Tangled Web of Dialogue

I never considered myself naive when it came to the amount of planning that goes into a game, but there have always been certain things that I have taken for granted. A great game just works, and if the game is immersive enough, the player simply doesn't have room to question exactly how it all fits together. It's seamless. If the player can feel the seams (via bugs or bad design), the game won't make it very far.

This is why, in games ranging from Pokemon to Halo to Final Fantasy [whatever number] to WoW, the player doesn't scratch her head and ask why her character doesn't fall through the ground, or how gravity works, or how the game knows when to play a sound or to animate the character in a certain way. Good games don't allow these questions to come up, which is why most players don't really consider them.

But now that I'm on the other end of the screen, it's time to dig in and answer those questions in my own way. One of those seemingly simple things that we tend to take for granted is a game's dialog. Skybrawler is a story-based game with a huge number of NPCs (non-player characters), which means that I have to develop a system to track and manage all of the various dialog that will pop up during the game. And more importantly, the dialog that is displayed must match the portion of the game the player has reached.

Let's take Chief Engineer James Daniels as an example. He's in the game right from the start, and the player will have hundreds of opportunities to talk to him as the game progresses. Obviously, Daniels can't say the same thing over and over; that wouldn't make sense, and it would surely prevent the story from going anywhere. Instead, Daniels needs to say different things depending on where and when you talk to him. If he just helped you take on an army of Stonefangs, he should say something about it afterwards when you talk to him.

So each major character will have an entire library of phrases that must be conjured by the game, depending on when that character speaks. And if that's not a daunting enough task, I have to make sure that I assemble this library of dialog in such a way that it is flexible. That is, if I need to make a change as to how the dialogue is displayed, I don't want to go in and manually change every single stored chunk of text; I should be able to change one variable at the top end, and the lower-level functions should flex accordingly.

I think I have the basic system down, but I need to ensure that it is functional, efficient, and flexible before I go about actually implementing it. It would be a hell of a job to undo it once it's in place.

We have liftoff: A personal thanks.

Skybrawler is now 100% funded with 48 backers and 15 days of fundraising still to go! It has been an interesting journey so far, and it will only get more amazing as each piece of the game fits into place. I've seen an outpouring of support that I never could have anticipated. I have even met a number of people along the way, including Joe Fraioli, who will be composing the music in Skybrawler. It's inspiring to see the excitement and energy that a project like this can generate in people, and I look forward to seeing that excitement build as the game progresses. I am glad to be taking you all with me on this ride.

I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has dug into their pockets to make this project a reality; my friends, family, and a whole crowd of people I have not met (yet). Yes, this project is ambitious, and I recognize that putting your money into a project being built by a novice indie developer is something of a risk. But I promise that I won't let you down. I can't help but polish and tweak this game until it is exactly what I envisioned from the start, because I will not accept anything less. This obsession is somewhat distracting, however; as I read case briefs and write papers for my law classes, ideas bounce back and forth in my head until I finally give in and plug away at some new game mechanic for a few hours. But I can't avoid that, and I certainly don't intend to.

I see the potential in Skybrawler, and I plan to make it into something truly great, but my time is so constrained by my studies that I can only eke out a few little tweaks and modifications each day. I have made it a priority to build something in the game each day, and I have certainly lost sleep as a result, but it has been well worth it so far. Not to worry, though; my time constraints will soon be lifted, because this summer, thanks to my devoted and generous backers, I will be developing Skybrawler full time, all day, every day. No classes, nothing to interfere with the game's progress. It looks like Skybrawler will indeed have its place at Indie Games Festival 2012.

This is the start of something big. Thank you all for making it happen.

The Case for Supporting Indie Game Developers

Indie game developers are a lot like your mom-and-pop shops going up against Wal-Mart. You often hear the mantra of "support small businesses", but it's a fair question to ask, "Why?" In the context of game development, why should you pitch in and help out indie game developers, when there are plenty of great games coming from huge studios?

Like the music and film industries, the gaming industry is overwhelmingly dominated by a few big corporations with large marketing budgets and massive development teams. A game designer comes to one of these companies (or already works there) and pitches his idea, and the company then evaluates it and weighs it against their mountain of market research. If the game idea is reasonably likely to turn a profit, the company will approve and fund it.

The development team is then given benchmarks which may or may not be reasonable, and they must reach those benchmarks on schedule. When it comes time for the game to ship, if certain features of the game haven't been implemented, they are scrapped.

This process is driven ultimately by the profit motive. All corporations are bound by one thing and one thing only: maximizing shareholder wealth. So if a designer pitches a game idea that's incredibly innovative and has never been seen before, the company is likely to turn it down. Why? Because there's no market data available on the idea, and it's not a sure fire profit. So large companies will tend to recycle old game ideas and package and market them differently because there's a set formula that has been shown to work. They find a formula that makes money, and they make games which fit that formula. Deviation is bad, status quo is good.

As you read this, you may be able to think of exceptions to what I've stated, and I don't deny that they are out there. I'm just speaking of the general trend.

But this profit-driven, copycat style that we see in the corporate world isn't necessarily true in the indie game development world. Indie developers start with the question: "What would be really fun?" And they go from there. No pitching the idea to a publisher, no market research; it starts with the core question of why we play games: to have fun. Since the indie developer is in charge of the project and is not beholden to the whims of shareholders or to a corporate publisher's benchmarks, he can add features as he sees fit. The indie developer is free to innovate and come up with entirely new ways of thinking about games without worrying about having his funding cut off or having to leave out portions to meet a ship date. If it seems fun or interesting, the indie developer will try it out.

This is how we get games like World of Goo, Braid, Minecraft, Super Meat Boy, and Portal. Yes, even Portal began as an indie game project (called Narbacular Drop); its developers were later hired by Valve to recreate the physics-driven, first-person, portal concept in Valve's Portal.

And sure, indie developers hope to make money from their games, but they only need enough money to A.) pay for living expenses, and B.) make the next game. They don't pay dividends, they don't acquire other developers, they don't spend tens of millions on advertising. They just need enough money to make games.

Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent that game developers do not have to be subject to the stranglehold of the corporate environment. While developers used to need to find a publisher to get their games onto retail shelves, the internet has changed the paradigm of selling and distributing games. A developer can now sell his game on Steam, or he can sell digital downloads through his own web site, or through a variety of other online retailers. Struggling for shelf space in retail outlets is a thing of the past. This is even becoming true as console systems (Wii, Xbox, PS3) become more integrated with the internet, allowing players to purchase games online through their televisions.

And to top all this off, indie developers tend to work with very limited advertising budgets. They won't be throwing their games in your face. You won't have to deal with irritating pop-ups on every web site trying to get you to "join 12 million subscribers". Indie developers let you find your way to their games. Often these games are so innovative and interesting and fun that simple word-of-mouth is enough to sell thousands of copies.

The times are changing, and the age of the indie game developer has begun. We should support indie developers because they are the locus of innovation in the gaming community. They think outside the box, and they bring us new ways of thinking and playing. I can only hope that one day I'm right there in the middle of it.