Eye For Games a different perspective on game design and development • • www.eyeforgames.com november 2014
Samudai
Geek Sloth Games | Hoorn, Netherlands
November 2014 issue
2014 HIGHLIGHTED FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE In this issue you will find some topics we’ve highlighted from 2014.
Things that we want to introduce to our readers, but also what some of the developers had to go through this year.
It has been a very interesting year and this is our way to give these interesting topics a place on our platform. Thank you developers for sharing!
EFG magazine November 2014 ART DIRECTOR
COVER DESIGN
EDITION SUPPORT
Rai Sewgobind
Game: Samudai
Geek Sloth Games
Developer: Geek Sloth Games
COPY EDITOR
Jerry Kline WRITERS & CONTRIBUTORS
RĂŠmy van den Wijngaart Tom Schoen
8 Bit Studios
Tequila Games
Impulse Limited Eye For Games is a platform about game design and development where students, young professionals and developers can network and connect. By looking from different perspectives we provide inspiring, motivating and educative content.
Fakedice
Pinkerton Road Hi-Rez Studios
Zero Point Software Nine Dots Studio Team Reptile iFF Games
Turbulon Interactive
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by print, photo print, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher/author. www.eyeforgames.com For more information you can contact us at: contact@eyeforgames.com
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SAMUDAI process
60
INTERSTELLAR MARINES in development
28
20 Earthcore: Shattered Elements
SKARA: The Blade Remains
in depth: Mechanics - Card Design
in depth: Mechanics - Card Design
40
30 Jane Jensen
Zems™
interview
in depth: Card Design
46
52
Dicetiny
Smite
in depth: Card Design
in depth: God Designs, character
Corey Rollins
26
Megan Lam
44
GoD Factory: Wingmen
38
iFF Games
27
58
Turbulon Interactive
at Klei Entertainment
release
Lethal League release
at the Behemoth
devspot
devspot
45
into EFG
C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S ! To all new developers who joined the game industry, to the developers who are still working on their game and not giving up, to the developers who had to keep their team together and keep them motivated, to the developers supporting other developers, to the developers who have a supportive community, to the developers who released their game, to the developers who will keep creating awesome, beautiful, fun, and inspiring games.
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into EFG
CELEBRATE Game design and development with Eye For Games at DECEMBER 13, 2014 w w w. e y e fo r g a m e s . c o m
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timeline
So far 2014 has been the year of 2015, with both Microsoft's and Sony's consoles still seeking their full potential in the console race. The Wii U has received some sales bumps due to first party releases, but Nintendo's 3DS is still their best bet. And it seems as if most of the big AAA releases for this year were pushed back to 2015. With that said, 2014 was still a year filled with some pretty interesting news. EFG highlights a few of the biggest stories here, as organized by month.
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
The year starts with the PS4 out-
Amazon purchases Xbox One Killer
Respawn Entertainment, a studio
according to NPD numbers.
an undisclosed amount of money.
developers Jason West and Vince
selling the Xbox One by a 2:1 ratio,
Instinct developer Double Helix for
consisting of former Call of Duty Zampella, releases their first game
Titanfall. NPD reports Xbox One The long running battle of Silicon
Ken Levine, one of the original
physical copies sold approximately
an end, with a judge ruling in favor
announces that he is leaving the
release.
originally sued Epic saying that their
Irrational Games had been around
for their game Too Human. Epic
titles as System Shock 2, Freedom
Knights stole Epic code and infringed
and Bioshock Infinite.
Knights vs. Epic games comes to
founders
of
Knights
studio and winding down operations.
Unreal Engine 3 was not up to snuff
since 1997, and worked on such
Epic
Games.
countersued,
Silicon
saying
that
Silicon
on their copyright. After a seven year battle and an appeal, Epic wins.
of
Irrational
Games,
Force, Tribes: Vengeance, Bioshock,
925,000 within its first month of
The BAFTA Games Awards presents Rockstar
with
the
Fellowship
award, their highest honor. The Fellowship is given “in recognition
of an outstanding and exceptional
contribution to film, television or games.�
announces
their
acquisition of Oculus Rift for $2 billion.
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timeline
APRIL
MAY
ZeniMax files a lawsuit against
Unreal Engine 4 is released.
Oculus VR, claiming that ZeniMax
employees such as John Carmack Ex-Naughty
Dog
employee
and
Uncharted series writer Amy Hennig joins EA Visceral to work on an
were working for Oculus behind-
the-scenes while still employed at ZeniMax.
JUNE
Rise
of
the
Tomb
Raider
is
announced as a timed exclusive for Microsoft consoles. Previously the series had been an exclusive staple of Sony’s consoles.
unnamed Star Wars project.
Bungie’s
composer
long
time
Marty
in-house
O’Donnell
announces via Twitter that he was “terminated without cause” from the
EA shuts down Mythic Entertain-
Ex-Naughty Dog founder and for-
Camelot, Warhammer Online: Age of
Oculus as the head of their world-
ment, the creators of Dark Age of
mer THQ president Jason Rubin joins
Reckoning, and Warhammer Online:
wide studios.
Wrath of Heroes.
company.
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timeline
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTE
Microsoft announces 18,000 layoffs.
Casey Hudson leaves BioWare after
to
where he directed the Mass Effect
While most layoffs are expected be
Nokia
employees,
Xbox
Entertainment Studios is shut down. The studio was meant to work on original programming for the Xbox
One but was shut down before it ever got off the ground.
almost 16 years with the company,
Trilogy and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Previously he worked
announcing
he’s
Destiny is release Destiny
to
be
approximately ten
on titles such as Neverwinter Knights and Jade Empire.
Mojang sells Mine
to the tune of $2.5 Sony announces 10 million PS4s
After
Bungie’s new int
coming
shipped.
Games. Their first project will be a
Nintendo announces that their first
Bluestreak.
Wii U sales, but doesn’t give specific
sci-fi pc arena shooter called Project
party title Mario Kart 8 has boosted numbers.
Amazon
Porser, and Carl M
their departure fro
out of retirement, Cliff Bleszinski forms a new studio called Boss Key
founders Markus
Microsoft launche
in Japan on Sep
originally launchi
the west in Novem
buys
streaming
video
service Twitch, after months of
Blizzard
in buying them.
Titan
rumors that Google was interested
CEO
announces that has
been
seven years of d
reasoning? Mike M
that “We didn’t fin
Samsung announ
Gear VR, a new virt designed for the phone.
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timeline
EMBER
tellectual property
ed. Bungie expects supported
n years.
for
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
Super Smash Bros. is released for the
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
series on a handheld.
compilation features remakes of
3DS. This marks the premiere of the
is released for the Xbox One. The
Halo 1-4 and includes multiplayer beta access for Halo 5: Guardians.
The New Nintendo 3DS is released
ecraft to Microsoft,
in Japan. The upgraded 3DS is more
s Peerson, Jakob
of the system and includes two
om the company.
