Hello there fellow game-a-vores -

My, my what a frosty day. Saw a squirrel at the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens yesterday; it had a huge stash of peanuts in a tree trunk. Don’t remember peanuts growing wild in Scotland, but there you go - that’s progress for you. Next it’ll have a stash of cappuccinos still warm in the paper cups. Busy little fella’ or fell-ette (hard to tell which - didn’t want to stare).

Talking of busy…

We’ve been beating the business plan into shape and developing our business strategy with our good friend Jude. We need that wicked piece of paper to sort out all things finance, and it’s sorely needed if I’m going to get my beloved decaf in the morning. Ever seen a bear deprived of its herbal infusions of a morning? Not pretty. Doing the business plan has led to some interesting discussions about exactly what we think the company is about and how to summarise that into one clear sentence; the kind of sentence that doesn’t need one of us stapled to each copy of the business plan to describe what we mean by the phrase ‘world domination’ while waving our arms around. Ach. Turns out, Blazing Griffin has evolved, despite our being hardly out of diapers (metaphorically speaking). Our sentence is: “Blazing Griffin uses games to quickly identify the popularity of intellectual properties and develop them into media franchises.”

DECODED: we want to make lots of games in the same cool settings.

Now why didn’t we just say that?

Design work for Distant Star progresses. We’ve been busy building a paper prototype which is all kinds of fun. Distant Star the boardgame anyone? Cuttin’ an’ stickin’ and having my girlfriend’s cat wander across it, and having flashbacks to primary school where I tried not to colour over the lines and had to be careful not to cut my fingers off with round-ended scissors. Paper prototypes are a great way of iterating on the game and getting everyone involved - design democracy and all that - and describing a board game can be a really good way of getting decisions made. We’ll be iterating on (‘spilling pizza sauce on’) that for a while and, thanks to more round-ended scissors, my fingers are intact.

Continuing with the money theme, and where it comes from, we’re working on server back-end stuff for our games - magical ‘1’s and ‘0’s that will allow us to handle digital purchases and a variety of payment models. The back-up plan is to plant lots of pound coins behind the library and hope they grow… that, and the other business planning we’ve been doing, of course. Mental note: remind Jude about the ‘money tree’ thing.

In the meantime, we’ve also gotten a rather professional artist working on concepting new characters and environments for Full Steam Ahead. How cool is that? More to follow, strictly hush-hush and all that (you won’t tell anyone will you? No? Good), but needless to say we have lots of standy-up boards in the office with pictures on them. We’ll be showing you what Richard’s been up to in a while, if we can shift all that concept goodness from the door.

This fragment of a phone call just occurred in the office:

Unknown caller: ”?”

Peter: “Just slaying dragons. That kind of thing.”

There you go - that’s how much we love you.

The Griffin.

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This last week I’ve been talking to a freelance web developer who works with us here in ScreenWorks. He’s just finishing up a project, and I thought we could get him to help out with some of the endless website stuff that always needs doing around here. He was pretty keen to get involved (We’re making games! And we’re awesome! Can you blame him?), so I came up with a project that needed doing and we sat down to write up a quick contract.

As we were talking things over, I realised the standard terms on work-for-hire contracts, especially for web designers, are frustratingly unfair. The employer almost always ends up owning exclusive rights to the final product, often to the extent that the contractor can’t even legally include it in their portfolio. I’ve had this happen to me more than once, back in my own freelance days - but this is the first time I’ve been on the other side of the table, imposing (by default) unfair and unenforceable constraints on innocent creative types.

Screw that. We’re going to do things a little differently.

So I sat down with the rest of Blazing Griffin to figure out how to do this right. What we want to do is make sure our contractors are getting a fair deal, and that anyone who does a piece of work for us gets to keep a measure of ownership of their own work. I mean, come on - you played BioShock, right? Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? But then, where do you draw the line? Some examples:

• If a 3D modeller creates an item or weapon for The Ship, can he use also use it in a demo reel? In a personal game project? In a game for another company? 
• If a web developer builds us a cool piece of tech for the website or the forums, can she link to it in her portfolio? Re-use it on her personal site? Launch it as a standalone webapp? Licence it to a third party?
• If a coder develops a portable piece of middleware for us, can she licence it to other companies? To our competitors? Use it in her own games?

I think it’s obvious that a contractor should be allowed to do some of these things; it’s pretty clear that some of them aren’t exactly in our best interests, either. It turns out that line is tough to determine, especially when standard procedure out there is to answer every one of those questions with a firm and unrelenting “no.”

