First up, I want to say Woohoo! and Thank you! to everybody who responded so positively to our announcement of voice acting. I also know a lot of you want to audition but we aren’t doing open casting calls at this time. We may open up one or more roles in the future, and if we do, you’ll hear it here first. We promise. Until then, thanks for your patience.
Now, then! I had a long blog post written up about emotional sincerity, about how our game was meant to wear its heart on its sleeve and reject “lol cringe” attitudes… but it seems I already wrote that post like a year ago, so I had to scrap it. You can read it here if you like, though.
So instead of a pathos appeal, let’s talk ethos. Let’s talk about my past experience in game development, and how it lead to Arcade Spirits. This is Stefan speaking; Aenne has her own tale to tell and I’ll see about getting her on the blog to chat about it later.
Most folks know me from two different paths I took — writing (cough) anime fanfic and then original novels, and writing Neverwinter Nights modules. But truthfully Arcade Spirits first started out as an absurd little project from 1999 called “Culture Shock,” which was my attempt to write a visual novel engine in JAVASCRIPT to be playable in a browser. …look, it was 1999, JavaScript was almost respectable at the time, okay?
It was a different time. A far weebier time.
Eventually I canned the project as I just didn’t have access to the art resources I needed to actually do it, and JavaScript was clunky at best. Although there was this new thing I’d learned about at Otakon, attending a panel about… what was it called… Ren-py or something? Which seemed viable…
…but before I could dip too deep in those waters, Neverwinter Nights was released. And that changed everything. With a strong toolkit-based approach and an excellent dialogue editor, I was able to create storytelling adventures using a popular platform. I was in on it from day one, releasing Penultima, followed by Penultima ReRolled and the more horror-based elegia eternum series. Finally, I very nearly created an official Bioware campaign named the HeX coda, but corporate miscommunication resulted in the project being dropped from their roster and instead released for free.
(Interestingly, Fist of Discomfort — the game-within-a-game of Arcade Spirits — almost was a Neverwinter Nights module. I’d experimented with making a simplified brawler game out of the D&D based fightin’ engine, complete with those flashy GO! arrows you’d see in Final Fight.)
All my NWN games were very character-driven, as you can see here.
But D&D wasn’t really ideal for storytelling, because no matter how hard I tried I could never quite get the combat balance right. I could make stories featuring memorable characters, including some of the “dating” mechanics seen in Arcade Spirits, but it wasn’t quite enough to really explore narrative potential. Exploring relationships — both romance and friendship — through game systems has always fascinated me. To make that dream a reality, I needed a different tool.
For about ten years I opted to go back to writing novels. I didn’t need artists or musicians or coders to write a novel, just my own brain and a keyboard. It felt like a style I could actually work in without hitting the limitations I’d hit trying to be an entire game studio by myself. Meanwhile, the indie scene for games kept growing and growing, and visual novels started becoming more and more prominent…
Then in 2016, Aenne Schumann suggested working on a project together. She had friends who could help, resources we could tap. I had money to bankroll the venture and an idea that had been forming since 1999. Both of us combined had a diverse array of perspectives about arcades and arcade culture, which could be used to write a stronger story than either of us could have created alone. And we had the tool I’d learned about so long ago, RenPy. The time was finally right to make this work.
No more limitations. No more compromises. If I was only ever going to get one shot at making a professional video game I wanted to go all out — hire amazing artists, collaborate with them, work with a publisher, get this in front of as many people as possible. If it tanked, I’d soak the loss and at least say “I did it, I crossed that off my bucket list.”
But if it succeeds. If this grand fiasco actually succeeds…
Well. We’ll see, won’t we?
I’ll admit, I might be doing a poor job of communicating my positions, and important nuance might’ve been lost when I summarized a longer post that wouldn’t go through for some reason.
