Queen's Wish Is Out. Here's Why It's So Weird!

All new. All different.

Now that we've finally released our new game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror, we're finally free to talk about it! Nerdy game-design talking!

We have been writing role-playing games for a very, very long time. It's what we do. One of the ways we stay sane while doing this is to change things. Every game or two, we like to change stuff: The graphics. The setting. The game system.

Doing new things inspires us and keeps our brains fresh. After 25 years, we want to innovate. Stretch the form. Take risks, win or lose.

The problem is that whenever you make a change some people will get mad. Whatever change you make, some people will dislike it. (Which is reasonable. People like what the like.) It is then the responsibility of the developer to earn new customers to make up for the ones driven away by the changes. (which is difficult and scary.)

Our newest game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror, changes EVERYTHING. It's a completely new RPG, rewritten from the ground up.

Some of the changes, like the graphics and the storyline, will be pretty self-evident. Some people will like them, and some won't. I hope you're cool with it, but it's out of my hands now.

There Is One Way I Can Make Things Easier

There is one thing I can help with, though. I've changed a lot of rules and ways the game system works. For decades, we've set up stuff in a certain way, and now it's different, and it's caused some confusion among our testers.

So, for our long-time fans, this is a quick guide to the stuff we've changed. This will help you avoid confusion and kill monsters with maximal efficiency.

I don't want you to waste your time. Every dungeon you enter, you can WIN. You have to win. If not ...

1. Trash Monsters Don't Get Experience

This is the single change that makes people the most angry. You get experience with victories. Completing quests, defeating dungeons, these are what give experience.

Sneaking into a dungeon, killing two wolves, and running out doesn't reward you. You have to enter every dungeon determined to get victory. Coffee is for closers.

I understand the anger about this change. A lot of people play RPGs to get that constant dopamine drip of tiny rewards. I'm trying to do a different thing here, and it's going to cost us money. I don't want you to waste your time killing the same 3 brigands again and again and again. I want you to always be pushing forward, exploring new areas, defeating new foes, trying new things.

2. You Have To Do Dungeons In One Trip

Along the same lines as #1. Your enemies can get reinforcements. You can't dip into a dungeon, kill a few monsters, return to town to rest, and repeat until the adventure is whittled away. You have to use strategy and conserve your power to defeat dungeons in one trip.

Don't let this stress you out, though. We have worked really hard on balance. On Normal difficulty, the dungeons should be exciting and suspenseful without being punishing. If you want a true tactical challenge, on the other hand, Veteran and Torment difficulties are there for you.

3. You Don't Have Much Energy, But Effects Are Powerful

In our earlier games, you had tons of energy and cast lost of spells all the time, but they had less of an effect. In Queen's Wish, you have less energy (though killing foes refreshes it). The effects are quite powerful, but you will have to take care to use them when they can have maximal impact.

If character development seems to simple, remember that how you improve your forts is a major part of your character build. There's lot of complexity, but I don't hit you with it all at the beginning.

4. Healing is Weaker. Crowd Control is Stronger.

It is more important to control your foes than to just let them bonk you and heal the damage. You will have a full suite of stun and terror abilities to get your enemies under control.

A nice tip: Many of your ability make your next weapon blow have a special effect (like causing bleeding or stun). These abilities help attacks from bows and wands too. You can have your archer stun the evil wizards in the back row!

5. You Make the Best Gear In Your Forts

The dungeons still have good treasure, of course. However, your most important reward for completing missions is resources for your forts. Then you can build new smithies, alchemists, etc. The more smithies you build, the better the gear you can get.

Having trouble in a dungeon? Remember that the best gear is sold in your forts. Go back to one of them, build a new smithy, and do some shopping. It will help a lot!

There are over 40 base abilities. Some are core. Some are situational. Some dungeons on higher difficulties may require special character builds.

6. You Can Change Around Your Skills At Will

When you train your character in a set of abilities, you can unlearn those abilities in your forts at will. Some abilities are more useful in certain regions.

On Normal difficulty, this probably won't be necessary. In higher difficulty levels, you might need to change your skill loadout or switch to alternate characters to overcome certain challenges.

