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Games by JimD Newsletter – Game Progress, Dragons, & the Future

Added 2019-10-27 19:15:40 +0000 UTC

Hello friends, choice gamers, and horror readers. This month has been a big month for me. I had my surgery and all went well. I’ve been recovering for the past few weeks. For the first week of my recuperation, I didn’t work much. The pain and discomfort were large sources of distraction, though I got a bit of progress done on Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven. This past week I felt much better and finished a large section of writing for chapter 8. In this newsletter I’ll discuss more of my recent progress and also discuss things I have planned for next year.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven

Yesterday, I uploaded my newest version of Part 3 which continues the very important Research Station mission and a specific scene in which you get to question Benton, a member of the Silverthorne Militia. You may remember in chapter 7, one outcome of the possible battle with the Silverthornes is to capture Benton. Once your group resides at the Junkyard, you secure Benton in a makeshift prison cell and have the opportunity to question him about his group. This is a pivotal scene as it provides information on the largest potential adversary for your group to date. This scene took over 10,000 words of content to cover all of the nuances of this experience. I use the word “experience” because I tried to make it as real as possible while making sure the game was balance. I’ll discuss more of this in my Game Balance section below.

My plan for Part 3 is to continue working on the Research Station mission and add more specific scenes, such as romantic interactions, hobbies, and other smaller scenes that fill-in the day to day management of life in the zombie apocalypse. My goal is to hit at least 20,000 words per month. Currently, Part 3 is a little over 120,000 words.

Vampire Fiction

I finished Episode 5 this month and am hoping to release it soon. The publisher continues to change a lot of their processes by which writers and developers produce their stories. In the year I’ve worked with them, they have changed the way we are paid, our method of payment (banks), how much we are paid, the size of each episode, the monetization of each episode, the amount of graphics for each episode, and a slew of other items. While they are a new company and must go through changes until they settle on a good “formula”, it’s jarring to spend time working on a story and to deal with changes every few weeks. I’m not saying I’m giving up; I’ve already promised fifteen episodes. It just gets hard to work on a project where the rewards are so unpredictable when I have a hit like Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven to work on.

So I will continue to work on Vampire Fiction, but until my publisher reaches a point of equilibrium, I will be working at a much slower pace on that story.

Dragon

No, this is not a point where I tell you I’m changing to writing fantasy stories or a Game of Thrones fan fiction game. One new addition to my writing has been to download and start using new software, Dragon NaturallySpeaking. As some of you know, due to my underlying disorder, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, I have limited use of my hands. Being a writer, this means I type and code much more slowly than most people. I actually timed my writing at one point at only twenty-five words per minute. Friends and family have suggested I try dictation software, but I always resisted. I felt that it would be hard to code using such software due to limitations on recognition of commands and variables.

However, after my recent surgery, my hand strength was even more reduced, and I was unable to type. Thankfully, my hand strength has returned but during that downtime I decided to try Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It definitely has trouble picking up codes and commands, but in terms of writing narrative, it is exceptional. While I use to write from 300 to 350 words on average in an hour, I am now doubling that. It took a while to learn the software and to understand how to use it with my coding tools. As I use it more and more, I now see that this product will help me increase my production each month, especially in non-coded pieces of writing, such as this newsletter and my short stories.

Game Development – Game Balance

While writing this month’s scene involving questioning Benton, I had to consider game balance more than most scenes of the game. Most of this relates to forcing or motivating a prisoner to give up guarded information. Benton is a captive and therefore does not want to answer any of your questions. One mechanic of the scene is to give you the opportunity to interrogate, manipulate, or even torture him into giving up the information you need. As you can imagine, this is one of the most difficult scenes I have written in a long time.

When writing such a scene, I have to balance a variety of play styles. I can’t focus on any one play style more than another when thousands of players, all playing thousands of different characters, want to approach scenes in different ways. While many of my more vocal readers want to interrogate or torture Benton, many more of my non-vocal readers will want to befriend him or bargain with him. If I give one play style more content than another, it will feel like the game is directing the player and that is when players lose agency. One reason people really enjoy this series is that they truly feel they are playing the game the way they want to. My goal is to continue to give them that style of game.

How do I balance such a scene? In truth it is still difficult, but the majority of my time is to consider all possible scenarios and then boil them down to the most common possibilities. So when approaching Benton, I give the following options:

The main character can question Benton alone.
The main character can question Benton with another survivor.
The main character can suggest another survivor questions Benton.

In each of these paths, I have to then balance the skills the main character may use to motivate Benton to talk. These may include Persuasion, Leadership, or Intimidation, backgrounds/professions, various relationship scores, and the skills and attitudes of the survivors who may be a part of the questioning. For example, the scene may play out differently for a persuasive teenager who brings in Jamie, an intimidating police officer who questions him alone, and an authoritative doctor who questions him with Rachel.

I also had to balance the possible methods of questioning him. At first, I wrote several ways to interrogate or torture him. However, this is not a torture simulator. While that is one path of the game, if I devote so much content to a single path, the player may feel forced into that path. For my writing style, I had to rewrite that scene to balance each path equally. Each method of questioning Benton must have a route to succeed with results that are no better or worse than another.

The torture and interrogation scenes also pose another risk. Apple, one of the main distributors of the game, has clear guidance on their apps which limit depictions of torture. So, if I had very specific narratives of torture, the game may be pulled from the store. Truthfully, I never thought to include graphic scenes in this game. But with the possibility that certain content in my game may be flagged for breaking one of Apple’s guidances, I treated this scene with the utmost care.

With all of that said, I am happy with the way this scene turned out and them looking forward to my testers providing feedback.

The Future

Even though Halloween is upon us, I am already thinking about next year. My workload in 2020 will increase dramatically, but I feel that I’m ready for the challenge. One of my top goals is to finish Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3. Even now with all of the sections I know I have to write, it seems like a lofty goal. While I am hoping to release Part 3 next Halloween, it’s hard to predict whether or not that’s possible.

Another development which I have hinted at in the past is a new project in the works. Earlier this year, I was approached to work on a new game set in an established universe that is being a licensed by a major company. Just this month (the day before my surgery, in fact), I signed a contract to work on this game throughout 2020. With that contract I signed an NDA, a nondisclosure agreement, which prevents me from giving any more details on this project. However, I was told by the publisher that they will be making a major announcement sometime early next year at which time I can begin discussing the game, the genre, and other aspects. I am very excited about this development and am looking forward to sharing more details in the coming year.

How will I balance writing this new game along with Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3? My plan is to divide my month to work on different games. Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking will definitely help and I will have to budget my time more carefully. The rewards of producing two games next year are considerable. My motivation has never been higher, and I am definitely challenge myself in the new year. Also, I hope that my work on the project increases the support of new patrons and new players of my games. In turn this may allow me to hire more help which will speed up production of Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven.