Developing The Point and Click Adventure Game, Dream Machine

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/gdco-dream-machine.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference Online at Austin, Texas and with me today is a special guest or some special guests. How about you guys introduce yourselves?

Erik: Oh, hi. I’m Erik Zaring. I’m the producer of the Dream Machine game, one of the finalists here at the Indie Game Pub competition.

Anders: Then, I’m Anders Gustafsson and I’m the game designer of the Dream Machine.

Interviewer: So, what’s the Dream Machine about? Can you talk about the game design, game play?

Anders: Sure. It’s an old school point ‘n click adventure game made by hand using clay and cardboard and old Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.

Interviewer: What inspired the game?

Anders: I’ve always loved point ‘n click adventure games. I was a bit bummed that they went out of style. So, we made a game that we’d like to play in a style that we enjoy.

Interviewer: What were some of the challenges when you first started? Did you prototype it, or was it mainly… Since you’re basing it off an adventure game format, did you just go directly into development?

Anders: I guess we did. We had a brief prototype of the first island level core room. We tested that out to see if the concept worked, and once we got started, Erik found some money and we got started after that to build it.

Erik: The first set’s I actually built at home at my kitchen table. I showed it to Anders, and at the time we had a really boring day with ordinary jobs and felt that we had to bring, at least, five minutes of pure love back to the plays out there. So, we decided and made a demo, and for the past two years things have slowly been progressing from that point two years ago.

Interviewer: When you made a demo, so the clay stuff must be really time consuming. How did you expedite that process, and what did the demo include?

Anders: The demo was only the first two rooms that you encounter in the game, very brief but it was a proof of concept thing. And we showed it to a lot of players as many as we could, and they seemed to enjoy it. But expediting the building process, we haven’t really done that.

Erik: I’m an expert, you know. I used to have my own animation studio for a couple of years doing stop motion sets and stuff. And I was crap at building sets back then, but now I’m really fast. If I would use Illustrator or 3D stuff, it would take the same amount of time. It actually goes faster now because we like the sets and the characters at the same time, so we don’t have to have all these render passes.

Interviewer: The demo, you talked about funding. Did you guys try to get outside funding, or did you guys just use your own funds to actually make this game?

Anders: Oh, yeah. Well, there’s this thing in Scandinavia called Nordic Game where you can apply for EU money. So, they have the bad taste of spending like $3 million – how much? $3 million…

Erik: Six, I think. Six million Danish crowns. That equals 600,000 Euros or something like that. Every year, two times a year, you can apply for that. They give that to really small developers, not the big companies that have the momentum to succeed on their own.

Interviewer: Once you guys got that funding, what were you guys thinking at that point in terms of how much time it’s going to take and just motivation to get the game done?

Erik: That’s a good question, but we thought that we could with that money work at lightning speed, and everything would be finished by summer 2009 or something like that.

Anders: Yeah, yeah.

Erik: It dragged out. It took longer because the project, the story, evolved when we got the confidence and the money and the attention. We thought that we should make this something really, really great.

Interviewer: Yeah. Can you talk about that confidence evolving and the story evolving as you were actually getting more exposure and getting funding?

Anders: Well, the plan for the game and the story has been set from the beginning, but I guess we’ve been more elaborate in the execution. The rooms in the second chapter look better than the first, and we also, once we got the money, we went back and took all the rooms to the same level because we didn’t want to have this threshold.

Interviewer: Did you guys feel that money got in the way then of the development because now you had higher expectations and you had more resources, and you could buy more stuff that may not even be effective.

Erik: Actually, yes. For quite a long time, for a couple of months we were absolutely… I had my hands tied behind my back because you get this stage fright because you have to deliver now, something. You can’t do it just for yourself. So, it got in the way psychologically somehow, actually.

Anders: And right about that time was when we started inviting players and had a lot of feedback from people. So, we felt that, oh, wow, we had a lot of money now, not a lot, but a bunch of money. And now, we have all this responsibility to actually make a game. Previous to that, it was only Erik and I sitting in our bedrooms, basically, doing this thing for ourselves.

Interviewer: What were the play testers saying at first when they first played it out?

Anders: Surprising good things right off the bat, yeah.

Interviewer: So, would you say it’s the money that built the confidence, or was it the play testing that built it?

Erik: The play testing, I would say. Once people saw this, what we tried to do, we just got a whole lot of love from those on the Web and those close to us. It is a crazy undertaking, but it also has a lot of heart. and I think that speaks to a lot of people.

Anders: Since we got to know the analytics as well, so we could see a lot of people all over the world play this game, and that is just mind boggling.

Interviewer: So, the game is already released, or are you in the process of releasing it?

Erik: We have the first episode out now. It’s for free, and there are four remaining chapters that’s supposed to be released some time next summer or something like that.

Interviewer: When did you guys release the game?

Anders: It hasn’t actually been released. It’s in open beta now so you can sign up if you want to play the first chapter. Only the demo is released officially, but if you want to play it, you can just sign up and you get instant access.