C-stick to compliment the circle
5 billion. Minecraft
powerful than previous iterations
Manneh announce
additional buttons, as well as a pad.
es the Xbox One
ptember 4th, after
ing the system in
mber 2013.
n
Mike
Morhaime
their next MMO canceled
after
development. Their
Morhaime claimed
nd the fun.�
nces the Samsung
tual reality headset
Samsung Note 4
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SAMUDAI PROCESS
Samudai is a 2D action arena fighting game created by developer Geek Sloth Games. It’s their first game and they have learned a lot from it, not only design-wise, but also how to build a dedicated team, as they started without one. Discover how Samudai’s process went!
process
IDEA & CONCEPT Questions answered by Nils Wessemius. How big is the team working on the game?
At this moment it’s just us three. We had two extra people working on Samudai but that was only temporarily.
Were there any guidelines that were set from the beginning?
Basically we wanted to visuals to be inspired by classis cartoons
such as Samurai Pizza Cats. We had a pretty basic idea of we wanted to make but it evolved into something much more.
What kind of ideas were suggested during brainstorming sessions about the game?
Too much to name; we are constantly thinking of ways to improve the game. That’s why it’s probably taking us this long to complete it!
What were the biggest sources of inspiration for the game?
Like we said, classic cartoons for the visuals. Gameplay however was inspired by games such as Super Smash Bros.
How did you came up with the name of the game?
The cats were samurai that died so that became Samudie. We made it Samudai with "ai" to make it sound more Japanese. Were there any other scrapped name ideas?
Well Samudai was always the name but in the beginning we called it
Samudai Acro Cats to make it sound more like Samurai Pizza Cats. Why did you choose this genre?
We really like 2D games and we liked Super Smash Bros. Since we felt that there was no such game we decided to make it for
ourselves. The extra modes that we added to the game was just to give the player more things to do and have fun with their friends. What is the main goal of the game?
To knock your opponent off the stage or into hazards. You keep
fighting him through different stages until you finally face him in the last stage as a boss.
Did this change during the development process?
Yeah most of the things changed. The original idea of the game was just one level with logs coming down a waterfall. This ended
up being our center stage and we kinda went from there, adding more stages over time. We did know pretty fast that we wanted all the stages to represent different parts of a mountain.
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process
DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT STORY If there is a story behind the game, how does a player discover this story?
There is a story we made up to link everything together but, it is not something you will find in the game.
Every ten-thousand years the Gods wage war for the possession of the Holy Ball of Yarn.
Choosing skilled warriors to represent them, these Samudai are strengthened by the gods and given power over the elements.
To reach the Holy Ball of Yarn the Samudai must fight each other throughout
different unique stages to ultimately face their biggest threat, claim the Holy Ball of Yarn, and settle the balance between good and evil.
How many people worked on the story for the game? Basically it was just Frank and I.
What inspirations did you draw from when creating the game's story?
Nothing really; we have a very simple story. The only purpose it had was to link everything
together for us. We wrote the story after we had the characters, so you could say that the story is inspired by them.
How much story is in the actual game?
There are hints of the story in the game, like the ball of yarn you get when you win, but that is about it.
ART STYLE
Questions answered by Frank Openty. What art goals did you set for the game?
We wanted to keep it cartoony but also show off a distinct Japanese style. That is why
we started with totally black cats. When that didn’t work out with the gameplay we gave everything more color. Every character has his own color now. And the backgrounds are basically inspired by Japanese woodblock prints but with our own twist. How would you describe the art style used in the game? Cartoony but respectful to the source material.
What is the main inspiration source for this art style?
For the background Japanese woodblock prints, for the characters retro cartoons, and most noticeably Samurai Pizza Cats and Japanese culture.
Did you have to do any research for any specific designs?
Basically everything was researched. The way they paint things like plants and water, I tried to fit it all in.
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process
GAMEPLAY Can you tell us about the combat system?
You take no damage whatsoever, but you get knock backed when you
get hit. The idea is to make your opponent fall into the different hazards throughout the stages or out of the level entirely.
Were there any gameplay functionalities you couldn't implement in the game, but were originally desired by the team?
One of the things we really wanted to do was adding online functionality
to Samudai. While we kind of realized that it was not something we can do right now we always keep it in the back of our heads. Maybe some day.
How much thought went into the game mechanics? Did you try anything new, or did you update existing mechanics?
Well, the game was inspired by brawlers like Super Smash and we wanted to keep it as simple as possible for our first game. I don’t think we did
anything really revolutionary but the way everything is brought together is pretty unique. I don’t think we will ever do something completely innovative
because our main focus is to have fun in the game; that is enough for us now.
What is the player's interaction with the game? How can a player win or lose and what options are available to the player?
It is a local versus game so you’ll always be playing against another person.
You win by defeating your opponent multiple times and pushing him or her to their respective end stage. There the losing player will turn into a
boss where he/she has the chance to push back. We also have some small gameplay modes that each have their own win and lose conditions.
ANIMATION What were some of your goals and priorities when it came to the game's animations?
Everything the characters do needed to have the right amount of visual feedback to the player.
Was there anything that made animating the characters or environments in the game challenging?
Importing sprite sheets into Unity. We had a lot of problems with the pivot
points and only recently we found a good way to do it. This is mainly due
to Unity 4.3 (Unity 2D) being really new so there wasn’t that much support for it.
Were there any animations that were considered particularly crucial to the player's experience?
The struck animation for when people are hit. This was probably the most
important animation because before we implemented the animation it was really hard for some people to tell if they got hit or not.
Are there any animated parts that are more for the design or visual effect than functionality?
Most of the environment stuff is purely visual. We really wanted things to feel alive.
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process
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process
PROGRAMMING
Questions answered by Martino Wullems. Which programming language did you use?
We are using Unity so we had the option between C#, Javascript, and Boo. Since our main programmer was familiar with C# that became the main language. Which engine did you use? Why?
Unity 3D because it takes away all the hassle of writing your own engine and allowed us to prototype quickly.
What was the most challenging part to program?
I think the overall interaction between players in combat where certain moves have priority over others.
What kind of bugs did you have to deal with? Were there any particular bugs that stood out and took a lot of effort to fix?
We are using a stackable status effect system, much like debuffs in MMOs like World
of Warcraft. Sometimes the stacking went totally wrong and characters started
flying and all sorts of crazy stuff. These kind of things take a lot of playtesting before you find out the actual source of the problem.
Did you learn anything new about programming while working on this title? Mainly managing complex interaction between players.
MUSIC & SOUND
Questions answered by Barry Pietersen. What was the most important goal you were trying to accomplish with the soundtrack?
To get a match with the pace of the game. I think that's quite important with
fighting games. Also, getting the Japanese feeling in the music without too much distraction. The music has to serve the game, not the other way around.
Did you have your own ideas for the music or was it mainly influenced by what the team wanted to accomplish?
Of course influence from the team is there. That should be part of the progress. On the other hand, music should be sincere in a way. Too much input could harm such creativity. The tracks provided were done mainly based on creativity, but I believe that complete independence is not healthy in motion based music. How would you describe the music used in the game?
I would describe it as accessible Japanese/Asian music. It therefore has an European twist.
Which hardware and software tools did you use to produce the music and sounds?
Not too much. The production is quite simply done with Logic and some software
instruments. However, in order to reach some impact physical instruments such as bass and guitar are added.
