The Swapper Sort of Postmortem & Game Key Give Away!

PHEW.

That's what I felt when the first review came in. Admittedly we'd had some indication from the press that The Swapper's reception would be warm, but I don't believe anything until it's in front of me, hence the non-committal tone of the pre-release post.

As it turns out, things went well. In fact, I think we've all been blown away by the game's reception, and by the fact that everyone is now paying their bills. Certainly I have never read kinder words about my work, and I'm thrilled that it's on a game I was so heavily involved with, and which reflects my particular philosophical passions so well.

So I was going to write this piece as a sort of round-up of some of the criticisms made in reviews, and look for where we went wrong. I'm certain there are places that we went wrong, but it seems the reviews are not going to tell us where. Instead I'll just delay it by telling you about some of the nice post-release stuff we've got going on.

First off, the Steam forums have developed into an active little community:

• Fans are racing our level designer, Otto, for speedrun times. Otto currently has it with 29m24s, and if you've played the game you should check out his vid for sheer elegance, and to wonder how even the guy who built these levels can keep track of who he is when he's hurtling through the game at this sort of pace.
• People are discussing the story at great length.
• I have deviously persauded people to read more about philosophy of mind.
• And, okay, there's also a four page contingent of people with Intel HD graphics waiting for a fix. It's coming, but until then be warned: this game probably doesn't work with Intel HD graphics.

Second off, I have two Steam codes for The Swapper to give away. Would you like one? If so, write your most convincing three word argument for the existence of god in the comments and check back in about 5 days. The two I like the most will earn themselves a Swapper key!

Finally, expect a fuller analysis of what we did in the game, why, and how we could have done it better at some point soon.

The Games You Must Have Played 2012/13 - Part 1 of 2

There was a time on this blog when I did previews and recommended games and things, and that time is returning... NOW! I've been stuck in exams and The Swapper crunch for the last month or three, but no longer.

Every week I play games that are worth writing about. I rarely actually write because the internet is full of such things, and actually lists are a bit time consuming to write; but it is worth doing if even one person comes here and is sold on a game they'd not gotten around to yet, so here we go. These are the games that stirred that childhood emotion inside me of wonder and delight over the last year.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
My word does XCOM make me realise how much TBS fans have been hard done by over the past decade, and how glad I am those days are over. Frozen Synapse reinvigorated my interest in the genre, and games like Memoir '44, Hero Academy and Rad Soldiers have been sustaining it. XCOM well and truly sates it.

It's hard not to admit that a big part of XCOM's appeal is in the looks (especially with the HD mods). The cover system is similar in function to Rad Soldiers' (though far more nuanced than), but seeing your people actually dashing for cover in roadie-cam, being pinned down by suppressing fire and shying away from incoming fire actually makes me feel like a commander. Sure the animation and clipping is still seriously rough really quite frequently, but who cares?

The meta-game deserves mention as well. While it's not as involved as the classics, it does a decent enough job of representing to you the global view, and the dramatic progress that you're making. I love the X-Com experience more than anything because it's holistic: I don't feel like I'm playing a game, I feel like I'm defending the world from aliens.

Don't Starve
If I'm honest, I've not booted Don't Starve since it officially released. It hit that point for me where I hadn't played in a while, and I couldn't bring myself to make the reinvestment in the perma-death only to starve gruesomely yet again. Don't Starve, it's true, has a bunch of features that distance me from it. There's not enough hand-holding for me - I like feedback from a game that I'm doing something significant, even if it's only a few lines of text. There's a bit of grind in the Minecraft-y elements as well, and frankly clicking on tiles all day so I can make my garden more aesthetically pleasing isn't the sort of activity I'm ever likely to engage in voluntarily.

None of this is to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy the hours I put in during the beta. I love Don't Starve because it's one of the best survival games I've played. I love dynamic systems, I love fleshed out worlds, and Don't Starve's nightmare wilderness is at once fascinating, fluid and convincing.