You may find the Queen's Wish system is way deeper than it appears at first. You'll have to make a lot of decisions about how to build up your forts and how to shift your skills around to deal with new foes.

7. No More Junk Items

For the last couple decades, there were lots of small incidental items (like spoons or bricks) scattered around to add flavor to areas. These aren't in Queen's Wish. Boxes only contain treasure. You don't get to collect a millions small items, but, on the other hand, there's no need to collect a million small items.

Your backpack is only for useful items. It has limited space, so you have to decide what to take with you into a dungeon. Fortunately, it's not hard to make your pack bigger.

And If You Hate These Changes?

Don't worry! We will still be remastering our old games, and we will leave the things you like in them alone as much as possible. Our next game will be a remaster of our beloved old Geneforge, and we promise to respect what you loved about it.

Anyway, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror for Windows and Mac is out. The iPad and iPhone version will be out late in the year. Thank you for your patience with this new world, and we hope you love these games half as much as we do!

No, Video Games Aren't Art. We're BETTER.

Do you think this should fill me with shame? Because it does not.

"When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me. When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me."
- Bob Hope, as told by Patton Oswalt

I used to argue passionately that video games were art.

Then I stopped arguing about it, because why bother? Of COURSE video games are art.

Now I see that it's a waste of time thinking of video games as art. Why would we game designers ever aim that low?

I Don't Want Art. I Want Transportation.

I just finished playing DOOM. Like many, I was amazed by how awesome a game it turned out to be. Penny Arcade had the perfect description for it: "Playable sugar."

DOOM had three of the best boss fights I've ever seen. Punishingly tough and yet scrupulously fair. When I died, I could say, "OK. I know what I did wrong. I won't do that again." When I fought those bosses, I was utterly transported. The rest of the world vanished. When I won, I was sweaty, wrung out, and completely satisfied.

I love literature and theatre. I love great movies. Yet, I can't remember any work of art, no matter how good, that consumed and drained me as much as the Cyberdemon in DOOM.

When I beat it, I felt proud. It is dumb to feel proud about something in a video game. The feeling was real nonetheless.

Nobody considers DOOM a work of Fine Art. Nor should they. Bloggers are not grinding their gears contemplating the True Meaning of DOOM. Nor should they.

It's not art. It's simply awesome.

Why would I ever be unsatisfied with Awesome?

Put this in front of me, and I will be lost until the sun comes up. Nothing else has that power over me. Should I be ashamed of this? Because I am not.

We're Doing Fine Without You.

It always peeves me when some blogger says, "Video games are OK, I guess, to the simple-minded. But they're not enough. They are unworthy. They're [string of negative adjectives], and it is up to me, hero that I am, to FIX them at last!"

Get over yourself. Video games are fine. No, they're not fine. They’re doing GREAT, by every possible metric.

Number of titles? The market is gruesomely flooded. (Gruesomely for developers, I mean. For fans, it's an overwhelming embarrassment of riches.)

Number of fans? Video games are popular to the point of global invasion. Find me a human, and I will find a game that can addict them.

Financial success? We're a 100 BILLION USD a year industry. We're huge and getting bigger every year.

Artistic accomplishment? Creativity? Look up any Best Games list from 2014 or 2015. Video games are breaking new barriers in craftsmanship and artistic expression every year and turning profits while they do it.

Diversity? Pick any demographic group, and someone is making games to cater to them personally. It's one of the great advantages of a gruesomely flooded market. (Of course, not every game will cater to you personally, but that's not possible or desirable. Other people get stuff they like too.)

Video games are taking over the world, and they're doing it in style.

We're winning because we offer something better than art. We offer Experience.

If you don't think Pong is fun, try it with friends. It holds up.

I Understand The Last of Us On a Higher Level Than You

The Last of Us is a truly great game. Many have written about it, including me. I recommend it very highly.

But here's what bugs me. The cutscenes of The Last of Us told a very good story. Those cutscenes, all together, would make a solid B+ zombie movie. But when bloggers wrote about it, they treated the actual game part of The Last of Us as this sort of useless, irritating, vestigial limb.

Without the gameplay, the action, the battle, the fear, the dying again and again, The Last of Us is just an above-average zombie movie. The true greatness of the experience is in the sneaking and the stabbing and the shooting and the dying. (LOTS of dying.)

