H: In that sense you have your own little survival game going on within your team, working on these limited resources and trying not to misstep within those limitations. I ask this of many Kickstarter funded studios in interviews, do you find that working outside the confines of a publisher, with diminished resources but greater creative control, to help or hinder the creative process?
R: It always helps the creative process to have some constraints.
H: As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.
R: Absolutely. You’re forced to find really creative solutions to things which is where you tend to discover the unexpected.
H: It seems to me that if you’re making a game that places some emphasis on minimalism, having a similarly restrictive scenario behind the scenes would almost enhance the process, that the two would almost play off of each other.
R: It does and obviously where we’re located does as well. I think ultimately what we’re trying to do is create a world that is compelling and can stand in its own right, based on the art style, the atmosphere, the feeling you have just moving through it. And then as we start rolling out the Story Mode and sharing more of the background information, I hope that people will really start to see the true identity of The Long Dark as a game. A lot of people have seen the Sandbox Mode and I think a lot of them think that’s the entirety of the game. But the Sandbox Mode is really only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more there.
H: So was there a reason you decided to keep a separate Sandbox Mode? Were there hazards to keeping that open of a world in the story mode context?
R: We split them up when we decided to go to Early Access. We didn’t want to ruin the experience by giving the audience a story that wasn’t final or complete. It was very much a gradual decision that we came to once we took stock of Early Access; we asked ourselves, is there an opportunity for us there, is there something that would work for us that would be beneficial to the game, and we thought well, the game is getting bigger and bigger, and it’s a lot of statistics and data, thousands of tune-ables under the hood that make the game what it is, and a lot of getting that right depends on having a feedback from a lot of people. We also knew that our Kickstarter audience, as much as we loved them, was still limited and we wanted to open it up to get more data, essentially. But we didn’t want to ruin that story experience for people so we said, let’s just make a sandbox which will show off the mechanics of the game and the game world, that we can then use to also fundamentally tune the core of the gameplay, which will carry over into Story Mode. That way Story Mode can continue on its own in secret, and then we can reveal it when we’re ready to reveal, when people can have the best experience possible. There are so many times in the Sandbox Mode where I’ve wanted to take things from Story Mode and put them in there to make the world feel more alive and to show you the true identity of The Long Dark, but I’ve been holding back because I want the story to have the maximum impact when it first comes out.
I don’t think we had any real expectations of how Early Access was gonna go for us, we have always looked at our game as what it really is, which is an artistic survival game, it’s really not a mainstream experience at all. The fact that we’re at E3 is kind of weird, because we’re not a showfloor kind of game. We recognize, as we’re sitting here under this Halo 5 trailer [on the Microsoft E3 show floor] pumping all day, that we’re a very quiet game. The Long Dark is the first survival game on the console, and it’s amazing to watch and discover an ecosystem of players that grew up independently of Steam, who haven’t been exposed to this genre yet.. We have almost a scientific curiosity around how they will respond to it. I can tell that some people really don’t get it, others don’t get it at first and then they get drawn into it and are like “Wow this is totally different from what I expected.” But, you’re not gonna get that in five minutes. It takes a half hour, an hour.
H: Yes it strikes me that this atmosphere isn’t very conducive to that, though I imagine the exposure is good.
R: Yes we’re very happy with that, we’re thrilled that Microsoft asked us to be a part of Game Preview. They’ve been great to us so far. We love that we can bring the game to players in this model. We haven’t given up any of our independence. It’s only been a benefit to us. So far our experience with them has been super positive and we like the fact that we’re pioneering this program. They’ve been looking to us to give them feedback on how things are going. You always pay a little bit of a cost to be a pioneer (if we can call ourselves that) because nothing is set up yet, everybody’s learning as they go along. We’re trying to educate people but the infrastructure isn’t there yet. I think what drew us to the program was the idea of being first at this, one of the first on Game Preview, and the first survival game on console. Whether it’s a sales success or not for us I don’t know yet, but just being first falls in line with the exploration that we’re trying to do…it all fits together: the game, the studio, the risks that we take.
H: So you guys are taking a big risk here, leading the way through uncharted territory in that sense. Do feel any sense of responsibility to help smaller or similarly sized studios through this process as kind of a leader and example?
