So guys. We come to the end… Or have we (I have an interesting idea for an alternative game based on the assets created here. It goes along the lines of populating a local area with all manner of intractable people and creating the story out of their stories… no its not really your typical pew pew game… But who wants them nowadays?! They’re freakin everywhere )? This here be a transcript of the Pechu Kucha schpeel I did tomorrow:
The story of Mum’s the Word was that it was, originally, supposed to be a text-based murder mystery game. And, in the beginning, I thought, and this probably due to my overly philosophical head, that this could be an incredibly immersive game like MUD’s used to be.
However, I kind of forgot about the human factor. The immersive-ness of these types of games was only limited by a player’s imagination. Right, sounds like an advert you would find on the back of just about every shiny next-gen game. The problem with that, and the reason that MUD’s are now a facebook oddity, is that the imagination of the average Joe was that of a small, and sadly demented gerbil.
I think, the first thing we learnt was that there was a reason for the liberal application of “Shine-ination” (texturing for those not used to industry jargon). Unless something shiny was thrown in an audiences face, they would frown profusely, a little wheel would spin inside their head and, eventually, like all things, the mouse running the wheel would expire, without anything fruitful to show for it. What a waste…
So, after two weeks of being killed by an ogre in The Hobbit (yes… It was just the one ogre… For some stupid reason, despite all of the commands I smashed into the command box I always ended up at this particular ogres clearing (the one with the path to his cave house behind him) and then, subsequently dying to a club in the face), we decided… maybe we should go for some proper well good visual feedback after all.
We decided that we could hybridize the two genres. Using text based commands to activate visual elements on the screen i.e. our awesome stick house. And, I think, our will to maintain creative integrity meant we developed like this for at least a four to six weeks. Firstly experimenting with how to produce meaningful visual feedback from text based commands. Then coming up with the library of text commands and the parameters for them to be used and then sticking the two together.
After a fairly fruitful month of production we found another thing out. As a consequence of having not been popular for at least 15 years no one had any idea of how to use text based commands.
Was it, “Open Door”, or was it “Open the Door”, or was it “Door Open”, or was it “enter <this> room” etc. People had not used such commands for a long time. It was like trying to get an oompaloompa fresh from oompaloompa land to use DOS (the most commonly used commands in our prototypes were expletives including “wtf”, “goddammit” and, none other than the oft used “F&$K YOU!” (heh looks like fask you)).
So, the last few weeks of the first semester came around and we relented. So it was “point and click murder mystery here we come…”
