Coming Soon...

News and updates and amusing observations to come very shortly! (And, most importantly, a typically maggotonian analysis of lessons learned!)
I haven't abandoned you and still love every one of you!

We're currently in the second round of survey tests.
A few comments are trickling through into forums. You can get live, horses' mouths updates on Big Fish and Wendy's blog.
In my next post, we'll take an honest, no-holds-barred look at the public and I'll be certain to share with you the good and the bad alike! There will be an amount of wincing and buttock clenching involved. You have been warned.

And please keep hold of my hand, and accept my apologies if it becomes a tad sweaty. :oO

Psychology of the Interior

Gregor Schneider's Dead House Ur.

Still waiting for the results of the survey to come through...

Within hours of sending the survey build out into the world, it found its way onto every imaginable free download site. Open up your google bar and type in Margrave: The Curse of the Severed Heart; then take your pick from six pages plus of torrents and blogs and so forth!
(Apparently, the game is: the third game in a ruler about an ominous heritage of family Margrejv.)

So, half the team are finishing off Severed Heart, and half have started on M4 (currently titled The Blacksmith's Daughter).
We've been having fascinating discussions about a curious phenomenon which I've blogged often about.
Watching the usability test videos, it's amazing to see the majority of players diving straight into the cottage - scurrying from the moonlit countryside, from the dark forest, and into the comfort of the cottage with its log fires and antique furnishings.
There's a security inside the cottage.
Similarly, four of the five testers did not once leave, or even attempt to leave, the cottage during their session.

I happened upon a fascinating essay written by Agnieszka Mlicka which I thoroughly recommend to you all, for its ramifications are pertinent to anyone who wishes to create a space.

For M4, I've created a derelict town - a town abandoned centuries ago, left to the designs of nature. In many scenes, an interior has become an exterior, with roofless towers and collapsed walls; in others, an exterior has the feel of an interior, with canopies of trees masking the sky and the evening sunlight.
So, I wondered, is there an intrisic set of components that might define a safe haven?
Would a player/reader feel as comfortable sat outside in a walled picnic garden as they would lounging on a sofa in a fire-lit parlour?
What's the difference between a prison cell and a home?

Agnieszka picks out the concepts of purpose and meaning, privacy and public identity, spaces for daydreaming (borrowed from Bachelard's The Poetics of Space), power and control, grids and curves, simplicity and complexity, light and dark, and all manner of other notions.


Another noteworthy find was Sally Augustin's article: Positive Design - Mimicking Nature.
Sally writes:

Humans feel comfortable in slightly darker spaces with slightly lower ceilings that look out over places with slightly higher ceilings that are more brightly lit …

Natural spaces entice us to move forward by conveying a sense of mystery about what’s ahead. In interior environments, a curving hallway motivates us to move on, as long as the environment generally feels safe. In an environment where people do not feel secure, that same curved hallway can seem ominous.

Time allowing, I'll return to some of these thoughts shortly.

In the meantime, I'll stick one of lovely Ben's concepts up for you to enjoy and consider. And do be sure to read through Agnieszka's essay! ;o)

Real

It seems like a lifetime ago when I visited a literary consultant and sat with her in her study as she scrutinized my first ms. She didn't much care for it, and rightly so.
I remember, after she had dismembered me, she was kind enough to offer me comfort. She explained that, no matter how many books she has written and sold, she is always fearful that her new project will be poorly received; she is never quite sure if she is doing it right. Experience offers little consolation.

I'll confess to you, my dear, considerate maggoteers, that I'm terrified.
As I type, the latest build of our game is trickling through the internet and into the homes of two thousand testers. They will score our game, and the results will dictate the amount of exposure and promotion we will get, and whether we will be awarded the Collector's Edition or not, all of which essentially amounts to a potential difference of many thousands upon thousands of dollars. That's proper money that comes out of someone else's pocket; that's real money gambled on my crazy ideas and convictions. Lord help us all!

Last week, the results of the usability tests came through.
Six women were invited to the Big Fish offices to play twenty minutes of Margrave 3. Their every move was recorded: the videos show the player's eye view of the screen, and a webcam captures live footage of the player herself, which is inset in a little window in the top right of the screen. (She doesn't see this - it's added later.)

User number five didn't stay for more than a couple of minutes. When she saw that she was being invited to solve the mystery of the protag's parents' deaths, she decided not to play on because she had recently lost her own father.
It's unbelievably stressful sitting through twenty minutes of a real person playing through one's game, and equally stressful sitting passively through the following ten minute interview. Doing this five times in a row is punishing.
But as a tool, it's ingenious! I could see unequivocally where people were struggling; where people were laughing or scratching their head; where they were engaged or otherwise.