I do think people tend to overestimate the President’s power, both in terms of getting congress to pass legislation the president wants passed and in terms of keeping track of and ordering around all of the myriad agencies that make up the behemoth that is the US Federal Bureaucracy, and I’d argue similar goes for any sufficiently large organization and wouldn’t be surprised in the least if someone has a law, rule, or principle named after them to this effect. I also think people tend to overestimate how much real control the government or any particular big corporation has over their lives. Granted, my experiences might be more unusual than I think and most people really are more affected on average by most government decisions. As for Roe v. Wade, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess as to the impact reversing that decision would have, but I will say I’m in favor of comprehensive sexual education, universal availability of contraception, and some of the government’s R&D budget being invested in development of male contraceptives with reducing unplanned pregnancies as an major goal.
I personally find the pronoun debate silly in that both sides seem to be looking for a reason to get offended for its own sake. While I don’t doubt there are people who will turn a few grains of sand into Olympus Mons over the character customization including pronouns, the implication that the number of people who would pass on the game simply because of such an option being as great as people who would pass because of something like not being interested in an alternate history, 80’s arcade inspired aesthetic, not being interested in a dating sim, or not being a fan of visual novels would suggest the problem of people turning the most insignificant things into major political arguments is orders of magnitude worse than I thought. My thoughts when that particular bit of customization was announce was probably along the lines of “meh, whatever” and until this comments thread, I was thinking most people otherwise interested in the game would have similar reactions.
I’d also have to second that the notion that a game can’t be both fun and carry a message is just plain ridiculous. I will, however, admit that an overly obtrusive or poorly delivered message can suck all the fun out of an otherwise enjoyable game. That said, I’m sure I’ve enjoyed at least one game that someone, somewhere has interpreted as promoting something I would oppose.
As for STEAM versus STEM, as much as I love Math, Science, and Technology, I think life would be pretty damn boring without art. At the same time, some of my favorite works of art are very mathematical. Sure, expanding the total sum of human knowledge and finding practical solutions to real-world problems are important, but I’d argue the artisan has just as much value to civilization as the scholar or the engineer, I think the division of academic fields into sciences and arts feels very artificial, and that the term STEM ignores the importance of creativity in these fields.
As for my issues with running the demo, I’m a Linux user and I don’t often run software I can’t just sudo apg-get install nameofsoftware and everything I need to run it gets installed automatically. On top of that, I’m running a highly customized and stripped down install, which can make running third party applications all the harder. At the moment, I think my biggest problem might be that my system isn’t setup for running a full desktop environment, and I’m not sure how to fix that without installing several gigabytes of stuff I don’t need(I wouldn’t be running a GUI at all if I found any of the text-mode web browsers available for Linux half as usable as Firefox). Plus, there’s the added issues that come with being blind and reliant on a screen reader(though I’m told the engine includes built-in text-to-speech support, which will hopefully help if I ever get the demo running). Honestly, I would probably not even be following this project if I wasn’t a fan of Stefan’s novels.
The Linux version of Steam will be able to install and play the Steam version of the game. Same with the demo. As for blind assist, I’ll do what I can to support it — you may want to talk to Katriel Paige, our accessibility specialist, to further figure out how to make it work for you. Any tips you have for things we can change are welcome too. Thanks!
@ Brilliand
Explain your objection. Do you disagree the Supreme Court lacks the ability to effect people? It effects people all the time. Several states lost their ability to define marriage thanks to nine guys and gals in black robes. We are currently in an era where the Judicial branch wields enormous power largely because we, as a society, are ever more polarized.
So Roe V Wade, Obergefell v Hodges etc. All effected people when decided and would affect people if they were reversed.
So I would have to ask you to define why you think it doesn’t affect people.
Please take purely political discussions that have nothing to do with Arcade Spirits somewhere other than my development blog, please. Thanks for your understanding.
Okay, for some reason, the comment I typed up triggered an “unacceptable” error when I tried to submit it, so I’ll just summarize my points.
I’ll reserve judgment on the demo for when I figure out how to get it running.
