just need to work on generic “me too” titles to find a place in this cut-throat industry.

I refuse to believe that, bring on the next project!