In our back-and-forth we came up with a couple ideas, until we hit upon Valve’s Steam Workshop Licence Agreement. At first glance it looks like a pretty standard contract, except it’s in reverse: accepting the Steam Workshop agreement means you grant Valve permission to use your content. We’d like to structure our contracts similarly, so that we get what we need out of the deal (assets, code, whatever) while the creators keep some of the rights to their own work. We may have paid for it, but at the end of the day it’s still their sweat.

It’s a tough question and we’re still not sure what the answer is, so if you have any insight or suggestions (or if you’re a freelance web developer looking for work!), give us a shout!

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Hello, dear players.

If, like us, you're looking forward to a visit from a figure in red(1) then we have good news: it's that time of year, again, where an anthropomorphic expression of great jollity and insane generosity can be seen flying high above the streets and houses, delivering presents to all good game players everywhere.

I am, of course, talking about the CHRISTMAS GRIFFIN.

Hush, listen... Is that a flutter of snowy wings? The scratch of claw on tile? The merry jingle of free gift keys?
It is, indeed! Casting around the office for a suitable gift this year, we came up with chairs, an anglepoise lamp, and carpet tiles - all good, until we tried to wrap the darned lamp...

So we've decided to gift digital.

In an effort to thank some of those who've bought the ship over the years (as well as a transparent attempt at some shameless marketing) we're giving two free game keys to any person who has bought a copy of The Ship on Steam, EVER, EVER.(2)

So at some point today, if you've been a Ship customer, have a look in Steam under Games/Manage Gifts and Guest Passes. In there, you'll find TWO FREE COPIES of the game you can send to friends and, if they activate their free copy, they get ANOTHER free copy.

Now my brain hurts with all this 'recursive freeness', but in short, we're giving you a gift to give away, while trying to spread The Ship like a 1920s flu virus or an Art Deco snowball.

So there you go.

And should you wish to thank the Christmas Griffin, just leave a small sherry and a pound of rump steak by the tree.

Happy Christmas, one and all!

The Blazing Griffin Team.

(1) No, not Julia Roberts

(2) Up to and including the end of the Steam Winter Sale 2011

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The Griffin was at a rather interesting event on 15th November - a games policy meeting at the House of Commons, organized between TIGA and the UK Government. This was an opportunity for a group of Indie studios to mingle directly with MPs at Westminster and discuss government involvement in the games industry. How cool is that? Thankfully, we’d previously been in touch with TIGA and, armed with a general ‘anything interesting going on, let us know’, they’d recommended we come along.

Somewhat strangely, it seemed Blazing Griffin was the only Scottish studio in attendance. Maybe ‘Scotland couldn’t make it’, but it did seem rather remiss given the not-too-recent calls for tax breaks, etc. that had been emanating from north of the border.

That harumph aside, TIGA, Microsoft (of course), and the MPs were up for some productive discussion. The fact that the MPs were keen gamers and had a real interest in games, was unexpected (but definitely useful), and they did spend a good chunk of time collecting feedback on various ideas - such as setting up something like the Creative Content Fund - avowing to report their findings back to their superiors.

The issue of tax incentives was soon raised, with the hope that we might become more competitive with the likes of Canada, France and the USA, whose attractive tax breaks are creating a skills drain in the UK industry. This problem has grown to such a degree, you might be forgiven for thinking there’s a lack of awareness in the higher echelons, that games really are a billion pound industry in this country. Bringing up tax - yet again - was a definite reminder that government policy is only likely to change through a process of gradual erosion (nagging) and a concerted effort to bring game industry issues to the top of the pile.

Along the way, there was a lot to be said about the highs and lows of being an Indie studio, and it seems most folks are facing similar problems. Access to finance is, of course, a common concern. There was also plenty of chat about skills shortages (some finding it easy and others finding it hard to get the necessary talent). There was some interesting discussion about distribution platforms and how different Indies are using them. Everyone was very open about what they were trying to achieve and the projects they were working on, and it was, as ever, a great opportunity to pick up on some development ideas and grow our list of contacts.

All in all a great day!

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OK, it’s time to come clean. We’ve been hinting at a big announcement for a few weeks, and now that we’ve finally signed the deal we can make it public: Blazing Griffin has purchased ‘The Ship: Murder Party’ from Outerlight.

Wait, what? More importantly, why?

Let us explain.

A few months ago we found out about Outerlight’s impending demise and, being fans of The Ship, realised that it would be a crying shame to let such a truly unique game vanish without a trace. Not just that, but we see a lot of unexplored potential in what’s there, and the game still has an active and passionate community of players — exactly the kind of folks we want to make games for.