In my mind, adding pronoun options other than he and she to character customization is about as political as adding the option to have purple hair on top of more natural hair colors, i.e. not at all. Also, portraying people with some socially frowned upon, but ultimately harmless quirk as otherwise ordinary people is not political. An attempt at social/cultural manipulation, maybe, but not political. Actually portraying hardships caused by said quirk being socially frowned upon and having characters avocating policy to address the issue, now that is political, and even then, might be for the sake of drama rather than the sake of being political.
I’ve never heard the term “deep state” before, but looking it up, that’s not my stance. If anything, I’m closer to believing the Federal Government as largely ineffectual as far as the daily lives of most Americans are concerned and see little difference between the two ruling parties who seem more concerned with pointless bickering, maintaining their illusion of power, and scapegoating foreigners than actually addressing America’s problems. Technological advance and personal life events have had far more impact on me than anything the Government has done in my lifetime.
As for Floating Point, the conflicts there hit much closer to home than most fantasy and science fiction works and makes me worried that petty Internet arguments might someday spill over into real-life violence at a rate to threaten civilization as we know it. Also, if I met an AI in the wild as sophisticated as those in Floating Point, I’d be hard pressed to deny their personhood with a clear conscience.
@Jeffery Mewtamer:
You haven’t played the demo? Okay…didn’t realize there was any difficulty playing the demo. Steam version worked fine for me.
What something is in your mind is irreverent. Its how the greater public will react to it. Further it is associated and advanced by a particular group who are attempting to advance their agenda in the culture war. To be specific choosing your pronouns means something very particular that choosing your gender in a game doesn’t. That, for instance, your gender doesn’t determine your pronouns. A position stupid, scientifically inaccurate and highly political in nature. Nor is it a harmless quirk. People have lost their jobs over failing to humor people’s laughable delusions. This is a very sensitive, very polarized topic. You can’t do that and not expect to reap a reaction. You do understand not everyone is onboard with the whole Pronoun thing, right? And that doesn’t make them wrong simply because they disagree with you? I mean you are not so arrogant to think something is right and good simply because you agree with it right? Because everyone believes in something and it kind of kills debate and prompts that degeneration into anarchy Floating Points trying to talk about if you deny there is even another side to debate.
You have never heard of the deep state? So you basically haven’t paid attention to any of the recent politics, news coverage, political blogs since 2016? And yet seem to think you are knowledgeable enough to give an opinion on the matter. Which I think says it all.
Moving on you clearly spoke in terms of influence and power wielded arguing that Trump did not have much compared to the elected representatives, appointed representatives, the tech companies eccetra. Nothing in the original statement is congruent with your current claim about speaking only about government paralyses. I can only assume this ties back in with your demonstrated failure that conflicts your emotions with factual data.
As for having an impact on your life, are you saying reversing Roe Vs Wade wouldn’t affect anyone? I mean I’m for reversing it but Liberals always cry about women dying in back alleys. But clearly, according to you, that’s a myth right?
As for Floating Point, we are well past the point we’re we can talk about what *might* happen. With Republicans getting gunned down at baseball diamonds and Antifa thugs being allowed to act with full support of the the liberal government we are well past the looking glass and the disintegration of the rule of law into Anarchy. So Floating Point doesn’t seem particularly relevant now.
Their AI’s. They lack a soul. They were manufactured either by Man or AI’s created by him. Which means they’re product, designed to serve a purpose. And most importantly they are not human. Which means I should have no greater concern destroying one than I would a toaster. Further they are potentially dangerous and distinctly separate tribe to Man and may compete with us for resources or space.So yes. If I genuinely thought they might pose a threat to Man, I’d wipe their hardrives without a second hesitation. That’s what my conscious would demand me to do. Protect my kith and kin.
I don’t keep track of what came from which decade, but I find that pretty much every decade since the 1950s has at least some good to great American Pop culture. Can’t say the same for politics(I’m tempted to say NASA and the Apollo program are the only real highlights of US politics post-Pearl Harbor, the rest seems to be mostly warmongering, dick waving contests with Russsia, and blaming one group of foreigners or another for all of America’s problems). Good thing politicians are pretty much crap at keeping people in STEAM fields from giving people hope for the future.
