In the spirit of fleshing out my post count, I decided to write about a post I read on Coyote’s blog, instead of simply leaving a comment there. Basically, he talks about having a gimmick, an idea, which stands out from the crowd, and how few games have one.

In my mind, this one’s easy. Text. You use text. Or, more accurately, storyline/premise. A paragraph, a single line, and a skilled writer can ignite interest that would take a legion of 3D modellers to do via pretty graphics.

The irony is you could take the 3D models from that space game, use the exact same mechanics and whatever, wrap two different narrative layers around the sucker and have two different feeling games. Let me list some sci-fi :

- Star Trek
- Starship Troopers
- Star Wars
- Buck Rogers

Each of these feel different. I stuck to the ones which use pretty generic spaceships and suchlike, so no settings where the art alone can create feel, like Warhammer 40K or Stargate. Now, if you just post up some screens from each of these examples, they all look the same. Spaceships and alien monsters and ray guns. It’s once you start to describe them, the storylines, that the different feel emerges. Star Trek’s sense of exploration of new frontiers and diplomacy with alien races, Starship Troopers take on politics and war, Star Wars with it’s thin wrapper of sci-fi over what is essentially a fantasy story, Buck Rogers with it’s more golden era sci-fi derring-do. Look, I’ve started to separate them even in this sentence, no pictures involved whatsoever.

But game developers…are oblivious. If you follow the links in my last rant you can read a panel of “experts” talking about character. They make me wince they miss the point so badly. You see technology is what they believe will allow them to create characters the player connects with, emotionally. We won’t be able to create great characters until we have our models perfectly photo-realistic! Gah, headpain again. No. No one thought Alyx Vance from Half Life 2 was a real person, no matter how perfectly bump mapped and lip synced she was. The thing these guys don’t understand is you don’t try to fool your audience by hiding the illusion, you get them to buy into it. When they do, they will bring the characters to life themselves, via their own imaginations, infinitely more powerful than the latest gfx cards. You do that with great stories and well written characters. Not bump mapping. If we’re involved in the plot, we forget that we are looking at flat 2D projections on a monitor. Bump mapping doesn’t cause us to get lost in your world like that. They’ve missed the fact that audiences all around the world go to movies with the most “realistic” graphics imaginable all the time, yet when the plot or characters are rubbish the whole experience is forgettable.

Of course, they will go to these panels, nodding sagely as someone spouts on about the virtues of photo-realistic graphics, then go back to their companies and spend many, many times the cost of employing an entire team of skilled writers on developing marginally improved gfx. Why bother hiring writers when you could do like these guys and let your 14 year old son write the plot.

Yeah, right. Check out this list I spotted over at Iron Tower Studios :

LINK

Holy cow that’s quite a list. Yeah, right, dead. Seems pretty vital to me. And, as a side note, I was quite pleasantly surprised at how many adventure games there are in development. I’d gotten the impression the genre was on it’s last breath. Seems the gaming press has let me down once again. Still, good to know.

And I see a Lone Wolf game on that list! Ah, that brings back memories. Here’s hoping they don’t mess it up.

Viva la PC! Viva la future.

-Gareth

I promised ranting, and ranting you will get. The target of my ire in this case is something spotted at Scorpia’s, a bunch of mainstream game designers who once again took the opportunity to berate the gaming industry of which they are a part for its lack of creativity and courage, and how it should be challenging peoples’ mindsets and changing the way that we interact with each other, etc. They do this every year at game designer conferences, the speeches are pretty much recycled.

This kind of thing pisses me off immensely, not only with these guys but with art types in general. The arrogant way they claim they are going to create some piece of art which changes and challenges my outlook on life, like they are handing out some of their divine insight to us boor unenlightened saps. This is the mindset that leads to a bunch of snooty art critics all wetting their pants over a picture an artist has painted in blood and urine because it is so “meaningful” and because they have become bored with traditional art. Just paint me a nice landscape you jackass. One that doesn’t stink up my flat.

Now, that annoyance is partially tempered by pity. I feel sorry for these developers. They are like tigers in cages, cages they built themselves. You see, the mainstream industry has developed in a way that traps designers in their own success. You make a hit game and it’s awesome! Money rolls in and brings with it acclaim. Sweet. But then you get told “Do it again” by your publisher, who really, really likes large barrels of money and whom you sold your soul to in order to make the thing in the first place. For example : Bungie is going to be milked for the Halo franchise until Microsoft drains the last drop of profit from its desiccated husk.

So these famed and successful designers, they make a great game or two and then get trapped making similar games, ad infinitum. They pace their cages but there isn’t any way out (well, there is, but they miss it). And with no way to expand there is nowhere left to go but inwards. So they turn inwards for meaning, to give their jobs some sense of greater purpose. The thing is they aren’t really doing this because they want to bring meaning to players or enlighten humanity. They are doing it to find meaning for themselves in the lives they have chosen, when they sit there creating games where players beat up tigers for the gold they inexplicably carry. I guess it’s some type of midlife crisis type of thing. They start believing themselves philosophers and artists instead of craftsmen.

