Follow these links for Part I and Part II of our GDC adventures.

Or for those who are up-to-date…

Cue tiredness.

After the conference, there was a certain amount of lethargy and Peter had decided to selfishly nurture a cold, but we had another day to kill.

We saw John Carter - which despite the critical drubbing, was much enjoyed. We also went on a near spiritual journey to find the world’s most authentic Chicago Pizza outside of Chicago. Eventually, we found a great place where the (literal) pizza pie arrived and the waitress couldn’t tell what the fillings were under the tomato topping. Oh, yeah, baby - miscellaneous Chicago pizza!

With a vague idea of finding a couple of John Carter books, we headed down-town and wandered past a park with a sign saying: “Don’t feed the parrots” (Even the Americans were, like: “Parrots? We have parrots?”). Thankfully, we managed to avoid getting eaten by the hungry, yet invisible avian hordes and visited City Lights. City Lights is a rather famous San Francisco bookshop - more alternative than mainstream - so, despite a strong showing from the basement SF section, we finally got our books elsewhere. But do check out the beat poetry library upstairs.

As Peter became increasingly, romantically involved with his flu (jeez, bro, get a room), he headed off to find a café to crash in. The rest of us then totally failed to see Alcatraz - I have no photographs of Alcatraz to prove it. Turns out this popular penitentiary was all booked up until the Monday after we left. I assume the Internet is to blame - curse your devilishly quick, mouse-clicking skills - but it could still do with a bunch of on-the-day tickets, for the lacksidasical traditionalists who turn up like saps on the day.

On the way to not seeing Alcatraz, we did see loads of naked cyclists protesting against… something. Clothes maybe? A couple fell off which looked rather… painful.

On our last evening we went to a Vietnamese restaurant which had a brilliant menu, with lots of different dishes (rather than the same sauce with five different types of meat). Once again, I was struck by the quality of American food along with the golden rule of thumb in comparison to the UK: it’s either half price or twice as much. Happy days.

Stuffed with knowledge, Vietnamese food, and luggage creaking with business cards, we waved goodbye to Romer and Brandon at the airport, forced cold pizza between our jaws (that Chicago pizza kept on giving) and then waited for 8 hours until our plane turned up. Somewhere in there, the American clocks went back, then there was jet lag, and now the UK clocks have changed. My body clock now hates me. Why do I keep waking up at 3:00am?

So there you go: the Griffin had great time, we did plenty of business, and Distant Star has gotten a coding boost. American immigration is a bit annoying, and Alcatraz was probably easier to get into in the past (say, circa. prohibition era). America has parrots which are being denied food, even as we speak, and nudity is not good during cycle crashes. I don’t like whisky and God hates game designers.

GDC was, in short, brilliant.


The Griffin

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You can read Part I of our GDC adventures here.

GDC got busy real quick, with its rampant horde of 22,500 attendees. The first two days were summits and tutorials, covering topics like Social and Online games, or Smartphone and Tablet games.

While Peter geared up for business meetings, Trevor and I attended the lectures. Most were superbly good - I think I broke my note-taking hand. We were also spoilt for choice: there were 4-6 occurring simultaneously all day, all week. At the start I was in six lectures a day. Reoccurring themes were social games, free-to-play, new funding methods, and the growth of games on transportable devices. My personal highlights included: Sid Meier - Interesting Decisions; a couple of Volition lectures, one talking about design culture, the other, playtesting and metrics; Valve talking about Team Fortress 2; and Giordano Bruno Contestable talking about moving Bejewelled Blitz to free-to-play; and then almost everything else I went to. Now we’re back - and just to finish us off - our passes give full access to the recordings in the GDC vault, which will amount to a specialist home-study course for months to come. I’m gonna need a cheese-press for my brain, just to get all the info in there.

On Monday night I tried to catch ‘Indie Game: The Movie’, joining the queue somewhere near… LA. Needless to say, most people were turned away. So, instead, The Blazing Griffin Massif all ended up in the Bourbon and Branch with some lovely folks from Glasgow Caledonian University. This was a pretty awesome, speakeasy themed cocktail bar. We had to book in advance, locate a featureless wall and doorway, give a password and were met by a 1920s style hostess. Inside were a million ingredient bottles, candles and elaborate fittings. I had a couple of great cocktails, one (a Sazerac) involving absinthe, and then out through a secret passage in a book case. At least, I thought we left via a bookcase - may have been a small door in the back of my head, what with the absinthe and all.