Did you have to do any research for this kind of music?
I’m not used to creating Asian tracks. So that needed some work at the beginning. Especially the drums-they’re quite different from a typical European rhythm section. I therefore had to read up about Asian and Japanese rhythms.
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process
QA - COMMUNITY FEEDBACK Which methods were used to let people test the game?
We released some early alpha demos that got us a lot of positive
feedback. We changed a whole lot of stuff because of the comments we got from people. We also let people play the game a bit at the Dutch Game Garden which also resulted in a lot of feedback.
How important was getting feedback from the community to the team?
Really important. At a certain point it gets really hard to see the things
that are wrong with your game because of your connection to it. Looking back at the earlier build it is easy to see that we came a long way.
Did you had to make any tough decisions because of this feedback? Redoing all the character art was probably the biggest thing. We had a
lot of feedback about people asking us if we could make the characters stand out more. It was a tough decision but in the end it was worth it.
What was the most common feedback you received after the alpha stage?
Well like we said, the characters were kinda fading into the background and needed to stand out more.
What bugs or glitches have been discovered by the community? Nothing we haven’t discovered ourselves, haha.
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We changed a whole lot of stuff because of the comments we got from people.
process
BUSINESS & MARKETING MARKETING Which marketing methods did you use?
Mostly social media. We are releasing our game on Steam so everything is digital. Did you try anything different with how you approached marketing for this title?
Well seeing as how Samudai is our first game, everything we did or tried was our first time. If we could do it all over again we could have done it a whole lot better, haha Were there any marketing ideas you had to scrap?
No not really; I think we took every opportunity we could get to promote our game. How do you think the marketing went?
Yeah, one of the biggest mistakes we made in the beginning was the importance of Twitter. We didn’t really know how to use it effectively, but we found out later and it already helped us out a lot.
PROCESS Looking back to the whole process did the team learn any new things concerning the art, music, programming, animation, or marketing of a game?
Since we are a new company everything we did was something we hadn’t done before. I can’t think
of one thing about making games that we haven’t learned something new about. When we started it was just me and Frank and we were looking for a programmer. When we thought we found one, he
panicked on us at the last possible moment leaving us back at square one. That, for instance, taught us about how to properly put a team together and what sort of things to look for in people. Since there are
limitations to what you can do yourself, you’re always going to need other people, but it’s not always
easy to find the right ones. In the end it worked out for us with our new programmer that Frank knew from a previous workplace and things are going great.
Nils: In a more practical sense, I can say for myself that there are a lot of things I’ve learned in the last couple of months, from making websites to Photoshop, Unity, social media, and managing a company and all the stuff that has to do with that.
Are there particular things you want to do differently now with your next game?
I wouldn’t say different because we really learned a lot from the mistakes that we made. One thing we really want to change however, is moving to a prototype phase faster so we can get a clear idea about
what the game is going to be like before we invest all the time and effort into it. Aside from that, how we are working right now is working out pretty good for everyone so that is probably the way we are going to keep working.
Did the process of developing this game change your perspective about creating games? If so how?
Frank: It is important to know what your target group is so that you can change certain parts of your
game and messages on social media to better suit your audience. You have to approach someone from the game industry in a different way than you would approach someone who is a regular consumer.
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in depth
Earthcore:
Shattered Elements My name is Radek Smektala and I’m a producer at Tequila Games.
We’re all gamers here, and for a long time we
created by the developer?” As it turned out, he was
AAA title. We’re also huge fans of fantasy and
we decided to create what we have called the “Card
wanted to really push ourselves by creating a big tabletop games and we wanted to reflect these
passions in our next production which has become
Earthcore: Shattered Elements.
We’ve been working on Earthcore: Shattered
Elements for over a year now. From day one the project has grown and changed almost every day.
Right now it’s hard to imagine that we started with
only a simple mechanic of three elements (fire, water, and nature) battling each other, based on the
unique to digital collectible card games. With Card Crafting, players will be able to fuse cards together
and combine their skills to create new ones. When we added up all the possible combinations we
realized that Earthcore will offer over 500,000 different cards, a number that no other collectible
card game that we know of has ever offered to their players before.
Of course between inventing and refining our
to each element as well as adding different skills
several, if not dozens, of different ideas that often
that could be used during combat. We also created
our risk system, which effectively replaces a
card’s health, offense, and defense points. In the risk system, the number on the card reflects the risk that the player takes by playing it, and the
better the skills on the card, the higher the risk.
different gameplay mechanics we went through had positive effects on the game, or at other times, certain features were discarded after a long period of play testing. I think that this is just a natural
part of the game development process for all PC, console, and mobile games.
Ultimately, the risk system adds a kind of gambling
One event that affected the game a lot was our
card loses an elemental battle then the risk number
preparing a campaign that affected the game’s
element to the experience because when a player’s
on the card is subtracted from his or her health points. Players need to carefully consider when
to use the higher skilled/more powerful cards as they will also possibly cause more damage to their health if they lose.
Having established the various combat mechanics we then entered into a lengthy process of creating
cards that would utilize all the different combat features. One day, a very experienced tabletop
game designer that we’ve been working with said “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to create your own cards
in the game instead of only playing with the ones
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Crafting” system which is completely new and
rock, paper, scissors gameplay system. In the next step we decided to create various cards assigned
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absolutely right and it was really fun. That’s when
Kickstarter campaign. We spent over a month production schedule. Soon after launch, we realized
that maybe doing a Kickstarter wasn’t the best idea.
Without a strong support base in the community and corresponding media support, it’s really hard to get through and reach people with your title. We quickly decided to cancel the campaign and focus
our efforts solely on developing the game and then building the hype around it. It was also around that time that a very experienced board game designer
joined our team. With his help we significantly improved the game design and reached the point we’re at now.
in depth
When we added up all the possible combinations we realized that Earthcore will offer over 500,000 different cards.
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in depth
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in depth
We had some skills that sounded good on paper but didn’t make the final cut because of how they performed in playtests.
ART STYLE
DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Our art director and his team are still working
There are two things to address here.
but our main vision is clear: We want to create
First is the artwork we’ve used on the cards.
battles and let the beautiful paintings and
each creature to be part of the universe that we
on the final look of the backgrounds and cards minimalistic and stylish backgrounds for card
easy-to-read iconography of the skills on the cards catch the player’s attention. We’re also
trying to animate a lot of the details in the
backgrounds and during the battles whilst also
devoting a lot of time to preparing the very best
and most visually stunning visual effects that our engine allows.
There’s always a story behind the card and we want create. We’re very proud of the group of artists
working on our game because we’ve drawn upon talented people from all over the world, consisting
of both those who are experienced at working on CCGs (collectible card games) as well as complete newcomers. We always try to give them a brief
story of the creature that they’re painting, but at
the same time we also want to give them a lot of freedom whilst our core team can focus on the
CARD DESIGN Our Card Crafting system makes almost every
card unique, but of course we want to show players how strong their cards are. First of all
we’ll have Hero cards that can have up to three skills crafted on them. Second, we’ll have cards
with a single skill that can be crafted to a hero. There will be four levels of rarity of these cards
overall graphical design of the game.