Interviewer: Since it’s in kind of beta right now and you’re releasing it over time, are you using any kind of way to keep potential fans informed of what’s going on, or are you having Twitter and all that other social media stuff to keep people engaged?

Anders: Yeah. Of course, we do the development diaries and the Facebook, connecting people with Facebook.

Interviewer: Any other surprises that came up while you guys were developing or designing this game that you had to resolve to make it work?

Erik: Surprises? I don’t know.

Anders: Surprises? This has been our baby for almost two years, and the most difficult thing is to keep the energy and motivation for such a long time.

Interviewer: How are you doing that?

Erik: Well, we give each other a lot of space. We never argue, me and Anders. We have a beautiful relationship, so to speak. If he feels like, oh, I can’t stand this any more, I have to do something else. That’s cool. You go surf or whatever. The same for me, but at times we, especially on this work at an insane pace.. A lot of stuff happens.

Interviewer: Since you’re really focused on creativity and it has to be fun, are you spending “full time” on this, or do you have to work on it part-time because after a long time, maybe, you’re getting sick of working 40 or 80 hours a week. I don’t know how many hours.

Erik: Yeah. We can’t back away now. We’re in the middle of it.

Interviewer: I’m not saying back away. What I’m saying is that, is it counterproductive to work more than 20 hours on this every day?

Anders: Yes.

Erik: Well, I don’t know, Anders. With the funding that we’ve received so far, we’ve been able to work full-time with this for a year now with this funding. But before that we took on other games commercially. We should make faster, smaller games, maybe.

Interviewer: Is your thing then for the PC only, or is it online, or what’s the platform?

Anders: It’s online. If you have a browser, you can play basically on a Mac, Linux or PC.

Interviewer: Is it using Flash?

Anders: It’s Flash based, all in Flash.

Interviewer: You said that you have that Google Analytics. Do you know what the percentages of men versus women who are playing this game?

Erik: Well, it’s actually quite flattering because it’s not 50-50, but we have, like 30 percent women aging from 18 to 64. So, most of our audience is here in the States, but there’s a lot of women playing our game. Most are men between 18 and 29 or 35.

Interviewer: Why would you say then or why would say your game got nominated for the Indiepub contest?

Erik: That’s a really good question. I think a strong reason is the visuals, of course, and also the fact that it is a bit of a strange game. It’s grounded very much in reality, and it’s about relationship and moving into a new apartment. It doesn’t have any other controls, and I guess the judges were a bit tired of that old hat as well as we are. So, maybe, that’s one of the reasons.

Anders: I should to mention that the game gets trippier every chapter released. So, it’s not about a tiny apartment.

Interviewer: What’s next in store then for you guys in terms of games or projects that you’re going to do?

Erik: At the moment we’re being held hostage by our own game. So, we have to finish that, and we’re constantly discussing new ideas, but they could be stop motion, short films or different kind of medias, not necessarily because it’s the narrative, the narration which is central. I mean, games is fun, but we’ll see. I don’t know.

Interviewer: When you say narrative, what do you mean? Are you guys then just focused mainly on narrative, and games are just a medium to express that narrative?

Erik: Yeah. The narrative aspect is the most important for me, at least. I’m very much interested in what you can do with games as a story telling medium and do it in a good way, not heavy handedly or interrupting the player to tell a long expository rant but do it subtly embedding the story into the game play.

Interviewer: Now, can you talk about this narrative stuff some more? What’s compelling to you about narrative? Where do you see the potential there?

Erik: I think the potential is to embed the story, kind of hide it into the game play so if the players actually get the story told to them without really noticing it. You never break away from the game play to tell a story. You don’t treat them separately, and that’s of course, a huge challenge but that’s the way you should tackle it, not interrupt and treat it separately.

Interviewer: Can you talk about how you did that in terms of this game? What was the story you wanted to convey, and how did you integrate that into the game play?

Erik: The story begins simply with a couple moving into a new apartment. In the beginning you have their romantic first breakfast on the floor because the furniture hasn’t arrived, and you acquaint yourself with the neighbors. Progressively, you find out that there is strange stuff going on in the apartment building. You have to find out what that is and who’s behind it.

The way we tell the story, as a concrete example, you can look at all the boxes and he reads the description on the boxes. And, yes, by reading the descriptions you find out that the wife is pregnant and their previous life, what that was about, what their friends have given little gifts and stuff. That’s quite a subtle way to tell the story. You find out all the back stories without having been told it through a cut scene or anything like that.

Interviewer: Are there any other subtle techniques that you’re using to tell a story in a way that it’s not direct or hitting the user on the head with, hey, this is the story?

Erik: That’s hard to say. You basically tell the story any way you can. If the players seem bored by it, you have to rework the concept. But you can tell the story by a sound cue, subtle things like that, like the visuals.

Interviewer: Where can people find out more about your game or potentially play the game?

Erik: We have a website called TheDreamMachine.SE. There, you can go sign up for an open beta if you want to try it out or the demo if you just want a quick fix.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.