Here's Why.

Would You Survive the Apocalypse?

It's not a hypothetical question. I mean it. Think about it. Five seconds from now, zombies leap in through the window. Civilization is OVER. Would you make it through?

Well, here's a way to think about the question.

Imagine starting a game of The Last of Us on the highest difficulty level. (Or The Walking Dead. Or DOOM, for that matter.) Go into it blind. Try to play through the whole thing, front to back, without dying.

If you make it, you survive the apocalypse. If you're one of the 99.9999% of people who don't make it, you die. You help make up one of the mountains of skulls that serve as DOOM background.

Try it. It's an amusing exercise. It took me five tries to get through the tutorial of The Last of Us, so I know where I stand.

I had a much older relative once who thought she was immune to video games. Then this infected her. Eventually, she shook free, but she never again dismissed the power of our craft.

Of Course, This Isn't Literal Truth.

Obviously, the skills to win a video game are different from the skills needed to literally survive the End of Days. I know this.

The Last of Us, the actual game part of it, is trying to do something impossible. Like, literally impossible. It is trying to give us a glimmer of a portion of a sensation of understanding the experience of the end of the world. It doesn't succeed, of course. It can't.

But it does come closer to putting us INSIDE that experience than anyone else. We're not watching, we're doing. We are, in an indirect way, mediated through joysticks, living an experience. We are taking part in a compelling demonstration of how fragile our lives are. How utterly inadequate we are to the challenge.

The Last of Us can trick our brains, for a moment, into thinking we're struggling for survival. Similarly, Minecraft can trick us into feeling like we're building something glorious out of nothing. Cookie Clicker creates a powerful sensation of growth and progress, abstract but compelling.

When I write a game, I try to make you feel like you have power. Then I try to make you feel the awesome, terrifying responsibility of having power. When I force you to make a tough decision, for a brief moment, I can reprogram your brain and take your thoughts somewhere they've never been before. This is amazing.

That is, at heart, what the games we make are. They are tools we creators use to compel and rewrite your brains. We haven't begun to come to terms with the power we've unleashed with these toys, these addiction machines.

This is an integral part of childhood now. It will only stop being thus when it is replaced by something even more powerful.

SimCity Isn't Art.

Nor is Civilization. Or Halo. Or Space Invaders. Or Castle Crashers. Or DOOM. Or Super Meat Boy. Or Hearthstone. Or League of Legends. Or Clash of Clans. Or Minecraft. Or Pac-Man. Or Solitaire. Or Pong. Not art. Why would they aim that low?

They provide consuming experiences. They are compulsions.  I'm not going to argue that they're High Art. They aren't. They're SuperArt. They take over your brain and let you get lost in them.

I can see why Artists look down on what we do. They have no choice. They certainly can't compete with us. What we do is irresistible. Authors and playwrights are dinosaurs, and we're throwing the asteroids. We'll let Film and TV survive. For now.

Atari Adventure doesn't look like much. Yet I've seen this silly thing compel people, young and old, for a whole evening. Not an evening many years ago. An evening NOW.

"But What About Games That Do Try To Be Art, Smart Guy?"

They're great. I am a huge fan of video games borrowing storytelling techniques from obsolete art forms. Beginner's Guide. Gone Home. Her Story. Firewatch. All worthy titles that fused game elements with more mundane art forms to create things that felt new and fresh.

A lot of indie games now are movies that you stroll through with the WASD keys. You can make a neat game this way. I’ll probably buy it. Just don't think it makes your work inherently superior to more gamey games. If you're just telling a story at me, well, a lot of media can do that. When I play Overwatch or Dark Souls or Civilization, I am transported in a unique way only video games can provide.

This is my game. It doesn't look like much. Yet, for 20 years, I've gotten fan mail telling me how addiction to my work threatened relationships and livelihoods. Good.

I Am Done Apologizing For My Craft.

I have been obsessed with video games for as long as they have existed. These strange, shaggy, crude, profane, elegant, lovely creations are my life's work. I love them.

However, video games have a crippling self-esteem problem. We are desperate for validation, and this makes us targets for any shyster who wants to take advantage of us.