As for the future of The Ship, well — she’s being steered towards uncharted seas as we speak. With a bit of luck and a fair headwind we’ll be able to let you know the exact nature of our (bold! daring! courageous!) plans for The Ship and her crew sometime soon.

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Hello, Kitkat here.

This still feels rather strange — chatting to you all so soon. Back in AAA land, ‘nobody said nothing’ for years. I still don’t want to big things up too quickly before we get a chance to start showing those things in the game — let actions speak instead of words, as it were — but on the other hand if we don’t keep talking, you’ll wonder why things have gone quiet. I know a week or two is ages if you’re waiting for game updates, but in development land, that’s no time at all. Take an idea, design it, make sure it works with ALL the other ideas, code it, stick pretty pictures on it, test it, release it. Apart from starting to sound like something we might do in an animal sanctuary, those cycles take a while. We mention a thing, then… silence.

So when I say we’ve been talking, designing, working on ‘lists’ and coding underpinning systems (as well as pushing forward some other project work and the business), that may sound rather ‘meh’. But fear not, this meh is important meh…

Scoping

More lists? Yup. Lists are your friend: a rather pedantic friend who wears tank tops, organizes their mail alphabetically, and likes to have everything in its place, but a friend none-the-less.

We’ve put together a ‘game scope’ to both expand the project while imposing some limits. It’s really just a big list of features in a spreadsheet with some estimates on how long they may take to implement. But a lot of those features have been derived from the feedback you’ve been giving us, ranging from usability fixes to ‘more depth please’. Working out even a rough idea about what these features may be, still ate up our time like a delicious taco.

We went through that epic spreadsheet in an equally epic library (in our new office, that small ‘meeting room door’ at the end of the hallway turned out to be a whole library — who knew?). We all got bleary eyed after the hours of discussion, but now have a pretty good idea about what we’ll be adding to Distant Star over the next few months and, just as importantly, what we won’t.

But in the words of Lewis Carroll:

“My, my,” said Alice, “what a lot of stuff…”

Screen Design

Now, scope in hand, Trevor’s spinning up code and I’m moving on to a mixture of screen mock-ups and systems design. While that doesn’t immediately put a new spaceship or a fleshed out tech-tree in your hands, it’s a vital first step.

Spanning usability and gameplay all in one go, those screen mock-ups are important to visualising game changes, while focussing on one of the oft forgotten constraints of software development: ‘If you can’t interface with it, you can’t have it’. Seems obvious, but many game ideas seem to trundle on for ages before discovering ‘No sane person would try to fit that much s**t on a screen’. Thus, many ideas either evolve or die depending on the interface implications, the need for consistent usability across screens, and so on. So I’ve already hurt my head on some seemingly inconsequential usability details, while simultaneously looking at big sweeping system things.

So why doesn’t this ‘clicky thing’ work right NOW?

Yah, I know. It’s all about priorities and it’s going to take a while before changes start to percolate through.

Some of the first things we get out may be a bit funky until we get a handle on the backlog. Additions and improvements are likely to start slow but will grow with gathering momentum, as we design out the changes, build underlying systems, and find more helping hands. We also want to evolve what’s there, rather than bring it all down for months. On the plus side, that means you’ll be getting content as we go. On the negative side it may feel like things are moving more slowly than cold Marmite on a granite slab, but fear not — we are all working like frenzied (space) weasels.

So what is this marvellous ‘stuff’ of which you speak?

I’m pretty sure you’d make the same list as us and, in fact, quite a few of you already have.

Behold, some of the areas we’re looking at including:

• Art and Audio.
• A better exploration experience.
• More intelligent AI, with options for difficulty, etc.
• General improvements in usability.
• More info (manual, etc.)
• A much larger tech tree, while making sure the variables involved have a clear and meaningful effect.
• Story events
• More races
• An interesting, but simple, treatment of trade.
• A more involved combat system
• Creating more Structures (stuff to build on planets)
• A division between planet orbit and surface (allowing planets to be ‘invaded’)
• Some measure of diplomacy.
• Better treatment of ‘habitability’
• Ship design and a more tactical treatment of ships.
• Map updates, galactic features, and a ‘fog of war’.
• Improved resources.
• A look at our revenue model.
• Other stuff.
• Broken stuff.
• Stuff you suggest as we go along.