Journey
Quite apart from its lovely aesthetic, Journey was an important game for me for its 'co-op'. By eliminating almost all interaction, and then placing players in that beautiful, ever shifting desert Journey achieves that most difficult of goals: it takes the general awfulness of people on the internet and turns it into something wonderful. Okay, perhaps the way I've described this makes Journey a sort of lobotomy: take all the tools away from people and they've got no choice but to be nice; but play through the game to the end with someone you'll never know and tell me you didn't appreciate it.

Part 2 next week.

The Swapper Releases Next Week!

It's that weird time again when all those months of work transmorph into an actual playable video game - and some of you would be surprised how often that is not the case. After years on 'currently on hold' AAAs at the likes of Hydravision and Sega Hardlight I can't express how good it is to have my name on not one but two fantastic indie releases in the space of nine months.

The Swapper is coming to Steam Thursday, 30th May 2013. It is currently confirmed for Windows and Steam only, but we hope to offer a Mac build, as well as sell via other digital storefronts, on or shortly after release.

So, this is the point where I usually tell you a bit about the game, and what I did on it, but that's all discussed in the narrative design blog I put up at the Facepalm Games blog the other day. Instead I shall tell you what The Swapper feels like to me, just to see if it holds your attention.

First it feels very familiar. Working on The Swapper reminds me of working on Penumbra: both games are puzzlers made by young, four-man teams (at least, I was young when I made Penumbra); and my role on them has been more extensive than, say, on Driver or FTL where I was providing text without the overarching narrative design responsibilities. I'm also reminded of the guessing games we were playing with Penumbra's metacritic score and sales - the former of which was still very much in its infancy at the time. When you're on a AAA or a sequel you have a good idea of what to expect from the critical reaction. You have a basis for comparison. With The Swapper we just don't know, and that's a lot of fun. It's nice that 6 years after Penumbra Valve is actually letting indie games onto its platform as well; that should make a big difference.

All the same, I have no real idea of what to expect - for once the release and review embargo feels like a major event. Our break-even point (the sales we need to pay back indie-fund's investment and begin making profits ourselves) is not massive. In fact I'd be taken aback if we didn't hit it in the first week - but who the hell knows? We're so close to the game now that it's hard to tell. Should we have layered up the story in this way? Should we have made things simpler? Should we have gone with that actor? Things have changed a lot over the course of development, and I no longer have a gut feeling about which way things will go. The unique art style is invisible to me now (and I was never very visually-minded in the first place); the experience of the player as they work through the narrative is hard to synthesise, and we've not had a lot of QA in that area; every word we've heard from critics and journos has been positive, but then previews always are. Next Friday is going to be exciting.

I keep reminding myself that the puzzles, at least, are inventive and satisfying. They are the strongest part of this game, and that's the way it should be. I only hope my writing doesn't let them down. We'll find out soon enough.

PAX East & GDC 2013 Debrief

So that whole thing happened, and I am still reeling. I've been trying to think of an angle from which to write up the trip, but have failed, so instead you get the pictorial highlights reel. Lucky old you.

This is our hostel in Boston. It doesn't look it but it was quite luxurious. So much more space in US cities. Also full fried breakfast in the price. Lush.

This is our booth. It's got a rather sleeker black vibe going on compared with last year's, and four HD tellies. We were blaring out the trailer on the big screen, but after a while we started hearing the same two lines of dialogue over and over in our dreams and we had to turn the sound down.

Klei Entertainment are awesome. Play Mark of the Ninja and Don't Starve immediately. As Alia (software engineer, above centre) pointed out to me, they're somewhere in between being a small indie and a pro-developer, and that's a theme that continues throughout the conference. So many people from so many different areas of development all with their own ideas about who's doing important work - and me, somewhere bang in the middle.

PAX was fantastic for us. Quite apart from hanging out with excellent indies like Klei, The Men Who Wear Many Hats, and Blendo Games we secured some lovely coverage for The Swapper. Head to Game Informer, IGN or the New York Post for more.