A pretty standard night, then.

The main conference (and expo) started on Wednesday. Everything became so much busier, and there was more dashing backward and forward between the different conference buildings. At one point, we looked over and Notch was waiting with us to cross, cunningly in disguise (sans hat). At another, two vocal folks were out with placards, one of which said ‘Thou shalt not monetize thy neighbour’ and the other, ‘God hates game designers.’ I’m pretty sure it was an enthusiastic marketing stunt. If not, they’d definitely done their game dev. research. In the background, was the thumping music from the energy drink encampment, where young ladies in stretch, blue lycra were trying to thrust energy drinks into keyboard-callused hands. Ah, the buxom, siren-like call of lycrinated caffeine.

The GDC Expo floor was packed with more than 300 exhibitors, along with busy career and business areas. GDC Play was also providing a place for new developers to showcase games. It was all rather large: the expo was in a space the size of multiple… big things, like rugby pitches, so there were plenty to investigate. That included the IGF (Independent Games Festival) stand, where we caught Dear Esther, Johann Sebastian Joust, and Fingle - great games one and all. With the Scottish Games Pavilion now open for business, Peter was attending meetings. Despite a few no-shows (it’s not as if there was a hugely distracting game conference going on, tisk), business was done. All was good.

Other notable events:

We snuck into the IGN event, where indie devs got a chance to show off their latest wares to devs, press, and other invites. Plenty of good stuff on show. We ate mightily of the chips and dips; long was the indie game perusal; epic was the talent on show.

We saw the 14th Annual IGF Awards and a bit of the 12th Annual Games Developers’ Choice Awards (GDCA’s). This was surprisingly glitzy - there were lights and seats and everything. Notch was back, out of disguise (plus hat), but we left at the start of the Game Developers’ Choice Awards to meet up with a couple of Trevor’s friends. Chatting to said friends, Romer and Brandon, over the course of the show, it looks like we’ve got a couple more recruits on Distant Star, thus tripling our crack team of ninja coders. Wooh, hoo!

We also hung out at the Scottish Whiskey Evening, which was a social event to which Scottish companies could invite a number of business folks, for whisky, food, and (thankfully (1)) beer. This was a good chance to catch up with other conference peeps, as well as the Scottish game developers we should be speaking to more often back in Scotland.

So it was, by the end of the conference, we found GDC to be incredibly, awesomely, amazingly (2) useful - for business, for learning, and free energy drinks.

Part III concludes our GDC adventure.


The Griffin

(1) I’m such a traitor to my Scottish heritage.
(2) Please look at this page for more epic superlatives.

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Just over a week ago, the Griffin was at GDC in San Francisco. Feathers combed, beak polished and we were off, flying Edinburgh to London and on to San Francisco. With British Airways, that is…

Peter is not a man who ‘is one’ with plane travel. While he gulped down a horse tranquilizer in an effort to sleep while we all ‘thumbed our noses at the laws of physics’, and Trevor read the biggest hardback book that would still fit through the airlock, I concentrated on staying awake so I didn’t miss any inflight meals. It’s warped, it’s twisted, but I love those little foil-covered dishes of delights. Mmmm… individually wrapped morning rolls.

After eleven hours, and too many inflight movies, the plane touched down, and Peter was gently encouraged from the plane with the sound of tearing Velcro.

American immigration was fun (in the way that the Black Death was a ‘bit of an amusing romp’). Trevor skipped through, on the flimsy pretext of already being American, but myself and Peter had an incorrect address for where we were staying. Being entirely unsure about how American addresses work and the guy in the uniform coolly stating ‘we were wasting his time’ we were sent along to the room where plastic gloves and short intakes of breath live. Thankfully, Peter’s laptop coughed out the right address, before the griffin had its posterior investigated. This event reminded me how aggravatingly hostile American immigration can be.