R: We love to help and we already support a lot of studios that are in Early Access, because they’ve seen we’ve had success with it and they want to know how we’ve done it. We’d love to be able to do the same for people on console. Microsoft is very committed to the idea and they want to make it as good as they can make it. It’s been very refreshing. You think of Microsoft as being this conservative entity, but the people that we’re working with there are aiming for quality. They understand that it comes down to picking the right developers and giving them the tools they need, supporting them when they need to but also getting out of the way as necessary. They’re really good at that. When they first approached us before Christmas, it took about five months of talking before I said yes. I was really concerned about the idea of working with this huge entity when we’re a tiny little studio, I didn’t want to lose any of our freedom. It’s a testament to how good they’ve been that we’re here today.
H: Hearing that, this feels like less of a token effort to compete with Steam and Sony.
R: I can tell you that I’ve been pulled into meetings with very high level executives over at Microsoft who are taking a direct interest in listening to how developers feel about their experience working with them. It’s been incredible to feel that dedication to pushing the boundaries.
H: Are you planning achievements for the game? What are we looking at in terms of collectibles? Do you find these to cheapen the experience you’re striving for at all?
We have achievements on Steam, but we haven’t added them yet on Xbox One because there are different rules there for how you deal with achievements. We’re holding off until we have a chance to plan it out very carefully across Story Mode and all the other things that we want to do. I think you can tell from the experience we’re curating that we’re not about just giving empty rewards to players. The achievements we have on Steam are limited mostly to “you survived X amount of days”. That’s kind of the bread and butter of it, but there are others ones that we’ve put in as a result of observing players. In a Sandbox Mode where there are no objectives, what you find is that players who invest a lot of time into it start to make their own objectives. We’ve actually pulled achievements from the community. We’ve seen people say, “Well I’m gonna see if I can survive outside for three nights without using a fire.” and said, “OK let’s put that in there then.”
H: Ah I see, drawing on what the audience does to earn that sense of completion or achievement.
R: Right like, “Can I use every single medicinal herb to be found in the game?”, we saw it and said “Hey, let’s do that.” We’re not trying to use achievements to push a mechanic. I find it frustrating when you play a game and there’s achievements in there that seemed like they’re designed to just drive unusual game activity, things you aren’t inspired to do normally.
H: I’m a little torn on that personally because on one hand I do like to be prompted to come out of my comfort zone but at the same time, it can cheapen what they’re trying to do in the first place. Shouldn’t better game design prompt the natural use of those mechanics? If you want them to do something, make it more essential or easy to adapt to?
R: Exactly. We want to reward players for the behavior that they feel is compelling. I don’t think achievements should be what drives player engagement or decision making. Often achievements become these little guideposts for people whereas to me an achievement is an acknowledgement that you've done something amazing and that you did it yourself. The game doesn’t give you anything. Everything you have is something you’ve earned.
H: One of the other games that I think is really strengthening the burgeoning, pure wilderness survival genre is The Forest, which is also out on Early Access on Steam. Have you played it or any other survival type games on there and what are your thoughts?
I’m a little drawn on talking about The Forest, I’ve met the development team and they’re really awesome people. They’re really new to the industry so I think they were surprised to discover they have an amazing hit on their hands. I think they’re working really hard to make the best game they can.
H: That’s one of the survival games I’ve been playing a bit more avidly, they’ve been putting out updates almost every month, and each update changes everything every time.
R: They’re definitely trying to fine tune it and find their way. What I’ve heard about The Forest, and other Early Access games as well is…how we measure quality as developers, and the things we try to focus on for the best possible experience for the player, can be different than how players actually measure quality, if that makes sense. I play some of these Early Access games, and I see bugs in the first three minutes that I would never ship in my game, but their communities are still really happy and have way more players than we do. So it’s been interesting. I think what we’ve come to terms with is that we have our expectations and standards that are our own and it’s probably excessive in terms of what we need to do for our community, but we’re also trying to do something that we feel proud of. It’s a great reminder that we need to pick our battles, that not every player is going to be enthusiastic about our latest update or addition. I think our success has hinged on our focus and not biting off more than we can chew.
H: All about carefully managing those resources, right?
R: Always. Watch your calories!
The Long Dark is currently in Early Access for Sandbox Mode on Steam, as well as Xbox One’s Game Preview program. Check out more about The Long Dark at the official site.
