#69
Guest Post: Ryan Span / Alpha Wave
Posted by Lars Simkins
Hi everyone! For once it isn’t Lars writing one of these, so don’t be alarmed if it lacks his unique (and hilarious) mix of optimism and despair. Instead you’re getting me, Ryan Span, the head writer on FRONTIERS and project lead on our new Alpha Wave initiative. Which is exactly what I wanted to talk to you guys about. To give you more of a look behind the scenes, and show you what we’re all about at AWE. (Is that an excellent acronym or what?)
AWE yeah
Lars has always championed honesty and transparency when developing FRONTIERS, and I completely share his feelings on that count. You can expect the same kind of openness from me and the Alpha Wave team. So, first off, let me give you a rundown of our manpower and how we’re using it.
OUR HEROIC TEAM
NATHAN
Nathan Jensen is our main programmer, graduated in Games Design at Brisbane’s Griffith University with several college awards under his belt. He’s been bashing out the vast majority of our code in record time, and doing an excellent job all around. Euclidean is his first project with us but it won’t be the last.
CURTIS
Curtis Rochelle is a fresh graduate of the brutal game development program over at SMU Guildhall, with a Master’s in level design. He’s in charge of making our levels dangerous and dangerously fun to play. Keeping players on their toes in a game like Euclidean is a big task, and I’m glad Curtis is on the job.
RYAN
And then there’s me, designing the gameplay and atmosphere, managing the projects and people, torturing the metaphors, and actually doing our voice work as well. Euclidean and the Everton Experiment are going to be AAD’s first games to feature voices. It’s not my first foray into voice acting, and I like to think it’s going to be pretty awesome:
GUY
Lastly, we have our good friend, this guy. You may have heard of him. The one who does the thing. Well, he’s still doing the thing, and he’s doing it full-time. What, then, is his involvement with us?
WHY AAD?
AWE is set up to function totally independently from FRONTIERS. Anything that affects one project doesn’t affect any other. If Lars has a few free minutes to knock up some art assets for us or offer some consulting, great. If he’s neck-deep in bugs for a month and can’t even come up to breathe, AWE’s release schedule carries on undeterred, since we have plenty of friends and freelancers willing to step up to the plate.
So if Lars is only tangentially involved, I hear you ask, why bother affiliating these AWE games with AAD Productions at all? Why give him a piece of our pie?
Well, reason one is the fact that I’m getting to talk to you guys right now. FRONTIERS has probably the most dedicated and supportive fanbase of any game I’ve ever seen. You guys know what we stand for. You appreciate what we’ve done so far and I doubt you’ll be disappointed by what we’ve got coming up. It’s hugely valuable to be able to reach such an engaged audience.
Reason two is personal. We’re a team. I love FRONTIERS, I’ve put more than a year of my life into it and I want to see it through, so if AWE can help fund development company-wide, that’s what I’m gonna do. Two years ago today I barely knew Lars. Now I consider him a really close friend and I wouldn’t dream of doing this without him.
EUCLIDEAN & FRIENDS
If you’ve kept up with Lars’s posts over the lifetime of FRONTIERS, you know what a huge money sink art can be. That’s why we chose Euclidean as our pilot project. It’s superbly abstract, and the whole concept lends itself to a stripped-down, classic Alone In The Dark kind of art style. It looks great both in VR and on a screen, and it has some important advantages for development.
Stripped-down art style equals stripped-down costs, and stripped-down deadlines. That makes Euclidean more likely to turn a worthwhile profit -- and to be a satisfying game, by making the best use of our skills and resources. We’ve actually spent so little creating Euclidean that it’s a no-risk venture for all of us. Which is exactly according to our sinister master plan, and which means that every copy will go a long way towards boosting that _other_ game you really want to see finished.
Really, what I’m talking about is scope: How big your idea is and how much work it’s gonna take. It’s probably the most important concept to keep in mind when developing an indie game. We all know how easy it is to overestimate what you can pull off in a reasonable timeframe with the resources you’ve got. (Lars can speak about this at length.) So, we’re aiming for the tightest scope a single-player, story-driven, first-person game can have. How? I shall tell you!
Environments:
- Euclidean consists of blocks, rocks and other basic geometric shapes.
- The Everton Experiment takes place in one room and one hallway.
- Ariadne's Thread is a literal hedge maze.
Interactivity:
- Virtually everything in Euclidean will kill you on touch.