Reaching the BA desk, I found my luggage had decided to ditch me and go on a world tour, reminding me how aggravatingly hopeless BA can be. They were encouraging that my luggage would arrive the next day. Maybe. Definitely. Possibly. In the meantime, they gave me a $50 pre-loaded credit card by way of compensation, so I wasn’t about to complain. No clothes, though. I later bought a game design book with the cash, illustrating that: (A) game development is more important than modesty and (B) It’s kinda cool that BA knew what I wanted.

So we arrived.

San Francisco is a sparkly, modern city overlooking San Francisco Bay. Across the wide-open water is Alcatraz, while up on the hills are the suburbs and their iconic, hill-valley-hill-valley gradients, nestling in amongst the morning haze. The suburbs are probably the bit you think of when you imagine San Francisco. There are semi-tropical plants here and there, but it’s not too humid. There are some great murals and plenty of wooden buildings - all that wood makes for elaborate architecture. Then there’s that little cookery book store with its selection of modern and antiquarian cook books, or the café where you put your name on the list and wait out on the street corner for a seat, while a guy’s dog gets a bowl of water. Across the intersection, the local animal sanctuary is showing animals off outside the pet shop in the hope folks will adopt. While down the road is a donut shop or a café descriptively called ‘Pie’.

We were right in the middle of this picaresque district, staying in a quant, old, wooden house. The furniture was worn and comfy, there were enough pillows on each bed to build a whole new one, and we were greeted with a bottle of red wine on arrival. Conveniently, the house was only twenty minutes away from the city centre on the Muni (the local tram / underground system) arriving within a block of the Moscone Centre, where GDC was to be held. As we turned up a couple of days early, we had plenty of time to get settled in and find our way around before the conference kicked off.

It was lovely weather. I bought myself a hat before my noble (ok, receding) hairstyle resulted in ‘scalp crackling’. We checked out the Golden Gate Bridge (no mist), saw the Palace of Fine Arts (a huge, though somewhat anachronistic, ancient Greek-style-temple-thing) and had a meal at a crab restaurant. There may have been some random photography of ‘American stuff’ like school buses and fire trucks (sorry Trevor) and we had a wander through China Town. Optimistically, we also bought a bunch of food to cook for ourselves back in the house. Despite America’s reputation for fast food and low-quality produce, the supermarket was, as I’ve always found, packed full of lovely stuff. And, despite a guy I was chatting to mentioning America doesn’t do cheese (?), there was plenty rennet-curdled milk-products to be had. Trevor even got himself a… gnrgh… (cough)… goat brie (1).

On Sunday, we registered for the conference and picked up passes, which was a surprisingly streamlined process. I also picked up my luggage after one of the guys in Codeplay (the company we share an office with) had it delivered to his hotel. Thanks Neil :)

One night, I don’t know which, we were shaken awake to discover a minor quake. As it was mild, and all such things come under ‘awesome tourism’ if you’re a Scottish visitor, it was a pity I was unable to photograph tectonic slippage. Probably would’ve been blurry, anyhow.

The Griffin.

PART II continues our GDC adventures.


(1) I thought he’d rolled in something…

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I'm sure a few of you have been wondering why we decided to acquire The Ship, so I thought I'd shed some light on our thinking as well as on some of the results to date.  Those not of a business-like disposition look away now...

Reasons for acquiring The Ship:

Firstly, it's a great game. We love it. 'Nuff said.

Secondly, The Ship was (is) generating small amounts of revenue. As a studio looking to grow quickly, the value of having a stream of income - even a small one - is extremely high.

Thirdly, we wanted to gain access to data which would be otherwise difficult for us to obtain. It has always been in our plan to use digital distribution platforms, and top of that list is Steam. Thanks to having a product on there, we can now back up the various hypotheses in our business plan with some top-notch empirical data.

Fourthly, potential for a sequel - the Ship had proven appeal (and God knows we were keen) so it was likely a sequel would be well received.

Lastly, and most importantly, were the players. Not only are they a great bunch (the most discerning players in the universe, of course) there are also lots of them. The existing player base of The Ship was just under 160,000 prior to us acquiring it. So instead of starting from ground zero, we - as a studio - were keen to build a relationship with a lot of enthusiastic players like us.

A touch unfortunate, though, was the fact that a large number of players were inactive in The Ship community due to lack of updates or development over the last couple of years. So we had to come up with a way of re-awaking things.

Prod them with a claw?