As I understand it “STEAM” is just STEM polluting a straight forward and analytical based sciences with “Art”. Personally I think STEM is better and far more likely to focus on practical matters that improve people’s lives. Through I do find it indicative of your previous thought patterns for you to prefer the one allowing more ambiguity and less “real science” to one that does.
This is my first time hearing about the Neverwinter Nights stuff, but then again, I’ve never gotten into anything Bioware.
As for other things mentioned in the comments, I only know basic HTML as far as web programming is concerned, but I do think there’s a tendency for the layperson to conflate the myriad of different technologies people have cobbled together to make the web what it is. That said, while I have no idea what the programmatic limits of HTML5 are, I’d challenge the notion that JavaScript is absolutely mandatory for writing browser games. Setting aside things like Flash, I can think of at least one genre of game(namely point-and-click adventures) that could be written entirely in basic HTML. Sure, doing so would put additional restrictions and limitations on the developer, and it would probably be easier to code in JavaScript, but I see no reason it couldn’t be done in plain, old, HTML.
As for pronouns, while I think the lack of unambiguous, animate, neuter pronouns is a glaringly empty niche in the evolution of the English language, I’ve always thought the pronoun debate kind of silly, but are there really people who are willing to write a game off just because it offers the option to customize player character pronouns? Seriously, is such that fundamentally different from a game giving you a choice between male and female protagonists that has essentially only minor cosmetic impact on a game(something Pokemon has been doing since Crystal and many other mainstream franchises with silent protagonists have been doing nearly as long, if not longer)?
Also, what about Arcade Spirits is cringe worthy? Is this one of those cases where Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr et al. abuse a word until it takes on a different meaning on mega-social sites than it has in normal, everyday English or where they’ve diluted its meaning to the point they apply it to almost everything? If so, this reinforces my priors that the megasocial sites are mostly cesspools of the worst of human culture, though I confess there might be confirmation bias in play.
As for Trump, I’m not convinced there’s been any real change in the last fifteen years in my life, American Society, or the world in general that can be credited in whole, or even in significant part to the title of President of the United States passing from Bush Jr. to Obama and then to Trump. Yes, the president is nominally the most powerful person in the US, and if you buy into the fairy tale of the US being the most powerful nation in the world, arguably the nominally most powerful person in the world, the president is still just one person. One person among hundreds of elected Federal officials, and those elected officials are only a drop in the bucket compared to the dozens, if not hundreds, of appointed officials and thousands of ordinary government workers who make up the bulk of the Federal Government, and even the Federal Government as a whole seems powerless compared to companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Twitter, and Yahoo, among others that have shaped one or more aspects of modern life, and even those only hold power over people as long as they buy-in to their respective ecosystems. Even if Trump truly has more influence than any other individual human, he is still nothing compared to humanity as a whole. Also, as a 30-something who long ago rejected most of the pro-America propaganda he was fed in school, I don’t think America was ever half as great as the ignorant patriots think it was.
But I digress, I find it inspirational that Arcade Spirits is potentially the culmination of an ambition 20 years in the making. Gives me hope that my own dream of having a hand in the creation of a video game that, if not a major hit, at least breaks even and developes a loyal fan following will someday come true(I’m currently at the point of trying to turn my degree in Computer science into a livelihood).
Thanks for your support, and I wish you the best in your own dreams! As Arcade Spirits says, you should always chase your dreams — but chase them responsibly.
@Jeffery Mewtamer:
As I said to Stefan, the point is choosing your pronoun, instead of your gender, is about making a political statement. Something Pokemon isn’t trying to do. Why you feel you should be able to make one and not have people respond in kind strikes me as self-absorbed.