I don’t want my world outlook challenged you pompous twits, I like my world outlook. I want you to put together a fun, well crafted experience. Pete Molyneaux especially annoys me these days. What happened to him after Dungeon Keeper? He’s become so divorced from the simple basics of gameplay that the only thing that seems to excite him is seeing how people will react to something, like a kid who shakes up an ant farm just to see how the ants will scurry around. I’ve seen this kind of syndrome in Dungeons and Dragons before, when DMs become bored with being DM. Instead of working to create an enjoyable scenario for the players they start chucking in too much rubbish just to see how the players will react. Taking away their gear so they will have to deal with situations at a disadvantage, that will be fun, right? No.

Cut it out now guys, it’s tedious. You’re not fighting to uplift humanity, don’t kid yourselves. Make me more solid, enjoyable RPGs, dammit.

I suppose, before I carry on, I’d better rewind a bit and introduce myself and Scars of War.

Hello. My name is Gareth. I live in sunny South Africa, which, for those joining us from the 1st world, is the part of the map labeled “There Be Dragons". By day I am a dashing young software developer, by night I am a dark and brooding Indie Game Developer, performing my secret machinations from my bat-infested underground lair.

Ok, maybe there aren’t any bats, but I see a few cobwebs around the place.

Scars of War is the culmination of almost 3 years of work. Actually about 7, it’s been 7 years since I seriously started pursuing game development as a past time in University. But 3 years since I started working with the Torque Game Engine. We’ll use that as a benchmark since it represents the point where I was first willing to spend money on buying game dev assets. When I “got serious” about it, so to speak. And it’ll probably be at least another year or so before SoW is done.

So what is Scars of War, this game I’ve been slaving over for years, spending cash I could otherwise have used on hookers and booze? Time to whip out the little PR blurb I wrote :

Scars of War is a mature fantasy role playing game set in the aftermath of costly war between neighboring nations. You play a veteran of that war, drafted to fight at a young age, who now finds himself (or herself) somewhat adrift. Events are in motion which will end up dragging you into them and forcing you to pick your allies and enemies carefully. There is no clear cut good guys versus bad guys in SoW, only different groups with different goals, goals more complex than simply “Destroy the world, mwahahaha".

Mature fantasy? Sounds like porn. Maybe I’ll get a lot of accidental customers, horny old men thinking they’re purchasing something involving Barely Legal Teens.

So what is SoW, really? Well, it’s a role playing game, as stated. You will take on the persona of a character in a fantasy world, as in other RPGs. But it is a move away from the happy-bright-funland style of fantasy roleplaying the market seems to be saturated with, the type aimed solely at providing power trip/dress up fantasies to adolescents. It’s not going to shy away from more adult themes, like the real cost of war, or man’s inhumanity towards man, nor will it paint characters in broad strokes of White and Black. If you are looking to earn Good or Evil Points, might I suggest you instead go lurk around the Fable 2 boards? Hey, I hear Evil guys get sweet horns, so you can tell how evil they are by looking at them! Awesome.

If you are interested in more details on the SoW back story, let me take a moment to once again point you to the forums. You can also read a comprehensive feature list and see some screenshots. If you happen to register and pledge your undying loyalty to my cause, hey, that’s cool too.

Why did I set out to make a “mature fantasy” RPG? Well, because I like that theme, simply enough. There isn’t actually anything wrong with having a morally unambiguous, bright and happy RPG game. Nothing at all. But my preferences lie with a less clear cut story, a grittier, darker setting, characters with ulterior motives. And it’s not an area explored much in RPGs, so thats what I settled on.

Whew, well, that’s the boring introduction out the way, now we can get on with the incoherent ranting and raving.

Right, so I’ve decided to try this “public game development” thing that Coyote talked about. In that spirit, I hearby dub this url as The Official Developer Diary for Scars of War, the upcoming indie RPG from yours truly, set to knock socks from feet sometime in the not too distant future.

The dev diary idea is appealing to me for a few reasons :

1) I’m a lazy/cheap bastard. I haven’t gotten round to really learning the ins & outs of web development, and the cheapskate in me doesn’t want to pay a professional web developer to do me one until I’ve had a serious crack at it. The voice in my head goes “you write code for a living, come on, how hard could it be?". That voice has gotten me in trouble before, but for some reason I still keep on listening to it. So I’m going to give it a try. Until I do so or concede defeat this blog can serve as a nice interim solution.

2) More importantly than 1, the idea is that having an audience will motivate me to work harder. You’d feel a bit arb saying “Um, yeah, this week I goofed off and played the Witcher. So no coding really, but at least I collected another 2 picture cards with nekkid women on them!!". Motivation through fear of public humiliation. I like it.

3) I can get people used to coming round to this domain for SoW updates, so when the proper site goes up we can transition more smoothly to that. The Codex has been a generous host, but it’s time to start building an independent web presence. Oooh, I feel all “Marketer-ish” already. Stop me if I start promising a “Revolutionary Next-Gen RPG Experience!", please.

4) I can satisfy my urge to rant and list it under “PR” in my mind.

5) I can open the official Scars of War forum, since there will actually be something to talk about now. We can compare Witcher cards collected, or something.

So, with that, I once again welcome you to the official Scars of War board. Still got some details to fix, like the green font (like I said, Lazy Bastard), but after that it should be smooth sailing. Feel free to register of the forums. Hopefully this will be a fun ride.

- Gareth