Also massive props to Kelly and Megabooth for everything and being excellent.

So then we hit San Francisco. Neither Olli (Facepalm Games) nor I had full conference tickets, so this was basically the start of our holiday. I immediately went to Golden Gate Park and was attacked by this gopher thing.

The cab back to the conference hall was surreal. My first time out and about in a city I've written for in a game, and here I am sitting in the back of a cab driving through those iconic streets, listening to a game developer conversation that could have been straight out of the game. I was having fun.

The following days involved avoiding the infamously overcrowded / crap GDC parties, hanging in the indie hostel, and seesawing between horrendously overpriced beers and entirely free ones. The indie hostel was an experience in itself - and entire building taken over by everyone from Zachtronics to Vlambeer. Keeping as I do various fingers in various pies, the whole thing was a slightly different world. Olli knows every game and every person in the room. I can't tell the difference between a student and someone putting out a game everyone else in the room evangelises. At the same time, the writers are a few blocks away on the 40th floor of the Marriott hotel drinking $7.50 beers. I'm getting a bit bored of the stale pizza-by-the-slice, so it's nice to have both options available.

We hit the Humble Bundle party that night, which is a most civilised affair in an old mint building. It of course ends with champagne and scotch being snaffled before the free bar closes, but it's a good crowd, and I manage to pin down John Walker and secure Ir/rational investigator a playtest and some coverage.

The next thing that happens are the IGF awards, in which FTL is nominated, which seem to take us all by surprise. I find my way to our table and meet Justin's parents and assorted family - there are only four of us who credited on the game, but from what I understand it's very much a group endeavour. I can't imagine bringing my parents to an awards show, but Justin's dad was in the industry, and they are awesome and well into the swing of things. We win three awards, I get up on stage once, look very nervous and forget to thank my girlfriend, then we eat tacos and go to the Steam party.

The parties later that night are yet more surreal. We go to the Wild Rumpus, and pretty much everyone I've met in the last week is there, and has been watching the awards. The Subset guys aren't really much part of the indie scene - they're out of AAA, they want to keep their team small, and they want to make the games they love. The limelight is perhaps not their territory. Still, for one night we are minor celebrities. It's quite strange.

The following day I lend a hand on the booth, which really just involves shaking peoples' hands and awkwardly taking credit for Justin and Matt's work. Everyone's played the game, so they just want to come over and say thanks. I love the picture above, because Justin (2nd from right) and Matt (3rd from right) are talking to a chap who worked on the old X-Wing vs Tie Fighter games, which are one of the guys' core inspirations. For once on this trip they get to be the ones meeting their industry heroes.

It was a thrill to spend time with Subset, with Facepalm, and with all the other devs I met out there. I really am lucky to work on the fantastic games I have done, and there's nothing like seeing a bunch of other people making fantastic stuff to make you want to go home and do some more of your own.

As ever, I'll keep you posted on that front.

How to Hire a Games Writer

It seems like I've written a bunch of stuff on how to freelance and secure jobs as a writer, but very little about the other side of that equation - how studios can go about finding and selecting writers. If anything it's perhaps the bigger open question of the two.

Writing is still a new and niche enough discipline that a majority of the people who have hired me have been hiring a writer for the very first time - and they sometimes come across me in the most roundabout of ways. So maybe you're a one-man band looking for someone to write some short dialogues; maybe you're a producer on a AAA tasked with finding a narrative designer. Where do you start?

Where to Look for Writers

Most developers probably know and have worked with numerous freelance programmers, artists and musicians - but if you're hiring a writer for the first time, where should you look?

Online Databases

There are a bunch of sites which allow freelancers of all kinds to upload their details for your perusal, like this one. These are often hit and miss - some are out of date, most have no curation, and many still don't have a separate category for writers. Still, they're usually free for everyone, and a LinkedIn search is never a bad idea. You could also check out local writers' guilds, or the IGDA list - but at the end of the day writers have the same problems getting their names in front of you as you do finding theirs because the channels are so niche and distributed.