The second thing to talk about is not the cards
themselves but the skills that players will be able
to craft onto them. It takes a huge amount of time to playtest and balance each skill separately and
in various combinations. We had some skills that
sounded good on paper but didn’t make the final cut because of how they performed in playtests.
– from the most common paper cards, through
The biggest challenge is of course the number of
gold ones.
predict and test to balance the game and try to
bronze and silver all the way to the ultra rare
It’s also worth mentioning that each skill
cards and combinations of skills that we need to eliminate any unwanted and conflicting effects.
in the game will have its own unique visual
The other big challenge still ahead of us is to try
ourselves to just a basic set of visual effects
players that are familiar with many staples of the
representation, as we don’t want to limit
and animations on the screen. It’s a huge and
time-consuming investment for our team but we believe that these are the kind of details that
and explain our unique gameplay mechanics to
CCG genre that we’re trying to modify or even break away from.
separate a great game from just a good one.
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in depth
Tequila Games Dev Team 2014 Highlights
Taking it to the next level Lukas Deszczulka, CEO of Tequila Games
I believe the most important highlight was the moment that we decided to take Earthcore to the next level. We could have finished what we launched on Kickstarter and released it, but instead we decided to enhance our design, devote additional months to development, and hire more people to create a truly AAA mobile game.
Kickstarter Radoslaw Smektala, Producer
Kickstarter and the lessons it gave us. We learned to prioritize
our work better and we also changed the way we were thinking about promoting our product to the public. We also got a lot
of very useful feedback about the game from the people who became interested in it.
New team member Mateusz Nowak, Lead Game Designer
For me it was the moment when an experienced tabletop game designer joined our team. He brought a very fresh perspective on what we did and had a lot of ideas coming from his years
of experience in designing such titles as the Neuroshima Hex board game.
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We met Tequila Games at Gamescom 2014 where they clearly showed us their passion for card games. It was nice to see how they took their passion and turned this into a digital card game which has a pretty neat mechanic for players who love to create new card combinations.
interview
COREY ROLLINS My name is Corey Rollins and I work at Klei Entertainment!
I've been at Klei for almost three years now, and over that time
my role has evolved so much that it's reached a point where describing it all with a single job title is quite challenging. In fact, I don't really have an official job title. Any time there's
a new hire or someone is visiting the studio and getting introduced, it's become a bit of a game here to watch people try and describe my role accurately. But I'll do my best to cover all the bases!
“Every day is different and I love problem solving�
I originally started at Klei as a "Community Manager" which came with all the duties you might assume that title covers. Basically, managing social media, forums, support and generally being
the bridge between the community and our game development
teams. However, as time went on situations popped up where I had an opportunity to use my uniquely varied past experience.
In my past I've worked in film (cinematography, special effects,
editing, prop design) where I've worked on some award winning shorts. I have a background in graphic design and traditional
Your experience working with Klei Entertainment
photography. I was a resident DJ at a few venues in college.
Absolutely amazing. Every day is different, and I love problem
summer for a few months back in the day (sadly I have not
to do something, I get the opportunity, resources, and trust to
agency marketing, web development, and event and product
Heck, I even set up bouncy castles as a part-time job one used this particular skill set at Klei yet. One day).
My most common job duties at Klei on top of general community
engagement are marketing art, designing the toys and merch
for our games, building and running the Klei Store that offers them, event planning for conventions like PAX, getting our games out to press and streamers, a little web development and design, and taking on special projects like our Chester
Plush KickStarter or designing and building the laser protected lock box we had at PAX Prime 2014 that people had to infiltrate in a live action ARG. It's quite a mixed bag, but it's really fun.
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solving. When a new challenge arises, if I don't already know how
experiment and figure it out. It's incredibly rewarding and just
an all around great fit for my personality. I love experimenting
and trying new things. I have always feared having a job where I do the same thing day in and day out. At Klei I get a chance
to use a lot of different skills from past experience and get to
keep learning new things. It's also great to be around other people who work the same way. Lots of people at the studio
are multi-talented. For example, one of our music composers Vince de Vera is also a UI and graphic designer! It's been really
exciting working here for the past three years, and I can't wait to see what challenges and opportunities will pop up next.
devspot
DEVSPOT
iFFGames We were a small team of only three at the beginning of the year. We had finished a game for a contest and did not win. The learning experience was great though, and we met some really cool people and saw some
awesome games. We had a big plan of making one awesome game.
After GDC 2014 we decided the game was too big for
our current budget and would need way more time for
development than we could put into it if it was going to be as good as we want it to be. We decided to go for a
smaller game in hopes that we could get some funding coming in to be able to work on game development full
time (we all currently have full time jobs that do not include games).
We started making a smaller, sort of an Outbreak type game with a bit of a twist. We know there are several out there, but we tend to come up with ways to make
things unique. We had it looking pretty good and
working well when a friend sent us a message about a new contest. At first none of us were too excited about doing another contest, due to still having not recovered sleep from the previous one. This contest was themed
so we had to come up with something with the theme
in mind. We came up with a great idea for a game using some of the mechanics we had already created with the
Outbreak type game and some great particle effects.
We got some help and input from some friends and
contacts in the industry that use Unity3D such as Nick from Rival Theory (great a.i. plugin for Unity3D) and
Adam from MecWarriors (awesome with animations).
These guys were great and definitely show their enthusiasm for games by taking time out of their busy schedules to take a look at your game and help in any
way they can. The game was far from contest worthy within a week of the deadline. I was able to recruit a
friend to help set up the UI and an awesome audio
engineer to help with audio. The game still needed a lot more done to be as good as the awesome games that did win, but we were able to submit a great game with about 30 minutes left before the deadline.
Now, we are currently working on this same game
Crowd Control, and hopefully we will be able to publish it on a mobile platform or Windows some time in the
near future. We have a lot of fun making the games but we also enjoy playing them. So, until new games stop being released so often, it’s a slow process. One
of our biggest highlights of 2014 was seeing our company name in EFG magazine. We’ve never been in a magazine before and it was pretty sweet!
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SKARA: THE BLADE REMAINS What happened in 2014 with 8 Bit Studios? Steam Greenlight In January we were received a Steam Greenlight. It only took eight days to get the votes necessary! That helped spur our growth for the rest of the year and gave us the courage to continue despite being a small studio with a big project on a very small budget!
Microsoft Accelerator From February through April we took part in the Microsoft Accelerator program in London. This was of enormous benefit to our development-receiving support and advice from players like Microsoft Studios.
Kickstarter In June we ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. It was a wild month for the team, working on the game development and at the same time producing all the content necessary for the campaign. But we did it and were thrilled to see the response from the community.
pre-Alpha In July the pre-Alpha version became available on Steam for Kickstarter backers. So we have completed a very important phase in our development and are learning from our small community of testers. One thing we are happy to learn is how well community game testing works!