Imagine such a tool at your disposal! It's a direct line into your reader's soul! You cannot argue with it, or reason with it, or offer it any amount of justification. It does not listen to quotes taken from Robert McKee's Story or admire any amount of awards or plaudits in your collection. (Yeah, I started to think of Terminator too then! A peculiar, and perhaps not entirely inaccurate analogy!)
As consumers, none of those women could care one jot about me or my feelings. They wanted an enjoyable experience and if they didn't get one they would pull no punches. They're the people who will ultimately be spending their hard-earned money on a product which promises to entertain them and offer them a fulfilling experience.

Well, my sweet maggoteers - breathe easy with me, for the results were good. A few minor issues here and there, all of which have since been addressed... but a result that I cannot be unhappy with.

So if I cannot be unhappy, I must be happy then!
Well actually I've discovered that the sense of relief is far more powerful than anything else.
When two of the users explained, before the interviewer had even sat down, that they wanted to carry on playing, and that they would buy the game, I didn't think to myself Well done Solvey! Oh no, I was simply relieved.

And now it starts over again, with two thousand people playing for an hour or so.
And then, a week or two after that, the entire five acts go out.
And then, after a month of fine tuning and bug fixing, the game is released to hundreds of thousands of people.
And then they will pour into the forums and make their opinions known to the universe.
And then it starts over with Margrave 4.
I'm just beginning to wonder if this knot in my stomach is to become a permanent fixture, and if I will never again sleep soundly.
It's easy to talk the talk eh? ;o)
On paper, I've done the best I can with all that study and hard work - in theory, everything should be great!
If only the world worked like that.


Do be sure to stay tuned for the next thrilling installment!
Will Solv set the casual gaming world alight? Will he truly make a difference and set a new precedent, changing the way iHOGs are created? Will he curl up in the brumal shadow of mediocrity? Or will he crash and burn?
Take my hand and we'll find out together.

Epic fails:
no service
whore van
mc anus


Epic win:
winter blues

Dressing Up

Whistler's father.

I've been mulling over many ways to present the idea of dressing up.
This is the best solution I have found.

I was pleased to hear Big Fish founder Paul Thelan referring to the interactive novel in a recent interview.
So close!
There isn't enough time or scope in a casual game to create a narrative anything like the narrative of a novel. The idea of breaking an iHOG into 'chapters' is a purely functional device. None of these 'chapters' present scene questions or turn, and more often than not, they develop nothing beyond the opening of a door. They bear none of the characteristics of a chapter. However, it is beneficial to parcel the game into chunks, primarily for purposes of locating one's place chronologically in the game. (Handy for dev and player alike.)

My thoughts are very different now to those I harboured five months ago.
Back then, I figured, largely through misleading feedback and preconceptions, that the story of a casual game is tolerated, rather than treasured; that the act of solving puzzles and exploring beautiful environments took precedence over any story device.
Let's have a look at how plot can give meaning.

The standard HO scene goes like this:
Player studies a scene, looking for listed items.
Player finds all the items and then receives a reward.

That's a fun endeavour for sure.
But I've devoted a good deal of time to giving HO scenes meaning, and this can be done by integrating the scene and the act of searching and finding into the plot.

*Margrave IV spoiler alert*

In the final scene of Margrave IV, Eddie comes face-to-face with the boatyard Seer. (A Seer is a metal face; the face is connected to a soul which is housed elsewhere; the face is essentially the physical interface, allowing Eddie to chat with the souls - the personalities - of the dead. They have telekinetic powers.)
This final Seer is the huge, rusted face of a deceased girl named Ula. Ula is the final choke: she will open the gates to freedom once x, y, and z are accomplished.
Ula is lonely. She wants to play a game... of 'hunt the thimble'. She takes Eddie's thimble and hides it.
Now, when the player enters the HO scene, they are astonished to find the entire scene filled with thimbles!
The mechanic is unchanged; however, it is now imbued with meaning.
The boatyard HO scene is set amongst the wreckage of dozens of boats. This allows me to instantly underpin the emotional topography visually with threat. Then comes the sudden humour of the hidden thimble scene. And then I turn the scene, revealing Ula's true character, not simply through narrative/dialogue, but through the next series of plot-dependent games/puzzles.

*Spoiler ends*

It's this plot-gifted meaning that is so rare in casual games.
Furthermore, given that the look and feel of the entire world is ruled by the needs of the plot, every puzzle and mini-game has an inspiration, and that inspiration is not simply an aesthetic one, but is something far deeper - it is something with meaning - something functional, with crafted resonance.

Sudoku door

The puzzles and mini-games of your standard casual game exist in their naked form.
I recently saw a door that was choked by a sudoku puzzle which had been placed onto the door. Solve sudoku, open door. Some attempt had been made to integrate the puzzle aesthetically. But that sure as ballyhoo ain't at the core of the player's emotions.