Roger Ebert says he doesn't think we make art, and we lose our minds. Some people seriously claim games don't deserve the journalism due any industry of our massive size, even while ripoffs and shoddy goods are an epidemic. Academics and print journalism write about us in terms that are condescending, uninformed, and occasionally slanderous, and we cravenly respond,  "A newspaper cares about us! Please act like we're worth something! Please!!!" When you are sufficiently desperate for validation, even abuse can feel like love.

Enough. Developers and gamers are working in a symbiotic relationship to create something entirely new, a craft unlike anything in human existence thus far. We are exploring a new realm of possibility, and I count myself truly blessed that I get to take part in it from its infancy.

I just finished a game called Avadon 3: The Warborn. It's pretty cool. It has a lot of neat scenarios, choices, characters, battles, and just plain good stuff. I made a little world for you to try on for size. I hope you like the little toy I made. I've already started building two more.

Video games are so powerful that they can even disrupt the Magic of Friendship.

We've Only Taken the First Few Steps of an Epic Journey!

Want to pitch in? If you have ideas, suggestions, or feedback, we designers need to hear them.

Don't get me wrong. While our craft is awesome, it's still young. We still have so many ways we can improve. There are so many sorts of things we can and should do (design, technical, storywise) that we aren't yet. We need everyone's feedback to make a great thing better.

But I personally do require one thing: That your criticism be delivered with respect and love for the craft. If you don't like video games, don't play them. Fine. It’s your time. But we're already pretty terrific, and we're getting better. Fast. With or without you.

Stop using the word 'art'. Erase it from your dictionary. It's too weak a word. I want nothing less than to compel you. I am coming to consume all your thoughts, all your attention. I want to absorb you to the point where it threatens your marriage and your livelihood.

Video games should not interest or impress you. We should scare you. Video games are taking over the world. You haven't even seen a fraction of what we can do.

Three Reasons Creators Should Never Read Their Forums

If I have learned anything from writing Indie games for a living for fifteen years (and there are plenty who would say that I haven't), it is that it is usually a bad idea for creators to visit online forums discussing them and their work. It doesn't lead to happy ends.

This is why big, smart companies with actual budgets hire community people who do nothing but deal with and sift through forums. Managing fans is real work, and picking out the realistic and worthwhile comments takes a ton of time and judgment. That is why smart companies put a layer between the fans and the creators. If you don't have this layer, you should keep a safe, respectful distance.

It's a pity. My company, Spiderweb Software, has a really awesome, active online forum. Been there for years. Always active, full of all sorts of discussions. However, unless I've just released a game and are looking for signs of early, evil bugs, I have to stay away from it.

Some of my fans really resent this and take it personally, and they haven't been shy about letting me know. But if you've ever wondered why the creators of your beloved games often avoid the forums (especially the Word of Warcraft forums, Yeesh!), this might help you to understand why.

1. It's Not Productive To Read How Much People Hate You

It's been said that, if you want a healthy marriage, you have to say five kind things for every unkind thing. It is in our nature to gloss over and ignore kind words, but to really fixate on and get affected by unkind ones. This is why Facebook will never have a Don't Like button. If you see "Joe likes your post," well, fine. If the average online denizen see "Joe doesn't like this," he or she will probably freak out.

Which brings us to forums.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for IGN about how I felt that Indie games were far from the only source of innovation, and the big companies don't get enough credit for trying to make innovative things. Slashdot was kind enough to link to it. Someone might agree or disagree with me. Fine. But someone wrote this ...

"This is the kind of commentary I'd expect out of a cynical independent ripoff artist in action, really. You know, the kind of person who is too afraid and closed-minded to try anything new, partly because he doesn't want to lose his money or reputation - a sound judgement - and partly because he just doesn't seem to want to try. ...  In other words, nothing to see here. Just near-mindless droning from another cynic with a rather skewed and defeated view of the gaming world."

WHOA! DUDE! What did I ever do to you? Did I run over your dog? Make out with your mom? Go to where you work and mess up the settings on the fry vat? Damn!

Now, I thought that one was pretty funny. I sent links to it to my friends, saying, "Hey! Look what people REALLY think of me!" Over the years, I've developed a pretty thick skin. And yet, if you read lots of people dumping on you, unless you have super-human emotional control, it's eventually going to get to you. Sometimes I'll get weak and look at a forum and see some nasty cheap shot and it'll throw me off my game for hours.