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We have been following 8 Bit Studios since 2013 and finally had the chance to meet them at Gamescom 2014. Their positive energy, humor, and dedication to the game were very present, which is a good thing because this will definitely help them get more opportunities!
in depth
Zems
™
I’m Yang Pulse, project lead of Zems™ and project producer at Impulse Limited. I primarily work as the corporate manager and I oversee the rest of the team members to make sure we’re all on the same page. Zems™ has been in pre-production for three years and development for two years. It's been a bumpy ride
since we originally developed using HTML5 canvas so the game could be fully playable in browser, but later decided we wanted to make the game downloadable as a desktop game. The game started out as a close
clone of Magic: The Gathering with a modified resource system but has since evolved to include a game board,
hero system, and much more that we have wanted to see in online card games.
We've made a number of changes since abandoning the browser-based version, but the most notable one is switching to a hex-based grid.
Early wireframe concept
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First browser-based version
in depth
Here are some screenshots from our September Alpha:
Main menu
Early Alpha, No User Interface
After moving the starting hero and playing a card
Example of a ranged attack
This alpha doesn’t have a fleshed out user interface and the game itself is in 2D at this stage. Moving forward, we plan on changing the game completely to 3D. Here’s a concept of what we have in mind for the final game to look like.
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The circle on the red frame is where we intend to indicate a card’s rarity, something we overlooked when creating the original frame. Right now we’re exploring the idea of putting a diamond or some elaborate shape in place of the triangle in the circled area for cards that are rarer than others.
CARD DESIGN When the game was first conceptualized we didn’t have a
You’ll notice we employ two main styles: semi-realistic and
looked at some other popular paper card games, we really
to have a single consistent art style, we believe there are
way to balance or sort the factions in the game. After we liked Magic: The Gathering’s color pie system, which has a set of colors and players build decks by combining cards
from certain colors, with each color leading to potential
inconsistency so players cannot simply use cards from every color in a single deck. The unique thing about the
color system is that it makes imbalance very interesting,
illustrative fantasy. Unlike other online card games that try gamers out there that prefer a more realistic style while others prefer a more illustrative one, and we want to satisfy
both kinds of players. Variation in card art is something
physical card games like Magic: The Gathering have done for decades and we want to keep that approach.
as some colors are strong in certain aspects but have
One specific rule in the art direction is that women should
strengths and deficiencies.
right now heavily targeted towards male players and a lot
clear weaknesses, so players are forced to combine both
After several iterations of development, we realized the text area was too small and we decided to split the art and text space more evenly. We also created color variations of the card frame.
There are three main artists that do the card art for Zems™:
mariowibisono, herodees, and phoenixlu. Each of them has a slightly different style.
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not be oversexualized. The online card game market is
of artwork in other games depict women in scant clothing with very sexualized bodies. I’ve made it very clear to my
artists that I don’t want to alienate women in any way, so you’ll never find any artwork that disrespects women or otherwise portrays them as sex objects in this game.
herodees “Deepsea Vengeant”
phoenixlu “Raptorkin”
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SPECIAL CARD MECHANIC One of the changes we made after switching to desktop
development is the addition of heroes. I’m personally a
fan of the commander format in Magic: The Gathering and I also play League of Legends in my spare time. Both games have the concept of a hero or a commander,
and we’ve found that players love the hero system as a concept. In our game, each player starts with a hero on the grid. When players play cards to the field, they
must be placed next to their hero. Heroes can move around the grid, attack, and use abilities just like most
other cards can. The treatment of heroes as actual field commanders taking part in the battle is what separates
Zems™ from other online card games.
CHALLENGE mariowibisono “Vigilance, spell card ”
Developing hero cards is still an ongoing process and I’m sure we will have made adjustments to every hero card by the time the game is released. The main
challenge with hero cards is making them feel impactful
and unique without also making them singular. Each hero has an ability that encourages players to build
a deck that utilizes that ability, but we also want the hero’s ability to be flexible so players don’t think they can only build one type of deck with a certain hero.
For example, one of the heroes we have allows the player to discard a card from his or her hand and
then draw a new one. We want players to build decks
that revolve around cheating cards into play from the graveyard, but we also want this ability to support
players who just want to cycle cards and win through
other means. Balancing the two is tough, especially
since we want both strategies to be fun without being
underwhelming. In the end, there can be no perfect balance and we often have to rely on the fact that cards are drawn from a randomized deck to help prevent this ability from being abused.
herodees “Speaker of the Pride ”
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Impulse Limited 2014 Highlights
Beginning of a dedicated community The biggest highlight for me was when people started messaging us on our Facebook page asking how they can be a part of the earliest alpha - and this is before we had anything playable to show people. You know you’re a
part of something awesome if people are asking you questions about how the gameplay is going to work and requesting to play the game before you
have anything to show gameplay-wise. This had never happened prior to 2014 and I’m not sure where the sudden surge in hype has come from.
Planning Kickstarter campaign My team has been very thankful that we’ve been able to bootstrap most of
the development using our own money. However, we’re not made of cash and we do plan on launching a Kickstarter sometime in 2015. Please follow us on social media if you want to contribute and/or keep up with the game!
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phoenixlu “Aquaformer”
release
The release of
GoD Factory: Wingmen Guillaume Boucher-Vidal talked with us about how the release went for GoD Factory: Wingmen.
First of all, congratulations with the release of GoD Factory: Wingmen! Have you had the chance to celebrate its release yet?
Thank you very much! We celebrated a bit on the launch day by hosting a stream on Twitch.
tv, but we quickly had to go back into the action to start fixing bugs that surfaced only now
that we had hundreds of concurrent users. For instance, we had a bug with the scroll bar in the
match list menu, something we never even thought of checking since we never had enough players to fill up the list. Then we started working on more updates, balance fixes, etc.
Let’s talk about the release. Did the launch go as planned, or were there things that went differently than hoped?
The development itself went rather smoothly. We received a lot of praise for the game's stability,
and while there were some problems for some users they were mostly isolated. However, I wish
we would have generated more interest from YouTubers and streamers. We contacted many of them but had very little return, even though we contacted them in advance. It didn't help that
Bandai Namco picked a very difficult launch day, as PAX Prime was starting on the same day as our release.
What have you and your team learned from the experience of launching the game?
We definitely learned how to quickly do community management. Before launching the game, we had a very small, very tight group of players expecting the game, but once we launched, we
were quickly flooded with emails, posts on forums, complaints, praises, bug reports, balance
issues, and more. One of our programmers quickly jumped in and started interacting with them to show that we were present and receptive to their comments.
Are there things you would do differently with your next release? Or things you had wish you had done differently with the release of GoD Factory: Wingmen?
I hope that for the next game we'll be able to release simultaneously on all the platforms we
are targeting at once. For GoD Factory: Wingmen, we didn't have enough funds to wait until we were done with PC and consoles, but it's something that has hurt us I think. Some players play exclusively on PC, others exclusively on consoles, and some play on both. However, opening up to as many players as possible would have made our game look more “legitimate” in the eye
of many gamers and would have helped with word of mouth. I hope that for our next project we'll be able to pull it off!
How did the release go? How do you feel now that the game has been released?
Sadly, I must admit that so far the launch did not go as well as we planned. While the reception was good and our players have a lot of good things to say about the game, we lacked the
marketing power to reach a sufficient level of sales. We did not break even and we're now looking into ways to bounce back.
Are there any future plans for the game?