Recruitment Agencies

Generally recruitment firms aren't setup to deal with contract positions, but they do have large databases, including lots of writers, so it may not hurt to get in touch. There's a cost associated with advertising via a recruitment agency, but you should have the benefit of a wider reach and some degree of curation on the part of the agent. I was actually contacted by Interactive Selection the other week for a full-time position which I seriously considered, and I'd not been on their site in years, so the reach may work for you.

Writers' Agencies

An agent will represent anywhere from a couple to twenty-odd experienced writers - those ont he smaller side are often a small cabal of writers pooling their marketing resources. A good agent will have writers with guaranteed experience on their books, and be able to recommend particular people for particular jobs, provide a team of writers, or give you an opportunity to meet and assess some potentials.

The only agency with which I have any experience - and the only one I'm aware of of its size and experience - is Sidelines. It currently represents 16 writers (myself included), and frankly I was lucky to get in the door with only the Penumbra games when I did, because in their five years' operation the entry requirements have only gotten tougher. An agency will charge a small commission, which generally comes out of the writer's side.

Do Some DIY Headhunting

You might be surprised by how many games are written by freelance writers. While you can rule out a lot of AAA RPGs, games as diverse as Fable, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex and Hitman all involve freelancers one way or another. It can't hurt to get onto MobyGames, find out who did what on a game you reckon, and click through to their bio to see. Any good freelancer should have a few credits to their name and - if they're any kind of marketer - have their details filled out.

Email the IGDA Writers SIG
There are a lot of experienced writers on this list, and there are also also a lot of journalists and students. Treat accordingly.

How to Select a Writer
Once you've got some names in mind, what should you do? First, read this. That'll give you an idea for rates and standard engagements. Next you should get in touch with your shortlist and gauge their interest in the project. If they're game then - unless you've got someone whose previous work you're sure enough of not to bother - I'd suggest constructing and issuing a short writing test. I think out-of-context samples suck (at least watch a video of the game in action), and often enough the samples a writer has to hand will not sell them to their full. Samples tell you what a writer was able to do under different conditions. A bespoke test tells you what they can actually do for your project.

The test should ask the candidate to write according to a brief in keeping with the project, and should test each of the disciplines required for the role (eg dialogue writing, character design, prose, dialogue trees etc). For a short engagement ( less than 10 days), I'd say a few hundred words is reasonable. For a larger project you should probably stretch to a couple of thousand.

There is a general consensus between the agencies and writing guilds that writers should be paid for the time they spend on tests. I suppose there would be. The reality is that we're often not, and personally I will always take the chance to do a test for a game I'm interested in, whether it's paid or not. If you can afford it, or if you're asking for a big chunk of work, or multiple meetings / submissions then we certainly appreciate it. If not then don't let it put you off.

If you're not sure how to go about constructing the test and you don't have another writer on hand to do it for you, either give your candidate what they need to know about the game and let them take the lead (they should be more than capable of doing so) or get in touch with me.

Finally, get experienced second opinions on the tests. If possible meet your candidates in person, or over Skype. Make a call.

That's it. You've got yourself a writer.

I Will Be at PAX East & GDC

You spend your whole career hoping your AAA bosses will send you to the big US shows, then a small indie game comes along and sends you to three at once. Thank you, Facepalm Games.

Yes, next week I'll be accompanying my latest indie project, The Swapper, and Olli (its Lead Designer) to PAX East, where we'll be demoing the game on the Indie Megabooth floor. The Megabooth is gargantuan as viewed through the lens of my esteem, and pretty-well filled-out by anyone's reckoning: it's the beating heart of the indie dev presence at PAX, and the people are top. Do get yourself there.

Following that we'll be flying across the country to hit GDC in San Francisco. I have helped make a game based in that town, but I have not been there, so I can't wait to find out what all these invisible walls are actually made of.