Remember, as Penny Arcade put it (in a far superior and NSFW way), anonymity plus audience makes assholes. (And, for what it's worth, the creators of Penny Arcade don't read their forums either.)

It's a little different on my company's forums. But only a little. Even though it is mainly populated by my fans, it is still full of shots at my design skill, game quality, virility, and facial complexion. Remember, there's a thin line between love and hate. Nobody will lash out at you like a disappointed fan.

When I read the forums for, say, World of Warcraft or xkcd, I'm always amazed at how nasty things get. It makes me think, "If you hate it so much, why are you there?" But that's just the way it is, and excess exposure to insults can really get under your skin, make you doubt yourself, and interfere with your work. It's very sad, but you sometimes need to just protect yourself by staying away. Keep your brain clean.

2. It's Not Going To Be Helpful

It seems like reading forums would be a good way to get design ideas and learn ways to improve your games. With the exception of learning about bugs, this is usually not the case.

It can be tempting, when you're stuck designing a game, to read forums and look for feedback. The problem is this. No matter what the question is, there are people who will advocate strongly for both sides of it. Many of these people reflexively hate change. Many of these people are only happy if the game is much harder (or much easier). Some of them will not, in fact, have a realistic idea about anything. Often, there are issues where intelligent people can come to opposite conclusions, and you can read thousands of furious posts on either side of the issue without getting an inch closer to an actual decision.

Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head.

Of course, it is still very important for designers to get lots of good, constructive criticism. That is why I have built up an elite cadre of awesome beta testers and interested friends, and I listen to them very closely. And, I must point out, many of those testers were recruited from my forums. You just need to choose carefully the people you ask for advice.

3. You Might Get Suckered Into Getting Angry

Not much to say about this. If you read forums for long enough, you will read a lot of nasty comments and cheap shots. If you read enough cheap shots, you'll get angry. If you are angry enough, you will eventually lash out and flame back.

Snapping angrily at your customers never, ever leads to good results.

One Final Comment

I'm sure some of my fellow Indie developers are reading this and shaking their heads at my idiocy. A lot of developers do maintain close relationships with their forums. It works for them, for now. I'm glad for them, and I hope it keeps working.

Just bear this in mind. When you start out and gain your first following, you get a grace period. You're a fresh face, making awesome new things. Everyone loves you. And, most importantly, you haven't had a chance to start disappointing chunks of your fan base yet.

The longer you are active, the more of your fans will turn on you, justified or not.

And, if you are a member of my forums reading this, know this. I love you guys. The idea that anyone wants to discuss my work at all, even to dump on it, is insanely flattering. I just hope that this makes clearer the instincts of efficiency and self-preservation that lead me to keep a little bit of distance.

Edit: Changed "think skin" to "thick skin."

Some Morbid Reading For Your Day

As the years passed, I have seen a lot of Indie developers rocket past me, just because they are more talented and courageous than I am. Stupid Braid and World of Goo, getting all big and famous by earning it.

I have spent a lot of time envying Introversion, for getting success by being so damn innovative and good. Which is why this article about the grim state of their business really bummed out my day.

We all say it again and again, but it bears repeated. Indie development is a rough way to make a living. One or two missteps can cast you into the Abyss. Not long ago, I released two unpopular games and almost went under. Only the good fortune of writing one big success saved me.

I will feel bad if any currently operating Indie, even a direct competitor, goes under. Because, to quote an excellent book, "A marketplace without a competitor isn't." We compete, but we're all in this together. When one of us does well and gets people to go, "Hey, I should look for more games like that," it helps us all. Anyone who gets introduced to RPGs by Eschalon is just waiting to become my customer.

So good luck to Introvision. Survive and keep showing that Indie gaming can be more exciting than just 90s-style RPG retreads.

Couple More Quick iPhone Thoughts

Thanks for the great comments on my iPhone post. I did want to quickly address two points people made.

It's so agonizing missing a Gold Rush. The New York Times is taunting me with tales of untold wealth I have missed. But I still think I made the right call.