We want to do at least one major update on the game and see if we can gain back some traction. The most common criticism we've had, aside from a lack of players, is the need for
more maps. We listened to the community and we're now hard at work making new maps.
We're also working on improving Oculus support (notably for DK2 and subsequent versions), and adding support for a wider array of joysticks and controllers, as well as adding a couple more features in the process. Then we'll start working on console ports.
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Interview by RĂŠmy van den Wijngaart
INTERVIEW WITH
Jane Jensen
interview
Lately it seems more and more established game designers are leaving behind the safety of big publishers to pursue their dreams at smaller studios. Among them is Jane Jensen, famous for the Gabriel Knight series of games which she created at Sierra On-line. In 2012, she and her husband started Pinkerton Road, an indie studio co-funded through Kickstarter. Their first game was Moebius, which they created together with Phoenix Online Studios. Now the two studios have teamed up again to produce a remake of the first Gabriel Knight game, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. We spoke with Jane Jensen to hear her thoughts on this process.
Good day, Jane. What can you tell me about voodoo? I mean...how is your day going? JJ:
Heh. Pretty good. Tons of playtesting right now.
We’re about a week away from a final build of GK.
What led you to enter the game industry? JJ:
I bought my first PC back around 1988. I had
majored in computer science in college and was
working for Hewlett-Packard. I went to a shop in the mall to buy some software for my new PC and ended up
buying King’s Quest IV and Manhunter: San Francisco. I can be pretty obsessive when I get into something, and I became obsessed with Sierra adventure games. I wrote to them and asked if I could work for them and was eventually hired on as a writer.
Tell us a little bit about Pinkerton Road and why you started it. What is Community Supported Gaming? JJ:
Community Support Gaming is a crowd-funding
idea—basically people subscribe to your indie studio
and they get monthly updates on your progress and your games when they ship. We used Kickstarter to do it. Robert and I started Pinkerton Road because we wanted to be able to focus on adventure games.
What is it like to go from a huge, famous publisher like Sierra to a smaller indie studio like Pinkerton Road? JJ:
It’s really hard. Not just Sierra, but I’ve always
worked for a publisher who took care of the business,
financial, and marketing end of things. So that’s
definitely been the most challenging aspect of having our own studio—not having any support in those areas.
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I’m a firm believer that passion makes it happen
How did the anniversary edition of the first Gabriel Knight game come about? JJ: I first started talking to Activision about doing something
Which part or aspect of Gabriel Knight most clearly shows your passion? What would make players say "That's classic Jane Jensen!”
with GK around the time of our Kickstarter in 2012. There were
JJ:
about doing something with the Sierra franchises and so we
detail that probably people associate with me.
some awesome producers in house who were starting to think
brainstormed some ideas. The idea of doing a 20th anniversary
I think just the story—the supernatural and emotional
elements of it. It has a lot of heart and a lot of weird real-life
edition of GK1, and having it be one of Pinkerton Road’s first titles, was just perfect.
What kind of future do you envision for Pinkerton Road after the Gabriel Knight remaster?
Coming back to Gabriel Knight after 20 years, how did it feel?
JJ: I would love to be able to work with the new Sierra brand at
JJ: Very bizarre, very nostalgic. But I’ve loved the project. I’m so glad and grateful that I got to do it.
What were your guidelines for this remaster? What could be changed and what had to stay the same? JJ:
I really didn’t have a lot of guidelines. From the start I
wanted to keep it close to the original but rework it a little so it
could work well on tablet and mobile. And everyone was on the same page about that.
Which elements of adventure games do you feel have become outdated and which are still engaging? JJ: I’m a poor person to ask, because I love the old adventure games and I get a kick out of all the old tropes. Nevertheless, we
Activision, and maybe do some more GK games or even other Sierra franchises.
What are your thoughts about today's game industry? JJ:
I’m glad to see it broadening out in terms of audience
demographics and product offerings.
What advice would you give to people looking to get into the game industry? JJ: If you’re really passionate about a certain kind of game,
then you should absolutely go for it. I’m a firm believer that passion makes it happen. Even if you start out in an entry job
in a game company that you love, that passion will show and you’ll get the opportunities.
did implement things in the GK remake to eliminate as much as
Thanks for speaking with us today!
to figure out what to do next.
JJ: Thank you for the interview! - Jane
possible things like pixel hunting and wandering around trying
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MEGAN LAM My name is Megan Lam and I’m the Community Captain at the Behemoth!
My name is Megan Lam and I'm the Community Captain - it's
our fun title for Community Manager and PR Coordinator. When we go to expos such as PAX or RTX, I generally work
with the press to schedule interviews and make sure they
have all the info they need about our games. Similarly, I
do this throughout the year with the gaming community through our blogs, forums, social channels, and emails. Since we're a small company, we tend to wear many hats
here, so I even help out with scheduling or moderating the Usability Lab playtests on top of overall marketing at The
Behemoth. I'm basically the liaison between our studio and the world outside our development cave.
“It’s important to our company to recognize our fans out there.”
As for why I do it: it's important to our company to
recognize our fans out there and also the potential fans who are curious about who we are and what we're up to. We make games because we love them, but also because
we want the community to love them as well. On a personal
level, I'm doing community management because I enjoy interacting with fellow human beings. And that's really
what most online communities are all about - human beings with an occasional bot or two.
Your experience working with The Behemoth Eye opening and gratifying. The video game industry was
not something I was familiar with before working here, so I've learned a lot about the development process as well as
the business aspects involved. Everyone at the Behemoth is very talented and we all get along really well - it's probably
because they vet personality as much as they check for job
experience and skills (I mean, how many offices do you
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know that encourage poop jokes and sporadic singing?).
They've also fostered an environment where you feel like you can contribute your ideas and be a part of something
behemoth (ahem, see what I did there?). Every week
there's something new: expos, playtesting, charity events, new parts of Game 4 to play, community contests, etc. I continue to learn so much here and hopefully I'm giving as much as I'm taking from the gaming world!
devspot
DEVSPOT
Turbulon Interactive The game was meant to be a three month project-a very relaxed project to tie us to our next big game, code named “Project H.”
We were very impressed by our Lead Voice Artist
(Pippa Winslow) after voicing Little Bell Cackle, our first
world 1 boss and Witch Mersa, our main antagonist. I
agreed with the others that it would be much better for
Pippa to voice over something much more “solid” for the quality she gave. Moreover, I had always wanted
a more dynamic game mechanic for Duckles as the first prototype version (made a long time ago) was very
linear and wasn’t like Super Mario, where you could roam the map and move to the desired stage.
The more passionate you are about your interest, the more you want to achieve your vision; it is a very big
game, but not impossible to do. Plus our team is made
up of very talented individuals - I never could have achieved this scope without them. We wanted to make a very fun, crazy, and engaging experience for gamers. We thought this game and its characters had potential, so we “vowed” to make it happen.