Enter the Xmas Griffin:

We came up with the plan for the Xmas Griffin a couple of days before the Steam Winter Sale. The Ship was due to go on that sale but might not have gotten a lot of attention because of the other awesome games on it. So in typical Blazing Griffin fashion we thought we do something different. And we did this, which worked pretty well.

We were quite blatantly honest about what we wanted to achieve and everyone seems to appreciate that. In short, we wanted to give something away while also re-awakening the community with a bit of viral marketing.

What went right?

Press

As soon as the sale went live and our plan was in place, we got in touch with a few other indie devs to see if they knew any press who might be interested in what we were doing. Andrew Smith from Spilt Milk Studio put us in touch with Lewie Procter and DIYGamer.com who posted this which managed to alert Alec Meer at Rock Paper Shotgun which in turn led to this. And, in the blink of our griffin-like eye, a bunch of articles popped up on the web, which was great for web traffic as well as for sales, and, critically, it simply let players know what where were doing.

Enthusiasts

With news starting to spread, some of the diehard fans, and those who had clung to the eternal hope that something might one day happen to The Ship, got in touch and expressed supreme excitement. One was particularly awesome (link).

Engaging with fans like this was a great way to spread the word, and their enthusiasm for The Ship was certainly a great thing to have on the comments sections of the web pages we appeared on.

And we sure enjoyed talking to y'all.

New Players

So did all this good stuff actually translate into new players? Yes it did. Just under 40,000 players worth. J!

Our daily average new players since last October has been just under 400 players a day, which, granted, is slightly skewed because of the Christmas period, but we're still gaining about 120 players a day at the moment at a pretty steady level.

All in all the revival of The Ship community is going well...

However...

What went wrong?

Technical Issues

What we tried with The Ship over Christmas was slightly novel - perhaps not unique but at least interesting - however it was novel enough to "break" Steam just a teeny bit.

"Hey, we never touched it! It just kinda went funny."

Due to the age of The Ship and the way Steam manages licenses, most of the players who had bought the game prior to a date (somewhere in 2008) weren't receiving their extra keys, which was more than a pity: not only was it slightly annoying for them and for us, they were the largest portion of our historical player-base.

In the end the Devs over at Steam were able to quickly resolve the issue without too much loss of face on our part.

So, um, yeah, we caused a Steam-patch. "Go us!"

And, on the whole, the feedback from players was positive, with most being excited to just play the game. This leads us to next point....

Feedback

The response we got from the internet to our experiment over Christmas was great! However it did mean that there was a lot of chit-chat in general, not just from technical issues, but players getting back to us for all sorts of conversations. Which - while it was awesome and more than appreciated - was of a scale we'd grossly underestimated. Neargh! The time it took to get through it, I thought I was typing with claws...

Needless to say we'll try to have a more planned approached next time we do any more experiments.

Or maybe not. That's griffins for ya.

Conclusion:

Overall, the acquisition of The Ship and our experimenting has proven to be good for us, and we hope to continue in that vein.

"So," you ask, "What's happening to The Ship now?"

Well we're almost, almost - ALMOST ready to let the interwebs know what we've got in store for The Ship but until then The Griffin, well he say nothing. His beak is sealed. 

But, not too tight.

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Hello there fellow game-a-vores -

My, my what a frosty day. Saw a squirrel at the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens yesterday; it had a huge stash of peanuts in a tree trunk. Don’t remember peanuts growing wild in Scotland, but there you go - that’s progress for you. Next it’ll have a stash of cappuccinos still warm in the paper cups. Busy little fella’ or fell-ette (hard to tell which - didn’t want to stare).

Talking of busy…

We’ve been beating the business plan into shape and developing our business strategy with our good friend Jude. We need that wicked piece of paper to sort out all things finance, and it’s sorely needed if I’m going to get my beloved decaf in the morning. Ever seen a bear deprived of its herbal infusions of a morning? Not pretty. Doing the business plan has led to some interesting discussions about exactly what we think the company is about and how to summarise that into one clear sentence; the kind of sentence that doesn’t need one of us stapled to each copy of the business plan to describe what we mean by the phrase ‘world domination’ while waving our arms around. Ach. Turns out, Blazing Griffin has evolved, despite our being hardly out of diapers (metaphorically speaking). Our sentence is: “Blazing Griffin uses games to quickly identify the popularity of intellectual properties and develop them into media franchises.”

