Hello, Ducklings!
I am the Lead Developer for Evil Quacks and I'm here to update you on why we haven't been quacking as often as previously.
But First!
I was recently at PAXEast and did a panel with some other amazingly EVIL people. You can check out my postmortem here. There is also a video attached to watch the panel if you want.
We are also planning to bring back Pond Casts with Jake, Mazzeo ( from the panel) and I. You should check them out and their projects as well:
More updates on that Pond Cast and future Panels & Events will be posted here as well.
Now onto the more EVIL components of this post...
What's Up Duck?
Over the last couple of months, the team has gone through some big changes. Most of our key members decided to take a break from the Studio to focus on their own careers, personal lives, and more. We are very excited to see what new EVIL plans they develop. Whether it be on their own or when they return to the Pond Lair, we're excited to see them.
However, this means that the team of Evil Geniuses who are still active and working in the Pond Lair is...well one and that would be me. The team has given me permission to continue the game and make any design updates or decisions in their absence to get Project S.A.M up and running again. This is all very exciting to me but also very daunting.
Let's take a hard look at Project S.A.M...
Hi S.A.M!
Project S.A.M started out as an idea created during the original Evil Geniuses sophomore or junior year of college. Since that inception, it has been about 3 years. Within those 3 years, we have gotten pretty far!
Our writer, Kevin, was able to flush out a story with approximately 6 missions in it for players to interact with S.A.M!
Our animator, Josh, was able to provide us with unique animations for the different emotions of S.A.M as well as button and UI animations.
Our musician and fledgling programmer, Andres, was able to provide us with numerous background music tracks for different key points in the game.
And I have been able to prototype out a skeleton structure to the game, implement push notifications, and get it up and running in the Unity Engine.
This is all great progress and I am proud of the team for making it that far while also struggling in college and then struggling to find jobs after college.
But What About Now?
Now that it's been a few years and I am left on my own, I am able to take a step back from all these accomplishments and ask myself one of the most dreaded questions in Game Development; Is Project S.A.M worth continuing alone?
I've thought about this for quite a bit. I was ill for most of February and couldn't put forth any progress towards the game physically. After that, I had a family trip to Disney and then a "business" trip to PAXEast to present a panel. It was during PAXEast that I was able to evaluate the current state of Project S.A.M.
I have come to the conclusion that Project S.A.M is worth continuing but it needs a big overhaul to compete in the Indie market.
The Indie games presented at PAXEast are typically in their final stages. They have ironed out most bugs, have final assets in, and perhaps are just tweaking a few aspects, adding more "juice" as we call it, or fixing a few small non-game breaking bugs. That means I can not fully compare them to the current state of Project S.A.M, but I can see what the market is like for current narrative-based games. Project S.A.M is predominantly an interactive narrative.
I've determined that the way S.A.M's gameplay is currently structured is not quite interactive enough. Currently, it is set up so that you are "messaging" S.A.M to talk about current missions, decide paths, and analyze evidence. We are effectively asking the players to perform an action, messaging, that they perform possibly hundreds of times a day. Can we ask that and expect audience retention? Is the story gripping enough to continue to bring them back? Is the story interesting enough to hold their attention for all 6 missions?
I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't know.
We haven't been able to get the game to a state where the full game is playable from start to finish with all the choices cataloged, S.A.M's emotional state adjusted and shifted, and the real-time pauses implemented. No one has been able to play through the story or read through it in its entirety from start to finish in an environment that mirrors how the game will play. I believe this is a major problem.
How do we fix this?
Over the course of these years working on S.A.M, there have been numerous updates. I have learned a lot more about programming and system structure and our engine, The Unity Game Engine, has made some massive changes to their development practices & render pipelines (just to name two out of possibly one hundred changes).
This means that after learning this and seeing these new updates...I think Project S.A.M needs an overhaul from the development standpoint. Working alongside an EVIL affiliate, Joseph Chew, I plan to overhaul the entire system structure of S.A.M. During this time we will also work on making a generic template for all future game projects. One that has the structure already in place for "common functionalities found in most games." For example, Scene Loaders, Sound Manager, Networking, etc... This template will allow us to take care of the "common" aspects of any game we start and instead focus on the core gameplay structure of the game. It will also aid us in rapidly prototyping future concepts we have.
Along with this massive overhaul, I will also be taking the time to prototype the game out in Twine where testers can play through the entire story from start to finish and provide feedback. This way the story can begin to go through an editing process instead of waiting towards the middle or end of the development cycle to begin that. This should have been done a long ass time ago.
In addition to all of this, I will also be taking a critical look at the core gameplay. I currently don't believe that the "messaging" style of gameplay is interactive enough to appeal to players and retain them. Of course, I could very well be wrong depending on how the story feedback goes. I will be writing up a few blog posts or design docs on possible gameplay changes or implementations that could add more interactivity to the game while not subtracting from the story itself.
Oh, Quack is that All?
Yes, ducklings. That is all for now. If you've stayed with me through this entire post, know that I greatly appreciate you. I will be posting weekly to this blog on the development progress Project S.A.M or Evil Quacks is making.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns you can find me on twitter @TheWhiteRose014 or just message the entire team @EvilQuacks. If you can not possibly state your message in 280 characters then feel free to send us a message via the Contact Form on the Home page of this site.
You can also find some past videos the other Evil Geniuses have done on the home page as well or our youtube channel.
Thank you again for your time and patience as we continue on this adventure!
Remember to always Be Your Evil Self.
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