The game has a Metroidvania style which means our puzzles have to tie in together decently at least - a tough goal to work to, as we know there’s a lot of fans
of this genre who love it because of good game design
from franchises like Super Metroid and Castlevania. There’s lots of game elements in our game to keep
things ffresh: over thirty characters with their own backstory, tons of animations (IK bones, skinning, traditional
animation),
varied
enemies
(common,
bosses, and sub-bosses), and high-res art. The game is quite action packed with a lot of varied music tracks/ leitmotif which are practiced, studied, and performed
too. So all this takes a lot of time and dedication from
the team. The engine was made from the ground up too - not an easy task, especially having a co-op feature included!
Polishing and pulling away is also tough, but we want to achieve a great game together. We want to allow the players to have a very rich experience and a game with
great, responsive controls. We want to express our love for games and for the players to know we care. But
most of all we want them to have a blast and enjoy our crazy imagination and ideas! As long as our ideas are
out there for many to enjoy, I think that is satisfying in itself.
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DICETINY:
The Lord of the Dice Hi my name is Mike Lee and I’m community and marketing manager at Fakedice. Since I’m the only in the studio who speaks English, (albeit not at native level), I take care of all the communication with users, and any non-Korean companies. I also take care of PR and marketing like SNS, and press releases and so on. I also contribute some of the ideas in the game. I’m proud to say that I was the one that came with the name, DICETINY!
It’s been under development about four months now, and we still consider it to be at the early stage
of development. At first we wanted something simpler, but over the course, we ended up
adding more stuff as it always happens in game development. Now what we have is a more complex
version. Also when we first started, we didn’t think about adding parodies, although we were thinking
about putting in some humor. But while we were brainstorming ideas for the game’s storyline, an
idea to parody The Lord of the Rings came up. It snowballed from there. Now we want to be the
Scary Movie and Shrek of gaming.
The first thing we thought of when the idea for this
game came up was the thought of combining RPG elements and a collectible card system with a board
game. When you think of board games you initially think of board and dice. As I mentioned, we’re
fans of Hearthstone, so we wanted to add some collectible card and card battle elements in there.
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We want to be unique and original, albeit it’s a parody, and sometimes it’s hard to do that.
CARD DESIGN
UNIQUE
To describe our design, I think it’s Western,
I would say the random event is probably the most
studio, our main focus is the Western market, so we
board you get a random event, be it a treasure, a
humorous, and simple. Although we’re a Korean wanted something that Western audiences would be more familiar with. We didn’t want an anime
style, although that’s what we’re familiar with in Korea. Also, we wanted the images to be fun and
unique thing about our game. Every spot on the trap, a quest, or a monster. Every time you play you get something different. I think that’s really cool.
not too serious. Fakedice guys enjoy humor, and
CHALLENGE
the game. Lastly, we wanted to keep the simplicity,
Since humor and parodies are important aspects
some influence from Hearthstone as we’re big fans
with an idea for a card skill. We want to be unique
we wanted to put as much humor as we could in considering the size of development. We also got of the game.
We have a card called Fakedice. If you use it, you
can move up to six spots freely. It’s based on our studio name. Also there’s a card called Magic
of DICETINY, sometimes it was hard to come up and original, albeit it’s a parody, and sometimes
it’s hard to do that. Also, we are not 100% sure
whether the Western audience will also enjoy the
things we think are funny. We try to see things from the Western audience’s point of view.
Missile. Instead of a magical bomb or something,
we actually put in a tomahawk missile. Many
people find it hilarious. Also, we’re cross-featuring
Shovel Knight and Aegis Defender in the game, so characters from those games will have special card
skills that will be fun for players of both games. I can’t reveal them right now as they’re still a workin-progress, so stay tuned.
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Fakedice Dev Team 2014 Highlights Kickstarter launch Jin (CEO):
Our highlight probably is our Kickstarter campaign launch.
Gamescom Mike (Marketing/Community):
Maybe Gamescom, because I had always wanted to go to Europe.
We met Fakedice at Gamescom 2014, where they stood in a hall full of people showing their game off on a tablet. Rai felt the urge to talk to them since she appreciated their courage to walk around and get the attention of the audience.
SMITE
GOD DESIGN
By Tom Schoen
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We asked Scott Zier to tell us something about the design of Smite’s God character designs. Follow his design process in this great interview article. Hi! I’ve been working at Hi-Rez Studios for about 9 years
as a Level Designer, Senior Game Designer, and now as the
Lead Designer on Smite. My role at the studio is to guide
the design process on Smite, related to short and long term content deliverables and new game features going
into the live environment. I also do individual god design on rotation with other members of the design team, and
work with the balance and community teams on upcoming adjustments to the game.
RESEARCH AND IDEAS God design in Smite starts with research. We want to have a good understanding of the mythology, of a gods potential role and personality, before we put them into production.
We usually have some idea of what we are looking for when
we start researching. Sometimes it’s as simple as knowing we want to add a new Mage, or new Roman deity to the
roster. Sometimes there are specific gameplay features we are looking to add, such as temporary health shields, or
healing, that is the foundation for our mythology research.
Once we find a few mythological figures that fit our goals, then we start into concept art and generating gameplay ideas.
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DESIGN Early on there is a lot of iteration of art concepts and game design to get to the point where everyone is excited and happy
with the direction. We’re a studio that loves to test quickly, and
everywhere with WASD manually, so when things don’t feel right with movement based abilities, they usually feel awful!
iterate frequently, so we generally try to get the god in game
One of the advantages to working with mythology from around
to ensure the designs we ship are fun and fit the requirements
Our goal as designers is to take what makes them unique from
in as rough of a form as possible. We then do frequent reviews of a Smite god.
There are a number of guidelines for concepting and design around keeping the correct tone and feel for Smite. It’s always a
the world is that most of the gods are already very unique!
a lore perspective and to translate that into new and exciting gameplay options.
challenge to stay within the guides, while also trying to nurture
Scrapped ideas
are certain visual themes that connect each Pantheon, and
tested, then dropped for various reasons. For example, we
something unique and special for each god. For example, there
There are thousands of scrapped ideas in Smite that were
certain guides around ability design related to class choice. In
tried hard to have one of our Guardians, Kumbhakarna, pick
most cases the mythology is a boon for this, as it usually starts us with a very unique and interesting foundation!
It’s actually very rare the first design we playtest is the one
we ship. We go through a lot of iteration to find the right balance and feel. We tend to push upfront “finding the fun” in a
design, and in Smite that is often first around the feel of ability execution and the fluidity of combat. I think, a bit more so than other MOBAs, because we are third person players are sensitive
to timings being off or feeling clunky. This is especially true in relation to abilities that affect movement. In other MOBAs you mouse click to move, allowing your camera to roam free and
your attention to shift while you transit, but in Smite you move
up players and then throw them to a location of his choice. We struggled with the potential grief factor for allies, as throwing a teammate into enemies could be either an awesome teamwork
moment, or a horrible troll. We tried such things as him becoming a “spring board” so that allies had to trigger into him
to be thrown, versus Kumbha picking them up. Everything just
felt too clunky though. A two step process in Smite (pickup,
then throw) requires a lot of camera movement and aiming interaction due to our 3rd person view. Ultimately we decided
it wasn’t fitting with the rest of his kit and shelved the idea for a later date. Not long after that we released Janus, who had a
better version of team movement through portals, somewhat inspired by the Kumbhakarna trials being fresh on our minds.