Once there I'll be accompanying the chaps from Subset Games to the IGF Awards in which FTL is nominated; and generally milling about the place going "Gosh, isn't Develop quaint." (Develop is the UK equivalent of GDC, American chums).

I'll be in the US for ten days, and throughout that time I'll also be demoing Ir/rational Investigator on iPad. Whether you're press, dev or consumer, if you fancy a play drop me a line or come find me!

I'll be at PAX East 22 - 24 March 2013, at the Facepalm Games booth.

I'll be at GDC 25 - 30 March 2013.

Hope to see you there.

How I Got my First Job - Penumbra: Overture

Here's laziness for you. By far and away the most common question I'm asked by aspiring writers - after 'How do you be a games writer?' - is 'How did you get your first job?'. As much as I love hearing from and helping aspiring writers where I can, perhaps this post can save us all some time that we can then spend on nice things like writing tests, and reading RPS.

I got my first job, as narrative designer on Penumbra: Overture, at the end of 2006. I was 22, and halfway through an English & Philosophy BA at Southampton. I'd been reading books, playing games and writing stories for as long as I could remember. I'd been in the habit of sending sporadic bursts of emails to UK devs - at first looking for work experience (I didn't get any), then for entry-level QA and production jobs, which landed me a Summer's work at Lionhead on Black & White 2 the previous year. I don't know what spurred me to to switch from applying for actual jobs that existed to fantasy writing jobs that I figured should exist, but post-Lionhead I decided the smartest route into the industry was as a writer. After all, I was actually in the process of getting a qualification that would support my applications, and I already knew rather more about writing than I did about production or level design. Youthful naivety can be a valuable resource.

I recall one thing that happened at Lionhead while I was there that might have triggered my shift in focus. A few months before release a bunch of the other QA guys got together and wrote a short intro script that would frame the gameplay of B&W2 in a way more consistent with the mythology of the first. Frankly it was needed - any semblance of narrative progress that existed in the first game had largely been stripped out of the combat-oriented sequel, and it really didn't make much sense. In the end the idea didn't even get as far as being vetted - we'd hit text lock weeks earlier - but the image stayed with me. I realised that if Lionhead was approaching writing in so haphazard a way then maybe even a writer of my mediocrity could make a difference.

Luckily enough the indie game revolution was well under way by now. For the first time that I could remember the games I wanted to play weren't in the hands of the big corporations - everyone was doing it. Suddenly the people making the games were as inexperienced as I was. I started emailing small studios, new studios, eastern European studios... anyone doing something interesting that might be able to make use of a writer. No one replied.

And then I sent this email:

> Dear Penumbra,
>
> First of all, many congratulations on Penumbra - the physics based
> interaction interface is so intuitive it's a wonder it hasn't been done
> before.
>
> I read that you are embarking on a commercial project, and I wish you
> all the best with this, and wish to offer my services.
>
   The area that interested me particularly was the potential of the
> narrative to further enhance the atmosphere.  It's a promising start, but I
> think there's so much more that could be done with the actual
> implementation of the narrative, from the introduction, to the item
> descriptions, to the character's internal narrative during the game.
>
> I realise that Penumbra is currently a tech demo: obviously you have
> plans for the commercial release.  If you are currently looking for
> publisher financing, however, I would imagine that the tech demo is
> your greatest tool of persuasion, and as such, it would benefit from
> being as polished as it possibly can be.
>
> I am a UK based writer with a keen interest in the future of narrative
> based video gaming.  I have had a play with the config file for
> Penumbra, and I see that it is very easy to adapt in-game text, and I
> would love the chance to help write a more stream-lined, more engaging
> script and narrative for Penumbra.
>
> In case you are interested, I enclose below a re-imaging of the
> original introductory text, to demonstrate what can be done with the
> material.  If you enjoy it, please do contact me at the email provided.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Tom Jubert

Despite addressing the email to the name of the game rather than the team, Frictional responded and offered me a volunteer position on the commercial project, with an unspecified offer of royalties on release.

And that is the story of how I got my first job.