And in this case “Cringe” means SJW nonsense. That’s its leftist. that’s its more about sending some kind of message than being an actual game. Which having had the misfortune of playing the demo is an accurate assessment. Unless you are SJW, it ain’t your bag.
In regards to Trump. One change would Gorusch and Kavanaugh. Neither of whom likely would have been appointed if Obama or Hillary were president. The impact of both men will likely influence the supreme court for decades. And even more if RGB retires/passes on.
And I do find it funny you are advocating for, in essence, the Deep State. I thought that was something Trump made up.
I don’t think you reached the point where Gorusch, Kavanaugh, or the supreme court matter to the everyday lives of random people. Keep going?
Heh, reading the link to the previous blog post I had a laugh at “current events” being dour and depression. Personally I thought things since 2016 have been very 80-esque with a Teflon Republican President smashing the liberal orthodoxy and wanting to “Make America Great Again”. Quite fitting background for a game designed as a love letter to that decade. But admittedly I guess you have to be on my side of the aisle to really get the joke.
You can enjoy the pop culture of a decade without approving of the politics of that decade. I can like The Beatles and not approve of the Vietnam War, for instance.
While Arcade Spirits is generally apolitical, more concerned with personal stories than global politics, there is an undercurrent of anti-corporate greed and one character experiences sexual harassment. So, if you want something entirely and utterly neutral and objective, it’s still not going to satisfy. But it’s definitely WAY fluffier and more lighthearted than my previous project, which is a lot of stress off my plate, personally.
Well the Beatles weren’t really for or even really connected to the Vietnam War. I’d think Rolling Stones would be the more apt analogy.
And no. Arcade Spirits is quite political. You can’t advance something like LGBTQ+, which is about reshaping society norms, and not be political. That would be like me claiming I don’t have a political bias because I advocate for the Nuclear Family or want to reduce immigration from third-world countries.
Not really sure what your getting at. I had a laugh at you being upset at losing a political election while working on a game heavily inspired from an era where the exact same thing happened. I didn’t claim you couldn’t enjoy anything. Or ask for something entirely neutral. Whatever that means in this context.
So what’s so bleak about Floating Point? Their just AIs aren’t they? Not like they’re real people.
Actually I only found out about you because an “Arcade Spirits” trailer popped up on Youtube. Ironically “cringe” was the primary response I saw in the comments for it. Through I don’t think it was your sincerity rather what you were sincere about. The whole choose your pronouns thing was a bit on the nose and kind of kills a good chunk of the potential market.
I’m entirely okay with not appealing to the market that recoils in horror at character customization options.
Well A.) if the majority or even parity of people’s responses motivated enough to response to your trailer is Cringe/Pass, then your game trailer has sort of failed in enticing them. B.) Its not the customization options. Lots of games has those. It’s the chose your pronoun which is a LGBTQ+ thing. Which, since the gaming community has been polarized since GamerGate effectively says you belong to an alien and opposing tribe. Which shoots you in the foot going out the gate. C.) Are you trying to make a fun game or send a message? You can’t do both.
I’m most likely making a mistake in engaging with you, but I very much disagree with your last point
>Are you trying to make a fun game or send a message? You can’t do both.
You can 100% do both.
@ Jernik
Shrug. I care about arguments and argue accordingly. I just don’t have much patience for Libs who can’t even keep their arguments straight.
If you have the ability to make an argument that isn’t just reposting your feelings, you should be fine.
If you disagree please cite an example of a game sending a controversial or polarizing message at the time of its release that was universally enjoyed by all sides.
JavaScript is still respectable… though I think it gets more press under the name “HTML5” nowadays.
HTML5 is not Javascript by any means.
If you hear that a game was written in “HTML5” – it was written in JavaScript. Actual HTML5 can’t make a game.
Trust me, this was amateur hour 1999 era JavaScript. It was a grotesquerie which is better off left in an abandoned grave, never to be spoken of again.
I don’t think I’ve heard of any game written in HTML5, I hear of lots of games written in JS