DECODED: we want to make lots of games in the same cool settings.

Now why didn’t we just say that?

Design work for Distant Star progresses. We’ve been busy building a paper prototype which is all kinds of fun. Distant Star the boardgame anyone? Cuttin’ an’ stickin’ and having my girlfriend’s cat wander across it, and having flashbacks to primary school where I tried not to colour over the lines and had to be careful not to cut my fingers off with round-ended scissors. Paper prototypes are a great way of iterating on the game and getting everyone involved - design democracy and all that - and describing a board game can be a really good way of getting decisions made. We’ll be iterating on (‘spilling pizza sauce on’) that for a while and, thanks to more round-ended scissors, my fingers are intact.

Continuing with the money theme, and where it comes from, we’re working on server back-end stuff for our games - magical ‘1’s and ‘0’s that will allow us to handle digital purchases and a variety of payment models. The back-up plan is to plant lots of pound coins behind the library and hope they grow… that, and the other business planning we’ve been doing, of course. Mental note: remind Jude about the ‘money tree’ thing.

In the meantime, we’ve also gotten a rather professional artist working on concepting new characters and environments for Full Steam Ahead. How cool is that? More to follow, strictly hush-hush and all that (you won’t tell anyone will you? No? Good), but needless to say we have lots of standy-up boards in the office with pictures on them. We’ll be showing you what Richard’s been up to in a while, if we can shift all that concept goodness from the door.

This fragment of a phone call just occurred in the office:

Unknown caller: ”?”

Peter: “Just slaying dragons. That kind of thing.”

There you go - that’s how much we love you.

The Griffin.

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This last week I’ve been talking to a freelance web developer who works with us here in ScreenWorks. He’s just finishing up a project, and I thought we could get him to help out with some of the endless website stuff that always needs doing around here. He was pretty keen to get involved (We’re making games! And we’re awesome! Can you blame him?), so I came up with a project that needed doing and we sat down to write up a quick contract.

As we were talking things over, I realised the standard terms on work-for-hire contracts, especially for web designers, are frustratingly unfair. The employer almost always ends up owning exclusive rights to the final product, often to the extent that the contractor can’t even legally include it in their portfolio. I’ve had this happen to me more than once, back in my own freelance days - but this is the first time I’ve been on the other side of the table, imposing (by default) unfair and unenforceable constraints on innocent creative types.

Screw that. We’re going to do things a little differently.

So I sat down with the rest of Blazing Griffin to figure out how to do this right. What we want to do is make sure our contractors are getting a fair deal, and that anyone who does a piece of work for us gets to keep a measure of ownership of their own work. I mean, come on - you played BioShock, right? Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? But then, where do you draw the line? Some examples:

• If a 3D modeller creates an item or weapon for The Ship, can he use also use it in a demo reel? In a personal game project? In a game for another company? 
• If a web developer builds us a cool piece of tech for the website or the forums, can she link to it in her portfolio? Re-use it on her personal site? Launch it as a standalone webapp? Licence it to a third party?
• If a coder develops a portable piece of middleware for us, can she licence it to other companies? To our competitors? Use it in her own games?

I think it’s obvious that a contractor should be allowed to do some of these things; it’s pretty clear that some of them aren’t exactly in our best interests, either. It turns out that line is tough to determine, especially when standard procedure out there is to answer every one of those questions with a firm and unrelenting “no.”

In our back-and-forth we came up with a couple ideas, until we hit upon Valve’s Steam Workshop Licence Agreement. At first glance it looks like a pretty standard contract, except it’s in reverse: accepting the Steam Workshop agreement means you grant Valve permission to use your content. We’d like to structure our contracts similarly, so that we get what we need out of the deal (assets, code, whatever) while the creators keep some of the rights to their own work. We may have paid for it, but at the end of the day it’s still their sweat.

It’s a tough question and we’re still not sure what the answer is, so if you have any insight or suggestions (or if you’re a freelance web developer looking for work!), give us a shout!

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Hello, dear players.