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COMMUNITY GENERATED There are certainly god designs, and god
redesigns, that have been heavily influenced by community opinion and suggestions. Our recent Arachne redesign was largely prompted by direct community request, for example.
Just about everyone in the studio looks at
community posts, but we also have a community management team dedicated to gathering information from our players and e-sports
teams and making sure that information reaches the design team. This includes forum
interaction, running surveys, and managing more focused feedback sessions. We have
multiple community feedback meetings each week to go over all of this, and it’s a big part
of our process! A little less formal, we also sometimes just tweet questions or post to reddit and see what the response is! Beyond
all that, the influence of the community is present in everything we do. We certainly look
back at our more successful and popular gods and judge what went right, while looking at
our least popular gods and learning where to improve.
CHALLENGES Probably the most difficult challenge is just related to our patch release schedule. We put
out a new god about every 4 weeks, on top of
other new content like skins, voice packs, and new features like the league system. It adds a lot of time pressure to a process that is already
pretty complex and demanding. That said, it's also very rewarding come patch day! Getting
regular content out for our players to enjoy is
one of the exciting things about working on a game like Smite.
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We met Todd Harriz from Hi-Rez Studios at Gamescom 2014 where we had a great talk about how they work closely with their community to design their characters. Eventually we had the chance to ask Scott Zier about their creative god designs.
release
The release of
Lethal League We talked to Tim Remmers about the release of Lethal League.
Congratulations with the release of Lethal League! Did you plan the release strategically?
Thanks! Our aim was to release the game in Q2 just before the summer. However, at the start of 2014 we saw we weren’t going to make it in time for Q2 because of the online multiplayer that had to be very solid and needed some more work. We
postponed it to Q3 which was a bit troublesome because there are quite some big
game events combined with big game announcements we didn’t want to compete with. The date we picked was set between Gamescom and Pax at August 27.
How exactly did the process go when you entered the release-milestone?
I think the marketing was the biggest thing we had to tackle before the game was released: reaching out to the press with review copies and connecting with video content creators to learn if they were interested in covering Lethal League. On top of
that it’s very important to start building a community before the actual release. This actually started more than a year before the release of the game. In April 2013 we
released the prototype of Lethal League which was picked up incredibly well. Before
releasing the prototype we didn’t have plans to build a full game out of it, but because of the response the game got from the community (over 200,000 unique people played the prototype) we decided to create a full game out of this prototype. The challenge
was to keep that community alive and updated until the release of the full game. This was actually tricky because the development of the game was pretty closed to the public, but by showing the game on several events we managed to keep the community pleased and eager for the actual release.
At some point you had to think about getting your game out there. Next to reaching out to press websites did you have any other ideas as to how you would accomplish your marketing?
Our main focus for getting attention was through popular YouTubers and streamers;
their impact on the visibility of your game is huge. At several events we met some of the bigger YouTuners and showed them Lethal League. Luckily they were hooked, which
resulted in some great features on their YouTube channels. These videos resulted in more videos from other video content creators who wanted to check out the game and make a video about it as well. Another thing that was very important was keeping very
close to the community that supported us from the beginning, as well as new fans, to keep the community active. Maintaining an active community is very valuable in terms of word of mouth marketing.
How are you feeling now that the game has been released? How has the response from the public and press been?
Incredibly well! We are very happy with the release of the game. The responses we got
from the players as well as the press are very positive. A lot of video content creators keep posting Lethal League videos and the community is pretty active with weekly
online tournaments and lots of fanart. We currently have an 8.2 score on Metacritic, and the Steam reviews are “overwhelmingly positive” with 99% positive reviews. Oh and the sales are pretty satisfying too.
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“We will be on Steam Early Access for a long time”
My name is Carsten “Bozar” Boserup, and I am the community manager. My role is to build, manage, and develop Interstellar Marines into being the best community in gaming history. I’ve been working in the games industry for about four years as a community manager, which today is a full time lifestyle rather than a job.
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Was the concept of the game always meant to be this big?
The concept hasn’t changed. Its always been very ambitious and will continue to stay ambitious. It’s really about
creating a hardcore, but realistic sci-fi game that isn’t stepping into fantasy sci-fi like Star Wars, but more like Aliens (the movie) and that universe.
How big was the original team, and how big is the current team?
Well we started with just two developers and two community managers when we released on Steam Early Access
in July 2013. Before that we only had two developers and a few more helping once in awhile with concepts. Today
we have about thirteen full/part time (eight of which are developers) and six interns where five of them are
developers. So that is a massive increase in a very short time all thanks to Steam Early Access and our community for supporting us this early on.
Did the project grow larger during the development process? How?
Definitely. The co-op mission (The NeuroGen Incident). This was our first implementation of co-op that Kim (our game director) has waited ten years for. Most of our community has been waiting seven years. The scale of this one mission is bringing the Unity engine to its knees all due to its size and complexity.
At some point the game went into Early Access, but the game is still in early access. How are you keeping the community involved with the game?
We are keeping the community engaged on a daily and weekly basis with events and status updates through all of
our media. That is primarily my job, as well as actually talking with the community (online) face to face and taking
their feedback and listening to their concerns. It’s a massive task, as we have fans from all over the world. So this can in no way be a regular 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. job, but more like a 9 a.m. - 1:00 a.m. lifestyle.
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“The community means everything to us, and they are the ones that keep us alive and developing...” In what other ways is the community involved with the game’s content?
We are very much listening to the feedback and ideas coming from the community. Thankfully, we share a lot of the same ideas, and it’s more down to a matter of prioritizing our feature releases to keep our fans and community happy. We have re-prioritized planned features because our community was screaming for it and couldn’t wait to
play the game with those features (crouching, jumping, etc.). The community means everything to us, and they are the ones that keep us alive and developing, so we happily give the what they want earlier than planned to keep them happy (if it doesn’t massively interfere with the planned production).
Being in Early Access are there any other plans for making this game bigger?
We will be on Steam Early Access for a long time. But with every update we will add more content, gameplay features, and story that will allow the players to enjoy it. Interstellar Marines is a massive and ambitious project. What we
are developing right now is the Prologue, which has both a co-op/single player element, but also a multiplayer
component. Once we have developed the Prologue then we will start working on three co-op campaigns. We will
not do a gold release until we have the entire package fully developed. Once you have bought the game then you will have access to all the campaigns.
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Zero Point Software 2014 Highlights Co-op release The release of co-op was a massive thing for us, especially
for Kim Jorgensen (the game’s creator) who has dreamed
about this since he came up with the concept more than fifteen years ago. But also just the fact that now we have the tech and tools to finally start delivering on our main mode which is co-op, and the immersive and brutal gameplay that the players will experience.
Interns on board I also think that getting the interns we have on board was a big thing for us. Not only did we increase the team size,
we got six new game developer interns from The Game Assembly, which is famous for producing talented and
skilled game developers. Getting these awesome guys on board allowed us to speed up the development. We wouldn’t be where we are now without them!
Rai: I met Carsten at Gamescom 2014. What I really found surprising was to hear how long the game was in and would be in Early Access. Soon it became clear that they have an ambitious game and a very dedicated community to help them with their development process.
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