Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged: entertainment, gamecraft, games, Mobile, real fantasy, video games

Gamecraft – Part Two: Genesis

Published Fri, 06 May 2016 06:45:51 -0500

Bleeding Cool has enlisted one developer to tell his three year journey to get his new game, Real Fantasy, out. What follows is that journey in his own words…

by Chris Hood

(Real Fantasy is now available on iPhone and Android devices.)

Christmas morning 1980 I was hoping for an Atari game system (if you're under 40, it's was the Playstation when us old timers were little chitlins). Pretty much every kid in America wanted one. The system had been out a couple of years, but a game called Space Invaders was recently released. Think Call of Duty times a hundred and you'll get close to the popularity of Space Invaders. Every kid, and I mean EVERY kid, wanted an Atari with Space Invaders. And (yikes!) it looked like this –

I dragged my parents out of bed long before the sun came up and started tearing open presents. I quickly targeted what I thought was the coveted Holy Grail and saved that for last. I don't remember any of those other gifts; I was only 9 after all. But I do remember pulling that final present onto my lap… and thinking it was awfully light… Turns out it was underwear. Underoos, in fact. Captain America edition. I didn't even like Captain America.

I was raised well enough to not throw a fit or evidence my disappointment too overtly. I was, after all, surrounded by a bounty of cool games and other toys as my parents were always generous in December (the other 11 months I spent chained up in the basement). Putting the missing game system out of my mind, my attention quickly shifted to one of my other prizes when I heard my father call out, "Hey, what's this in here?"

I scrambled to find my dad in the hallway outside the living room where we had a second Christmas tree. He was grinning and pointing to the other tree which had never housed presents in the past. Yet this year, gifts were waiting. Sure enough, it was the coveted Atari and a trio of games – most notably Space Invaders. From that point forward, I was hooked.

I won't pretend to guess how many thousands of (productive) hours I've spent on video games since that morning 35 years ago. I do fondly remember the groundbreaking games of my lifetime that blew my mind. Much like the great films that help define my life – Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Matrix and Lord of the Rings – the great games likewise came at different ages and filled me with a childlike awe despite the fact that I was an adult for many of those experiences. With Star Wars, I'd never seen anything like it. I would have never thought another film would blow my mind in a similar way and was so glad to be wrong.

Space Invaders was a bit different in the sense that it was the most popular arcade game of all time, so I'd obviously played a good amount of it before my first Atari, but the idea of being able to play it any time I wanted in my own home was a turning point. The next of the 'greats' for me was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons on Intellivision. The PC era blew my mind with Doom. The ill-fated Jaguar system yielded a gem in the 90's called Alien vs Predator which I played for hours as marine, xenomorph and predator ("Game over, man. Game over!"). Age of Empires was next which was followed years later by Bioshock and Fallout 3. I love having my mind blown every year or two by a breakthrough in movies or games.

The great thing is that everyone who loves games has different favorites, different memories, but the one thing we all have in common is those games that amazed us. The ones that left us in awe. The ones that defined our lives at that particular moment in time.

Like so many other people over the last few years, I became quickly enamoured with mobile technology and the games that came with it. The problem was, none of them were 'great.' Granted, the limits of the technology was considerable. Going from the capabilities of a Playstation 3 to the iPhone 4 created a vast setback as processing and memory space was only a small fraction on our new, smaller mobile devices. Despite that, a few good games (relative to the technology) did find their way to us early on. Angry Birds and Candy Crush helped usher in a whole new era of gaming with a promise of great things to come. Yet to me, none of these games blew away. None of them were among the 'greats.' So when the idea of a new type of fantasy game struck me, something that wasn't available on mobile and I felt could be that kind of new, awesome piece of entertainment, I decided I would make it happen. How? I had no idea, but I knew the idea for Real Fantasy was something I very much wished existed in the mobile space. Since it didn't, I decided I would just have to create it myself.

Around this time I saw the first location-based elements being incorporated into some other games. None of them seemed to be doing much with it, or at least not using it very well, but I found the idea fascinating. I saw tremendous potential in it (as I still do) and feel we are still in the very early stages of taking advantage of that technology. I know I wanted GPS to play a key role in the new game, but I didn't want it to be dependent on it. The few LBGs ("locations based games" not "lesbians, bisexuals, gays") that I tried were pretty remedial. They hadn't figured out a good balance between those features and the game itself. That was something I'd have to remedy. I loved the idea of having the game modify the real world map places into interactive game locations (which ended up being Blacksmiths, Magic Shops, General Stores, Taverns, etc.).

I knew I wanted the game to be in the fantasy genre; always my favorite. I loved all the weapons and armor and spells and monsters and exploration that those kinds of games afforded. As I made pages and pages of notes, the questions quickly piled up – How much could I do with the limits of a phone? How much cool RPG stuff could I cram into this new game? Did I eat all the Cheetos?

No doubt to save space, the other mobile fantasy games were too limited for my tastes. It felt like you fought the same 5 or 10 monsters over and over. I wanted hundreds of different monsters. Other games had a handful of weapons, armor and clothing. I wanted thousands of options. On the other games I played, dungeon exploration was a dreadful bore if it was available at all, usually limited to no decision making at all and simply being show a monster that you 'encounter' (1 of the 5 or 10 you keep seeing over and over) and having to fight it (often with no decisions to make at all) before being shown the next monster you come across. There was no real adventuring. There weren't hallways and stairwells and doorways to choose from. There had to be a better way.

I spent several months conceiving the game the way I thought I would most enjoy playing it. I gave little consideration to the capabilities of modern phones and no consideration at all to how all these features and functions would be created. Programming wasn't my area. I was the creative guy. I figured I would put to paper any and all ideas that I had and leave it up to the technical team to tell me if anything I wanted simply wasn't doable.

I love the creative process. Always have. After around 3 months, I had over a 100 pages outlining what I thought the game could be and how it would all fit together. I had created dozens of mock-ups and lists of possible monsters, spells, physical and magical weapons, armor types, magical and health items and allies.

I finally had the instructions and the blueprints. At that point, all I needed was an architect and a team of builders. And that first guy on board would prove to be a problem, and a costly one at that. In fact, the second guy ended up being worse…but more on that next time around.