If, like us, you're looking forward to a visit from a figure in red(1) then we have good news: it's that time of year, again, where an anthropomorphic expression of great jollity and insane generosity can be seen flying high above the streets and houses, delivering presents to all good game players everywhere.

I am, of course, talking about the CHRISTMAS GRIFFIN.

Hush, listen... Is that a flutter of snowy wings? The scratch of claw on tile? The merry jingle of free gift keys?
It is, indeed! Casting around the office for a suitable gift this year, we came up with chairs, an anglepoise lamp, and carpet tiles - all good, until we tried to wrap the darned lamp...

So we've decided to gift digital.

In an effort to thank some of those who've bought the ship over the years (as well as a transparent attempt at some shameless marketing) we're giving two free game keys to any person who has bought a copy of The Ship on Steam, EVER, EVER.(2)

So at some point today, if you've been a Ship customer, have a look in Steam under Games/Manage Gifts and Guest Passes. In there, you'll find TWO FREE COPIES of the game you can send to friends and, if they activate their free copy, they get ANOTHER free copy.

Now my brain hurts with all this 'recursive freeness', but in short, we're giving you a gift to give away, while trying to spread The Ship like a 1920s flu virus or an Art Deco snowball.

So there you go.

And should you wish to thank the Christmas Griffin, just leave a small sherry and a pound of rump steak by the tree.

Happy Christmas, one and all!

The Blazing Griffin Team.

(1) No, not Julia Roberts

(2) Up to and including the end of the Steam Winter Sale 2011

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The Griffin was at a rather interesting event on 15th November - a games policy meeting at the House of Commons, organized between TIGA and the UK Government. This was an opportunity for a group of Indie studios to mingle directly with MPs at Westminster and discuss government involvement in the games industry. How cool is that? Thankfully, we’d previously been in touch with TIGA and, armed with a general ‘anything interesting going on, let us know’, they’d recommended we come along.

Somewhat strangely, it seemed Blazing Griffin was the only Scottish studio in attendance. Maybe ‘Scotland couldn’t make it’, but it did seem rather remiss given the not-too-recent calls for tax breaks, etc. that had been emanating from north of the border.

That harumph aside, TIGA, Microsoft (of course), and the MPs were up for some productive discussion. The fact that the MPs were keen gamers and had a real interest in games, was unexpected (but definitely useful), and they did spend a good chunk of time collecting feedback on various ideas - such as setting up something like the Creative Content Fund - avowing to report their findings back to their superiors.

The issue of tax incentives was soon raised, with the hope that we might become more competitive with the likes of Canada, France and the USA, whose attractive tax breaks are creating a skills drain in the UK industry. This problem has grown to such a degree, you might be forgiven for thinking there’s a lack of awareness in the higher echelons, that games really are a billion pound industry in this country. Bringing up tax - yet again - was a definite reminder that government policy is only likely to change through a process of gradual erosion (nagging) and a concerted effort to bring game industry issues to the top of the pile.

Along the way, there was a lot to be said about the highs and lows of being an Indie studio, and it seems most folks are facing similar problems. Access to finance is, of course, a common concern. There was also plenty of chat about skills shortages (some finding it easy and others finding it hard to get the necessary talent). There was some interesting discussion about distribution platforms and how different Indies are using them. Everyone was very open about what they were trying to achieve and the projects they were working on, and it was, as ever, a great opportunity to pick up on some development ideas and grow our list of contacts.

All in all a great day!

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OK, it’s time to come clean. We’ve been hinting at a big announcement for a few weeks, and now that we’ve finally signed the deal we can make it public: Blazing Griffin has purchased ‘The Ship: Murder Party’ from Outerlight.

Wait, what? More importantly, why?

Let us explain.

A few months ago we found out about Outerlight’s impending demise and, being fans of The Ship, realised that it would be a crying shame to let such a truly unique game vanish without a trace. Not just that, but we see a lot of unexplored potential in what’s there, and the game still has an active and passionate community of players — exactly the kind of folks we want to make games for.

As for the future of The Ship, well — she’s being steered towards uncharted seas as we speak. With a bit of luck and a fair headwind we’ll be able to let you know the exact nature of our (bold! daring! courageous!) plans for The Ship and her crew sometime soon.

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Hello, Kitkat here.

