First option I'd go for is graphic novel. In that it's the easiest to do, you just need InDesign and Photoshop, and maybe a Wacom tablet. Logistics aside, next option I'd go for would be MMO style games. I've developed small games using tools like gamefroot and Flash, but I'd love to build a hugely immersive sandbox type world. It probably wouldn't be medieval, but instead... surreal, strange. Subversive, gender inversion, challenging stereotypes, visual journeys, flights of fancies, sensory exploration, paintings come to life, dancing on words. Sadly, I lack the programming skills. As for lacking the programming skills, I know there are all sorts of resources online, online classes, I've done web coding, database architecture, XML stuff and so forth. I COULD do it, it's more a matter of it's harder. Much like, english and art and writing and foreign languages were stupidly easy in high school, while math, though I got As and Bs, I had to struggle with. As for the graphic novel: I have the skills. I have the ideas. I have years of notes where I've kept track of graphic novel ideas. I have experience with fine art, illustration, prepress, print design, creative writing, and so forth. The problem is of an ADHD nature. Mind wants to do so much, very hard to pick one thing and stick with it. I tend to need a support structure to help me stick with something, like working on a project with a group of people, taking a class, and those things are currently difficult to find.
Having done some minor editting work for a graphic novel before I can tell you it is pretty hard logistics and all. The amount of work a friend of mine had to go through just to get his work published was nightmarish, but he says he learned invaluable lessons on his first try. I have a bit of knowledge so I'll probably be around to help
Indeed, the publishing side of any venture tends to be more headaches and less fun than the actual worldbuilding and creating the media itself. But going virtual can bypass all that by posting your work on a website like a blog, or in the case of a graphic novel, posting pages on art-hosting sites like deviantArt. I'm releasing a card game as a bunch of printable pdfs on my blog. Sometimes just skipping all the publishing middlemen can save time and frustration, and keeps the hobby enjoyable.
If the support structure is you're big concern, then I hope having #worldbuilding here on Hubski will be helpful in that regard. Posting stuff, getting encouragement and useful criticism, or even collaborating with others on a group-made world might help. Perhaps if you're going the graphic novel route, try out sketches, art styles, formats and layouts, landscape and character drawings, and one-page vignettes to explore and create your world. Offer up that art and ask others what aspects of your world they take an interest in, which might encourage you to pursue new avenues and eventually steer the graphic novel into a new direction you hadn't considered. To use some fantasy cliches, perhaps your intent is to make a graphic novel about the lives of your dwarves, but Hubskiers really like your take on goblins, so you might swap focus to them, for instance. If you want to make a videogame for one of your worlds, you can start on design and art, and if a programmer or two takes a big interest in your world (and there are plenty of programmers on Hubski), they might want to help you on your project. I've got more than one MMO idea myself, but the tough stuff I've yet to learn for programming is the server-side stuff and networking and... basically anything that involves more than one computer. So until then... single-player it is!
All right, because of you and Cedar, I'm starting to get clearer ideas in my mind, and am starting to mock up (in my head, homunculus is doing the work for me) tentative methodologies for exploring said ideas. Thank you. One question I have: Like I mentioned, I have a TON of ideas about world building, graphic novels, novels, short stories, games and the like. Do you see possible risks involved with people submitting content and fleshed out ideas to this tag, with regards to intellectual property, someone mining this tag with the goal of stealing business ideas? Or am I just paranoid?
Good morning! I'm glad to see you're going to go for it, I've got a few ideas that I've been playing with and Craig creating this tag also prompted me to give it a go, even if it is just a much-needed exercise in creativity for me. You don't necessarily have to divulge much about your world if you don't want to, one option is to extract details and make them stand alone when posting / looking for feedback. I would like to point out Andy Weir's The Martian book, he started it by blogging it as he went and so the first version was available completely free online. People asked him if he could make it into an ebook format for easier reading, so he did; people asked if he could put it on kindle as that's easier, so he did; people asked him to make a paper version, so he did; and it became a best seller!
That's a fairly common question, actually, and probably deserves a post of its own. There's no true consensus, because there's always that miniscule chance that some jagoff will steal your work, but my personal philosophy is not to worry and not to care. As far as I'm concerned, the moment I share my world, my world is no longer mine--it's everybody's. I encourage people to play with it, take it, make it their own, make spin-offs and alterations, whatever. It would be high praise to me to see someone take something I've come up with and love it so much they have to do something with it themselves. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, as they say. I've never had a bad experience with being stolen from. People have before asked me if they could use something cool I came up with, and I said yes. Others have seen that I've posted similar ideas to theirs, and they've been disappointed that their idea isn't original, and want to change it. There's an instance where someone wanted to be original so badly they actively pushed away from an idea because they saw it elsewhere. Ultimately, I think that's the way a lot of people operate. Most people want to create wholly original stuff. Most people don't want to steal. When I was in high school, I wrote a short story and showed it to my best friend. He loved it so much he wrote a sequel. Then he showed both stories to a friend of his own, and she wrote a third piece to it. That was pretty awesome. I did not think one quick story could get so much attention, and breed so much more creativity. They took the original story and transformed it into something bigger and better. I always wonder why people worry so much about their stuff getting stolen. Don't people realize who awesome it feels?!
Having read your comment, I just realized that I grew up in the heyday of American capitalism, Wall Street heroes, everyone wanting to be rich, tons of popular movies about small town boys making it big on wall street, the American dream, mansions, expensive cars, flashy, wealth glorified. Intellectual property, copyrights, laying claim, possessing, security, investments, portfolio management... Then I saw that fall apart. For a while now I've been noticing the open-source movement gaining more and more traction, skill-sharing, young people growing up in a world in which people share freely, all content is accessible, and these younger people rebel against people who try to monetize greedily. Caught between multiple generations, I am. I am very pro open source and skill-sharing, but the older part in me instantly thinks about profit margins and intellectual property, especially considering I worked for years at law firms specializing in such things. It's a bit confusing.
Ah, the good ol' American Dream. I could philosophize on that for ages. We could turn this into a very different discussion... But to attempt to tackle this in a way that makes a semblance of sense, I'd just say forget about money. Worldbuilding, for me and for most, is a non-profit hobby. You do it for the fun and the joy of doing it, with no expectation of return on investment. The return I get is happiness when I learn someone enjoys something I've created. That's all the profit I need. Once you throw money out of the equation, perspective changes. How does one steal something you freely give? I did start this post by suggesting a goal and a basic "product" to shoot for, but don't let that be the motivating factor, just let that be a guidepost to steer the development of your world. The "product" is always simply a way to share the world you've created, not something to be sold and made money off. Think of worldbuilding as any other hobby, not as a means to an end. One does not go skydiving expecting to have sponsorships from Red Bull and GoPro; one goes skydiving because skydiving is fun. And besides, even if you absolutely do intend to make money off it, many people have made money by sharing freely first. Tarn Adams, creator of the game Dwarf Fortress, gives his always-in-progress game away for free, yet makes a living off donations. But I think of that as a bonus, not the end goal.
Read your entire comment understanding what you were saying about forgetting about profit, do it because you enjoy it. But, being a Wall Street fantasy baby, it just wasn't sinking in. Until the above quote. Then it clicked. Always nice when someone phrases a concept in just the right way that it clicks for you. One does not go skydiving expecting to have sponsorships from Red Bull and GoPro; one goes skydiving because skydiving is fun.