“Ah, I love the smell of stuff in the morning.” — Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, Apocalypse Now. (1)

(1) Hmm. Strangely, Kilgore didn’t mention our EPIC NEW FORUMS in that quote, but do feel free to come and have a chat, anyway…

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Title says it all, really. In case you’re not convinced:

This is the saga of the largest, longest possible game of the largest-scale, longest-lasting space strategy in years, and after six weeks and around twenty-five hours of play, it’s finally over.

*Yes, I know it’s from a few years ago. But it’s awesome.

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…since we released the 1.7 update to Distant Star, and I thought I’d let you folks know how things are progressing. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from this release, both positive and negative.

The Good

A lot of people seem to be liking the changes to gameplay mechanics — systems that used to be way too complex are now only slightly too complex, and that’s apparent in that more players are exploring pieces of the game they’d previously ignored. The new planet upgrade system and revamped tech trees seem to be a success, as well.

The Bad

By far the two biggest complaints we’re getting about 1.7 are the removal of the Cephala (did no one care for the Apparat?) and the limited number of technologies available for research. I may not have stressed this enough earlier — we’re definitely keen on adding in several additional races. We’re focusing our efforts right now on making sure the game’s design is stable in the long run, as well as adding back in things like new races, new ships, and the like.

As for the limited number of techs, we’re looking at releasing an expanded tech tree as part of 1.7.1. However, the tech tree is closely intertwined with every mechanic and subsystem in the game and most of what we’re doing right now is going through those systems and making sure they work from a design perspective. Some of those changes are straightforward and going to be quite quick to implement — but some of them are a wee bit larger (and thus correspondingly more awesome) and so may take a little more time for us to do them justice.

Overall

We’ve got a pretty good list of improvements to focus on for our next release: a gentler tutorial and overall better new player experience chief among them. We’ll be rolling out a little new content of some as-yet undecided form, plus iPhone 3G/Second-gen iPod Touch support and a few other bits and bobs we think you’ll like.

It’s been crazy-exciting to see Distant Star perk up over the last few weeks. I’m really enjoying the emails and feedback you folks are leaving (as is Stephen, who’s currently compiling the be-all-and-end-all spreadsheet of things that need improving in Distant Star). Keep ‘em coming, and let me know in the comments what else you’d like to see in 1.7.1!

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So, a couple of weeks ago, those of you who follow us on Twitter may have noticed we were having a trial day at a co-working space in Edinburgh (the kind of place where individuals can rent desks and the landlord throws in everything from heating, to electricity and meeting rooms).

Well, all three of us have now gotten full-time desk space there. It’s great. If you’ve ever worked for extended periods at home, you will know how awesome it is to move out of your own flat , escape the washing up, and get into a dedicated workspace surrounded by the people you work with all day. It’s so much easier to get up from your desk for an immediate face-to-face, than explain your way through a Skype call, or set a date for a rather distant meeting.

Of course, this isn’t our office. But it’s a smart place, and right now, it would be rather expensive to rent a glass-fronted uber-headquarters for just three people. Besides, we’re all sociable folks, and there’s a variety of interesting inhabitants co-working along with us, like freelance illustrators and web designers. There’s bound to be opportunities to source work from each other, or swap the odd bit of business chit-chat and, at the very least, surrounding ourselves with energetic people, all doing something different, is a great vibe to have around. It’s already having an accelerating effect on our enthusiasm.

Besides, who wouldn’t work in a space that has beer and Ping-Pong Fridays?

Yeah, this space even has an accelerating effect on small, white balls…

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We made it! Distant Star 1.7 is out — it’s an actual thing, which you can download from your friendly neighborhood App Store. It’s an awesome update; go have a look.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

Ah, you’re back. So. With 1.7 behind us, the team at Blazing Griffin can finally focus on some of the bigger, crazy-cool things we’ve been planning. We’ve got a couple of super-seekrit projects in the pipeline, and we’re waiting on one. last. thing. before we can tell you about ‘em. I can’t say anything yet, but…

One is an absolutely epic new direction for Distant Star that’s got us all insanely excited. Kitkat mentioned it in a design session the other day, and the only thing anyone could think to say after he finished explaining was “Yes, please.” We think you’re going to love it. I’ll give you one hint: if you’ve been following the development of Distant Star for a while, you’ll recognise it as an idea I talked about ages back, but was too much work for me to take on then (as one person).

So that’s Distant Star — 1.7 is out, and we’re looking forward to seeing what everyone thinks of it. Let me know in the comments, whether you’re an old hand at Distant Star or totally new to this whole conquering-the-galaxy-with-giant-starships thing.

As for Super-Seekrit Project #2, well…you’ll hear more soon. In the meantime:

Full Steam Ahead!

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