This still feels rather strange — chatting to you all so soon. Back in AAA land, ‘nobody said nothing’ for years. I still don’t want to big things up too quickly before we get a chance to start showing those things in the game — let actions speak instead of words, as it were — but on the other hand if we don’t keep talking, you’ll wonder why things have gone quiet. I know a week or two is ages if you’re waiting for game updates, but in development land, that’s no time at all. Take an idea, design it, make sure it works with ALL the other ideas, code it, stick pretty pictures on it, test it, release it. Apart from starting to sound like something we might do in an animal sanctuary, those cycles take a while. We mention a thing, then… silence.

So when I say we’ve been talking, designing, working on ‘lists’ and coding underpinning systems (as well as pushing forward some other project work and the business), that may sound rather ‘meh’. But fear not, this meh is important meh…

Scoping

More lists? Yup. Lists are your friend: a rather pedantic friend who wears tank tops, organizes their mail alphabetically, and likes to have everything in its place, but a friend none-the-less.

We’ve put together a ‘game scope’ to both expand the project while imposing some limits. It’s really just a big list of features in a spreadsheet with some estimates on how long they may take to implement. But a lot of those features have been derived from the feedback you’ve been giving us, ranging from usability fixes to ‘more depth please’. Working out even a rough idea about what these features may be, still ate up our time like a delicious taco.

We went through that epic spreadsheet in an equally epic library (in our new office, that small ‘meeting room door’ at the end of the hallway turned out to be a whole library — who knew?). We all got bleary eyed after the hours of discussion, but now have a pretty good idea about what we’ll be adding to Distant Star over the next few months and, just as importantly, what we won’t.

But in the words of Lewis Carroll:

“My, my,” said Alice, “what a lot of stuff…”

Screen Design

Now, scope in hand, Trevor’s spinning up code and I’m moving on to a mixture of screen mock-ups and systems design. While that doesn’t immediately put a new spaceship or a fleshed out tech-tree in your hands, it’s a vital first step.

Spanning usability and gameplay all in one go, those screen mock-ups are important to visualising game changes, while focussing on one of the oft forgotten constraints of software development: ‘If you can’t interface with it, you can’t have it’. Seems obvious, but many game ideas seem to trundle on for ages before discovering ‘No sane person would try to fit that much s**t on a screen’. Thus, many ideas either evolve or die depending on the interface implications, the need for consistent usability across screens, and so on. So I’ve already hurt my head on some seemingly inconsequential usability details, while simultaneously looking at big sweeping system things.

So why doesn’t this ‘clicky thing’ work right NOW?

Yah, I know. It’s all about priorities and it’s going to take a while before changes start to percolate through.

Some of the first things we get out may be a bit funky until we get a handle on the backlog. Additions and improvements are likely to start slow but will grow with gathering momentum, as we design out the changes, build underlying systems, and find more helping hands. We also want to evolve what’s there, rather than bring it all down for months. On the plus side, that means you’ll be getting content as we go. On the negative side it may feel like things are moving more slowly than cold Marmite on a granite slab, but fear not — we are all working like frenzied (space) weasels.

So what is this marvellous ‘stuff’ of which you speak?

I’m pretty sure you’d make the same list as us and, in fact, quite a few of you already have.

Behold, some of the areas we’re looking at including:

• Art and Audio.
• A better exploration experience.
• More intelligent AI, with options for difficulty, etc.
• General improvements in usability.
• More info (manual, etc.)
• A much larger tech tree, while making sure the variables involved have a clear and meaningful effect.
• Story events
• More races
• An interesting, but simple, treatment of trade.
• A more involved combat system
• Creating more Structures (stuff to build on planets)
• A division between planet orbit and surface (allowing planets to be ‘invaded’)
• Some measure of diplomacy.
• Better treatment of ‘habitability’
• Ship design and a more tactical treatment of ships.
• Map updates, galactic features, and a ‘fog of war’.
• Improved resources.
• A look at our revenue model.
• Other stuff.
• Broken stuff.
• Stuff you suggest as we go along.

“Ah, I love the smell of stuff in the morning.” — Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, Apocalypse Now. (1)

(1) Hmm. Strangely, Kilgore didn’t mention our EPIC NEW FORUMS in that quote, but do feel free to come and have a chat, anyway…

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