First, some pointed out that the iPhone has some people who play it seriously, like multi-hour sessions on a train or whatever. I have no doubt that there are a number of users who play long sessions, but the apps that are selling like crazy really seem to lend themselves to short sessions.

When in doubt, my main business rule is this: I always make the sort of game I would want to play. If I don't do that, my heart isn't in it. Even if a large percentage of iPhone users wanted highly-involved 40 hours games (which I still doubt), I sure don't use my iPhone that way.

Second, someone suggested that I write a quick app for the iPhone, to try it out. Throw something together and see if it floats.

Here is my bit of advice for aspiring developers:

NEVER, EVER JUST THROW SOMETHING TOGETHER. IF YOU CAN'T GIVE IT YOUR ALL, DON'T DO IT. BECAUSE THE PEOPLE YOU ARE COMPETING WITH ARE GOING TO COME AT YOU WITH EVERYTHING THEY GOT.

It is theoretically possible to put a small amount of time into something successful. But when that happens, you will have made something very easy to rip off, and your profits will eventually fade. So I really hope you had a Tetris-quality idea makes you a millionaire quick.

As for me, I write RPGs. And I don't think it's possible to really quickly write a Diablo or Rogue clone which will hit the sweet million dollars spot.

Of course, I might just be whistling past the graveyard, trying to convince myself that I didn't just pass up on a chance to make a fortune. But I, like all small business owners, have to make lots of decisions all the time. At some point, you just have to live with the calls you make and go on to the next thing.

Why I'm Missing the iPhone Gold Rush

One of the questions I get asked most these days is, "When are your games coming out for the iPhone?" I'm getting this a LOT. I'm not going to do it. But, when you get so many people knocking down your door for something, you'd better come up with a good reason for saying no.

Here's My Game ... Do I Get Rich Now?

When you write games, new platforms become available all the time. Then you have to decide whether to write games for them or not. XBox Live was one such platform. XBox Community Games is another. And WiiWare. And, of course, the iPhone.

When you jump onto a new platform early, the platform might take off, or it might not. If it doesn't, your time was probably wasted. If it does become a success, though, you can get in on a Gold Rush. Some early adopters of the risky platform can end up with tons of money. Pure, joyous greed attracts competitors. Because they're late to the party, some of them make a bunch of money, and a lot more don't.

XBox Live had a real gold rush. Some early games, like Uno, sold sick numbers of copies. But these days, getting a game on XBox Live can mean a ton of hassle and, if the sales estimates at VGChartz are even remotely close to right, there is the real possibility of not doing so good there.

Fart Noises = Millions of Dollars!

The iPhone is in a crazy gold rush phase, and everyone is standing up and taking notice. When someone can make a ton of money on an app that makes your iPhone fart, that should be your first warning of unsustainable sales.

Some early games have done crazy good. But there are starting to be signs that Indie games on the iPhone won't make a fortune. And it'll only get tougher.

As For Me ...

Which brings us back to me. I write big, deep role-playing games. The sort of game that lends itself to long sessions, not something you fiddle with for fifteen minutes on the bus. It would take real work for me to adapt one of my games to the iPhone, and, even then, I don't think it's the sort of thing that would attract a real audience.

There's a lesson for young developers. Make sure your game fits the way people will want to play it. PC Games = Longer sessions. iPhone Games = Ping. Zap! Done.

And, on top of that, the acceptable price point for iPhone games with any depth is now in the area of $4.99. Five bucks! And, if you charge that, forum-dwelling snots from all over the Internets will bitch you out in your ratings for being so greedy. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I can make a living charging that little for my niche games. It's certainly not something I want to risk months of development on. And I honestly suspect that price point won't support a healthy game development industry. I hope I'm wrong.

(Honestly. The whining in the user reviews for a lot of the five dollar games is amazing. What? Do people think game developers live on air? Jesus.)

When it comes to my business, I am made of pure cowardice. It's hard to make a living doing this, so I have a really hard time doing anything new and exciting and risky. I'll never get rich (as if my games could ever be enough in demand to make me rich), but I can still buy my kids food.

So I will spend my time supporting two platforms that have a proven history in the gaming arena, platforms that have lately been tragically underserved by developers. They're called Windows and Macintosh. Take a look at them sometime. I think there's money to be made there.