H: So you guys came from Early Access on Steam and now you’re on Xbox One; what is the status of the Xbox One version, is it in a completed state?
R: Actually what we’re doing is exactly what you’ll see in Early Access on Steam. We’re in Game Preview, which is the new program that Microsoft is doing; as they mentioned at the keynote, we and Elite Dangerous are the two games that were launched at announcement.
H: That’s very exciting, to be a part of what Microsoft is doing in trying to mirror somewhat Steam’s Early Access program, better supporting indie titles by giving us a window into the progress in developing one. I find it intriguing.
R: Yes, they actually chose us! It’s a testament to how solid our community is on Steam, and how we’ve run a really tight ship in terms of the quality of the game, the fact that it isn’t buggy, it doesn’t crash, there’s already a lot of good content there.
H: I think you guys have improved the integrity of the Early Access program on Steam on the merit of being a part of it, because you see so many games that are obviously an exploitative, shameless rip off, and I don’t want to knock the indie developers that are out there testing the waters and getting a feel for who they are as creators, but at the same time, I’ve been let down and disappointed. There was a dinosaur game I really wanted to play, The Stomping Land, which was abandoned, another game, Towns, was abandoned too.
R: Honestly I can understand from the developers point of view also, in that my team is made up entirely of veterans, we’ve all been making games for ten or fifteen years. If you are just getting into games development now, the bar for entry is very low. Because the survival genre is so hot right now, you can sort of cobble something together, put it out there…and suddenly you have all these sales and all this money and you don’t even know what to do with it. And unfortunately these teams don’t have the maturity as developers to be able to carry it forward. I think sometimes they do just get in over their heads. We’ve been pretty methodical about how we build a game and the choices we make, to ensure it makes sense with the size of the team we have, so that we don’t end up in a situation where we have a game that is bigger than what we can support, while maintaining a quality level that we can be proud of.
Microsoft approached us to be a part of the Game Preview Program and it’s essentially exactly the same game. When they announced it on Monday [June 15, 2015] later that afternoon it went live on Xbox One so you can actually buy the game right now. It has a one hour free trial, which is part of their program. It’s a curated project, it’s not open.
H: In that sense, they have a one-up on Steam, in terms of maintaining quality.
R: I think it’s just two different philosophies. Sometimes, you see a diamond in the rough on Steam that otherwise would never have been found if the platform were not open. But as you mentioned it does open the system to possible abuses. Steam’s philosophy has always been to be kind of hands off, while Microsoft has a console, and consoles have always been highly curated experiences.
H: Out of necessity! They have to be.
R: Right, so we had to go through a proper certification process to make sure the game will work perfectly on the console, Microsoft is very strict about that. At the same time, it’s a great acknowledgment that Microsoft sees the value in the community development model; build the community, get your feedback, improve the game, but do so organically, as opposed to the traditional model where you spend a lot of money on a game, throw more money at marketing, and then just hope it works out.
H: So, I haven’t played the game in awhile, not since Fluffy got me. If I were to fire it up right now, what changes would I find have taken place since then? All that was available at the time was open play Sandbox Mode, no Story Mode.
R: Story Mode is coming soon, it’ll be episodic and the first chapter should be coming out this year. It’s still sandbox, which is currently 25 square kilometers, we have three major regions, each with their own take on the survival theme. They’re joined by travel regions and it is a seamless world. We added bow hunting recently and in the true spirit of the game you have to make everything from scratch yourself, so you have to harvest the wood, you have to cure it til it’s ready to be used, you have to find all the supplies you’ll need to make it. The earlier part of the game is really about exploration and harvesting the manmade things that are left in the world, and then if you survive long enough you transition into a place where now you have to be more self sufficient. And really that’s the ultimate goal, to be more self sufficient, make your own clothes, getting food by hunting and what not.
H: I appreciate how tedious that is, because really that’s the reality of it, these are the compromises you’d be making internally in that situation. The expenditure of calories, I really like that as a device. It reminds me of the health and mana bars that have become such a staple of RPGs, but in terms of real life.
R: It’s just a very easily understandable measurement for people, right? And I think everybody understands that calories equals energy, doing things takes energy, higher levels of activity cost more energy than say, sitting still. That becomes a part of the economy of the game, the trade off they have to make. It drives the search for food and supplies, the burning of your calories are affected by other things like how cold you are, so you have to think about how to maintain your warmth, through your clothing or shelter or fires. All the systems work together to create that neutral threat of nature where it’s almost up to chance whether you survive or not. What I love about the game is that sense of contrast between how beautiful and immersive the world can be while having this underlying awareness that the world is slowly killing you. When I look back at some of the feedback we’ve seen from our community, I’m blown away by some of the ways that people will describe their deaths. They’ll write journal entries that go day by day, blow by blow what they did…to me that is the purest form of player story. It’s very exciting to see. I’m equally excited to think about bringing the Story Mode in, because it gives us an opportunity to bring in our author’s take on the story of The Long Dark.
H: So, tell me more about that, you said you’re planning on seasons, how many seasons will there be?
R: We’re gonna launch Season 1 and there will be a number of episodes. Right now the plan is to have eight. And then with any luck, we’d like to do future seasons and the current thinking is that each season is a literal season of the year, so Season 2 would be spring, etc. That way we can change the mechanics, get you out of the snow.
H: Oh that’d be so fun, like changing things up in terms of your survival tactics, for instance in the summer you’re having to manage your body heat and hydration, maybe.
R: Yeah hydration becomes an issue. As you can imagine in a world with this post disaster scenario, there’s no functional technology and people are more of a threat, but there’s a lot of stuff there for the picking. Later on in the game it’ll be harder to find resources, wildlife will be more active (since they will be outside of a winter context), etc etc. There’s a lot of things we can do just by tuning those mechanics to fit each season, and thematically you can follow that arc. Our grand design would be to do like a full year of The Long Dark.
H: So what can you tell about the story in terms of the greater picture? We do know that there’s been some sort of disaster-like event that has created this post apocalyptic scenario, but will we see any resolution on that? Is that something we get to learn more about in the process of the game’s overarching narrative?
R: Yes, absolutely.
H: And how is that delivered, exactly? Obviously you take a lot of inspiration from games that make heavy use of chat logs and journals left behind; will that type of storytelling be coming into play?
R: There will be some environmental storytelling that comes through the art and atmospheric design, and there will be collectibles and things left behind that you can use to learn more about your surroundings. There will be other survivors that you encounter along the way and that will be in Story Mode. And then we’ll have our version of a mission structure, with narrative underpinnings and what not. I kind of compare it to Fallout 3 in that you can wander freely in a sandbox environment but then also complete missions and follow through with their objectives. We’re trying to put our own slant on it but I think when it comes to a story-driven experience, we need to take advantage of what people already understand in terms of how storytelling works in an open world environment. We’re a small team so we have to pick our battles in what we choose to animate.