- TEE’s only interactive feature is the Button.
- In Ariadne's Thread you can read certain things along the way. That’s it.
Controls:
- Euclidean only needs WASD movement.
- TEE has WASD movement and one key for interaction.
- Ariadne's Thread only needs WASD movement.
Etc. etc.. Story, game duration, all of it is in service to creating the best experience we can on the smallest budget. Not the easiest task in the world, but it’s been done, and with style. There are some excellent indie titles out there which we used for inspiration, like Richard & Alice, Year Walk, Silent Hills P.T., and CONSORTIUM. They all do a great job of storytelling on a budget. And then there’s the low-poly classics from my childhood like Another World (Out of This World for our American friends), Alone In The Dark (so good it deserves to be mentioned twice), and even Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. That last one might surprise people, but I’ve always loved M2M’s flair at giving context to your missions and actions. Comparatively, the entirety of The Everton Experiment is an exercise in context.
VR IS A STUPID GIMMICK AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT
Let’s be honest. Until we start seeing properly-working commercial hardware, VR is going to keep being more of a conversation piece than a real way of playing games. Oculus have promised us 2016 and SteamVR December, but we’re not gonna wait for them to get their shit together. Plus, there’s always going to be people who can’t or won’t use the technology. Believe me, I can relate; I can’t properly see 3d TV or movies because of eye problems. I’m very glad 2d hasn’t gone all the way out of style.
So while we’re pushing the VR angle, because it’s cool and there’s a serious dearth of good VR games out there, we’ve got no intention of making it exclusive. We’re developing Euclidean and the others to be just as playable on your desktop or laptop screen.
My personal mantra is, things aren’t fun because they’re in VR. They’re fun because they’re fun. VR is a very different environment, you need to tweak a lot of the usual development bits and bobs in order to make it work, but the core of a video game remains the same: Storytelling, immersion, and gameplay. Those translate across any kind of technical gulf.
It’s going to be extremely difficult to predict how this new medium will shake out, at least until the hardware matures. Which, to me, is all the more reason to go pioneering. I want Alpha Wave to be at the forefront of this emerging technology, with games that are -- as Lars put it -- actual games that are fun to play, rather than glorified tech demos. By the time SteamVR and Oculus start releasing their commercial versions, we plan to already be in a good position, with two games released and one set to come out shortly after.
OKAY, I’M CONVINCED. CAN I HELP?
Yes you can, and thank you for asking!
Nowadays every game needs to stage a big press offensive to get noticed in this saturated market. Telling your friends is great, but actually, the most helpful thing you can possibly do is:
- Buy our game from your favourite retailer (when it’s out)
- Play the excellent game you just bought
- Leave an honest and forthright review
- Profit!
Reviews are literally gold dust to an indie game developer (and indie writers as well, I can say from experience). Even just a few lines might be enough to convince another person to get it and maybe to leave their own review. That review might sell another copy, and another, and you get the picture.
If you’re strapped for cash, there’s always other ways of supporting us, such as voting for us on Steam Greenlight when we run our combined AWE campaign, which will put all three games plus future ones under one umbrella. Which leads us conveniently into our last segment!
HOW LONG ARE WE TALKING HERE?
Euclidean is set for a release either at the end of the month or in July. Which isn’t bad for a project that didn’t even exist until April, and has been developed solely in our spare time. That should give you an idea of the attainability of our goals. The aim is to release one of these games every 3-4 months if not sooner, which means we’ll be kicking out The Everton Experiment around the end of Q3/beginning of Q4, and Ariadne’s Thread will follow suit by Christmas/early 2016.
We’re not looking beyond that schedule yet. First we knuckle down and create what’s in front of us, and sell it at a price point that reflects the scope of each game. That’s our number one goal for Alpha Wave: Small, inexpensive, and enjoyable. We’re planning to list Euclidean for $3.14, and it’s gonna be worth every penny.
TL;DR
Whew, this has gotten a touch long, hasn’t it? I shall stop talking now.
In closing, to all our awesome fans, thanks for reading, for sticking with us, and for believing in us. We won’t let you down.
-- Ryan
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Thanks for the update Ryan! And since you're too modest I'm going to plug the book you just finished on your behalf - it's called The Imposter Prince and I'll be sure to post a link for everyone once it's available.
If you have any questions or comments for Ryan feel free to post them below, he'll be returning later to answer using this account. - L