Letter from the Game Director - April 2010

Obviously the major news for this month has already been announced with the confirmation that we will be launching the expansion, Rise of the Godslayer, on May 11th. This is the culmination of a lot of very hard work for the team, and as we reach these closing stages of development I am very proud of the effort that the team has put in.

For this letter though I wanted to give a slightly more personal insight into one of the smaller, but I think more interesting parts of the expansion we haven’t talked about yet. It’s also a good example of when it is good that the Game Director isn’t right! So what exactly do I mean by that? Let me explain…

One element of overseeing a project like this as Game Director is that you have to say ‘no’ a lot, an awful lot in fact. The developers, just like you folks playing the game, are full of interesting and creative ideas; they always want to improve the game. That leads to a lot of ideas being pitched about and considered, far more than we could actually complete. The key part of my role is essentially helping the team decide which of these ideas best suit our intended goals and targets for the project and which can be achieved within budget. So more often than not the answer is ‘no’ and far more ideas are rejected than are accepted. It is probably the hardest part of this job. Feeling like the big bad troll that spoils all the fun comes with the territory.

However that said, another very important part of running a team like this is also being able to trust that on occasion your designers can prove you wrong. That sometimes you have to view a feature as a player would, and not just distill it down to time and resource.

In Rise of the Godslayer there is one fun feature in particular that wouldn’t have made it into the game if I had stuck by my own original assessment, and I’m glad that the designers were able to convince me!

Random Encounters on the Road to Khitai

The idea was a simple one - add a number of encounters that could happen randomly while the players were traveling to Khitai from Khemi. The designers wanted to highlight that it was a dangerous and lengthy journey. They wanted to add an optional route for players. In effect the player offers their services as a caravan guard to pay their own way to Khitai instead of handing over coin. Then along the way they would be pressed into service when the caravan encountered a problem.

When we looked at initially it was one of those things that I was skeptical to as maybe the resources could be spent elsewhere in Khitai itself to make more instanced encounters. The feature hovered very close to the ‘cut’ line for a long time during development. The lead designer though fought for its inclusion and worked with several members of the team to make it happen.

I still worried that they would only serve as an annoying distraction to players. The feature got even closer to that perilous ‘cut’ line. It wasn’t until I saw it finally working in the game and played through the encounters, that I saw that the vision the designers had for the feature was indeed a good one.

So how does it work?

As I mentioned above the player can offer their services as a caravan guard to pay their own way to Khitai instead of handing over coin. (You can of course just pay the caravan master his fare and travel straight to Khitai without worrying about working your way, so this feature is completely optional). What then happens is that you will be presented with one of nine scenarios that might occur along the way. The voyage to Khitai takes you past some dangerous areas, some of which Conan fans will recognize from the original stories, like the Vilayet Sea. These encounters take place as solo instances where the player has to complete a specific task to allow the caravan (or boat) to continue on its voyage.

These encounters range from protecting your boat from a Kraken, acquiring supplies from a Pirate Cove, defending the caravan from raiders or investigating a strange oasis plagued by the undead. There is an interestingly diverse set of objectives for these encounters, and you never know which one you are going to be presented with.

Effectively it adds some really nice texture to the journey to Khitai. I am always very keen to insist the team have a clear goal when implementing a feature, and in this instance they saw it and they implemented it well, even when they had to convince a skeptical Game Director.

As soon as I played them in context I knew they were right. I could see, as a player, this feature belonged alongside everything else in the expansion. It might not have sounded like the most compelling feature to the Producer in me when first weighed up against other resources, but, as a player…as a player it just works.

Sure, it could have been that these encounters became nine disparate solo instances or quests scattered throughout the expansion. Then it most likely would have ensured people only did them once (maybe only revisiting them when playing an alt), whereas now they provide a neat little repeatable solo adventure with variety and some fun gameplay. This was the right place for these encounters.

It isn’t a huge part of the expansion by any stretch. It is a relatively small addition that players might only do infrequently, but it does belong as part of the journey that the expansion contains. It will form part of your own journeys to Khitai that was well worth weaving into the experience…

…and is a good example of the fact that sometimes, as a lead for any kind of a project, the right decision is to trust in your people. The right decision is to look at things as a player and not just a Producer. This might not be the most influential or substantial addition to the expansion, but it’s a great example. It is often these small, ‘flavor’, type of additions that enhance the experience as well. It is very easy get wrapped up in the larger, more important features, so you can all be glad that the designers also want to set the right tone and create a complete experience.

…the closing stages

We are busy at work here with the final stages of delivery for the expansion…and we are very much looking forward to everyone getting to explore the lands of Khitai with us. A lot of inspiration, hard work and effort has been sunk into bringing these lands to life for all of you to explore.

We’ll see you in Khitai!