Stories in Unlikely Places: Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Good comedy games - small list. Good comedy games that aren't adventures - smaller list. Toward the top of it, though, nestled just next door to Psychonauts, is Giants: Citizen Kabuto. I won't commit to which takes the biscuit, but I will suggest that of the two, Giants is the game that carries its comic ideals right to the heart of its design ethos.

Founded by a bunch of ex-Shiny chaps and very much carrying the mantle of that studio's deranged comic styling, Giants was an incredible game of open world combat, lush tropical visuals and cockney aliens. It's a game of vastly disparate ingredients, united by Planet Moon's refusal to consign its boundless imagination and comic juxtaposition to the cutscenes alone.

You start out Giants playing as a crew of cockney aliens crash-landed on an alien planet on their way to Planet Majorca. It's an immediately ridiculous scenario in which to frame the subsequent island-hopping action. Once you're introduced to local boy 'My name is Ahmed, but call me Timmy' you'll never look back.

You won't spoil things too much by checking out the first few minutes of cutscenes below.

The levels that follow excel in mixing up conventions. Sure, a large part of this game is going places and shooting dudes, but the team at Planet Moon obviously relished finding ways to disguise that fact. In the second mission you get a jetpack and have to rescue dangling Smarties (the comically disfigured locals), and this was long before the likes of Just Cause gave us similar freedom. It's worth noting, too, that as good as that franchise looks now, Giants looked back in 2000.

As the game progresses - always interspersed with those fantastic cutscenes - your objectives are messed about with. One minute you're planting a bomb in an enemy camp, the next you're hunting Vimps (cow-bug things) for meat, the next you're knee deep in the base building game. Yes, there's even a relatively fleshed out RTS in here, which forms the cornerstone of the benchmark multiplayer mode. Every one of these elements is considered, presented with flair, and imaginative in ways it's hard to comprehend in these homogeneous times. The multiplayer standing alone would have had an impact - it was 8 player, non-symmetric teamplay with base building and Vimp hunting and a giant bloody Kabuto running about eating people. And it was 2 years before Natural Selection.

To put it in soundbite form, Giants is a game that reminds me how lazy the likes of GTA and The Elder Scrolls really are with their mission design - and how much more attention, variety and contextual detail we as players have a right to demand.

So you play on, and it's true - some of the levels become a little repetitive - but then you leave the Meccs behind and become a Sea Reaper. Suddenly the waters - which as a Mecc mean death by piranha - become the shadows you stalk through before you strike. You're able to move in ways that entirely change the game, and to overcome the hordes of enemies, that for the Meccs were becoming overwhelming, with precision and flair. You also have your boobs out which is again bucking convention, if nothing else.

All the time your objectives are being framed in ways that make sense. Gameplay rarely devolves into something that feels familiar. You're looking forward to the next joke, or the next time Planet Moon are going take you completely by surprise. Surely they're not going to let me do that?!

Playing it again now, it's naturally not as pretty - but it still has the charm. The timing is off in some of the cutscenes - Psychonauts comes up trumps for sheer polish and consistency - but I feel closer to these characters and, perversely for such an off the wall tale, the story itself. The world feels like a real place, and there's a darker tone to the game than the cartoony visuals suggest. From the grotesque design of the Smarties' physical features, to feeding children to giants, to the tensions between the different species, there's an edge here that keeps the game from feeling flat.

There's also the bit where you play as the giant, which was rubbish even at the time. Ignore that bit.

Planet Moon released one game of interest after Giants, Armed & Dangerous, before hitting financial woes, switching to smaller, licensed projects and finally being subsumed into Bigpoint. A&D retained the feel of Giants, but lacked the spark of invention (though it did come up with the shark gun long before it rose to fame in the latest Saints Row). Comparing the two games is nonetheless a fruitful engagement - doing so demonstrates just how much more is going on in Giants than gameplay + funny cutscenes.

Giants is a must play. You can get it from GOG for $9.99 (I make no money from sending you there).