Future of the Game (It's Good!)

Last week I alluded to Something Really Big happening this week. It’s here!

1. We’re Being Acquired*

There is a new game studio starting up which really likes who we are (character & culture), what we’re doing (the game Archmage Rises), and how we are doing it (process & culture).

I know! I’m as shocked as you are! 😝

Rather than starting from scratch, they would rather build from the Team & Tech here at Defiance and take it to the next level.

They are impressed with and believe there is “gaming gold” in Archmage Rises. So much so, that they are willing to expand the team and pay what it costs to finish it well (within reason).

Then the plan is to take that base (tech/design) and bring the “live a life” simulator to other genres, titles, and platforms.

I will be co-Studio Head along with Mark of the new studio. I’ve been self employed for 20 years so this new position opens a new chapter of my life, one I am excited to embark on. If Sid is right that games are about “interesting choices” then I think I can say life is about “interesting challenges”. I think being co-head with Mark will work well and is worth figuring out. It worked for Naughty Dog to have co-presidents!

(*for tax & legal reasons it’s not 100% accurate to say we are being acquired but it gets the correct idea across.)

2. How We Got Here

I have spent 33% of my adult life and most of my finances making Archmage Rises. I’ve poured some $1.1m USD into make the game. Perhaps fulfilling the saying “a fool and his money are easily parted”.

Words fail to capture the real struggle of watching the bank account shrink every 2 weeks as payroll processed. All while my wife gently asks, “This is going to work, right?”

It’s easy to make fun of Curt Schilling for losing a fortune on making a WoW-killer at 38 Studios but I know how it must of felt.

In light of this, you can imagine how painful it is to throw out work. The decision to rewrite Combat was super super painful.

On occasion someone has posted on the forums that I’m a scammer working some elaborate con spending $1m to cheat them of their $30 or $10. I chuckle at these as I add “World’s Worst Con Artist” to my resume. 😝

We launched to Early Access because I was running out of money. There was no way to get to 1.0 on what I had. The initial sales of Archmage were good, we got 4-5 months of payroll. We’re currently in the top 10% revenue games on Steam.

But it isn’t enough.

In the years I’ve been making this game, Early Access has changed from something kickstarter-ish ‘build the game with backers’ to just a glorified paid beta.

I think it was reasonable to expect sales to go up with each content update. They haven’t.

Enter Mark Webster.

Mark is a game designer with 15+ years of AAA, previously working with Activision on Skylanders, Guitar Hero, and Sony Santa Monica on God of War 2018 and God of War Ragnarok.

Mark and I have been fast friends since meeting at a games conference in 2019.

After Ragnarok he was independently consulting on game design and offered to help out on Archmage. At first he was helping out on some features and general guidance, but he couldn’t get the game out of his head. Even when he wasn’t working on it, he was thinking about it. I’ll summarize it as “the magic” bit him. We struck an arrangement where he could work fulltime with us on the game and become the lead designer.

But this was always just for a season. What he really wanted to do was start his own studio with a Venture Capitalist (VC). They had been talking for years and was just waiting for the right time to start.

It was back in Jan, with the game industry facing massive layoffs, when he approached me about continuing to work together. A partnership at the new studio. Over the 9 months Mark has been digging into Archmage Rises he’s seen something really special here. Sure there are plenty of things wrong and undone, but there is gold here. And if we do it right, it’s not just a game, it’s a product line.

So that’s the question put to me:

“Hey Thomas, what if we acquire Defiance, help finish the game, and make more games?”

“Uh, let me think about it… YES!”

“OK, what do you need to finish it?”

That is a very hard question to answer!!!

To answer it, I have to know how much effort it will take to get to 1.0. The specific disciplines, for how long.

This was a LOT of work to figure out over Jan-Mar, which is why you may have seen me say on the Steam Forums that I have a better idea on when the whole game will be done than any specific feature. Because that is all I was doing: planning, gantt-ing, budgeting.

3. What’s Next For the Game

George Broussard proved one can make a video game forever. He spent 14 years making Duke Nukem Forever without releasing. I’m make no judgements, I’m not too far behind him!

The new studio looked at Archmage’s Road Map and said “It sounds real great, but probably unrealistic to do it all for 1.0.”

This is what we will do:

• I remain Creative Director on Archmage Rises - I’m in charge of the vision of the game, the experience we’re trying to hit, how it feels to play
  
• Mark takes over as Lead Designer - This is his specialty. He will take my vision and design the game to hit the experiences we’re going for
  
• The team will expand so we can do it better and faster: Senior lead artist, more senior programmers, production support, Illustrator, Animator, VFX, more game designers, content creators, proper QA. We’re going from 11 to 20 people on the team! Right at a time when lots of experienced people are available.
  
• We will release 1.0 Spring 2025. To do so, we have to be feature complete around October of this year so we have enough time to polish.
  
• This represents a willingness to invest about another $1m USD
  

I’m excited. I need to be told I can’t work on this game forever… by someone other than my wife! 🤦‍♂️

I’m going through the roadmap identifying features into Four Buckets:

Core experience, have to ship with it - Obviously I/you feel like everything fits this, but with a budget and timeline to hit not everything can be here.

What can be delayed to free update post release - I’ve made a lot of promises over the years and its important I keep them. This gives me a way to keep it - no additional cost to players. I’m real impressed with how Stardew Valley did this with something as large as Multiplayer!

Should be moved to DLC - I hope I don’t have to use this bucket, but its an option. I understand people will be upset if I move something from expected 1.0 feature to a DLC feature. I keep you in mind the whole time.

Cut - I’m using this bucket as a last resort. I’m not sure which upsets people more: moving a feature to DLC or just cutting it altogether.

I want to be super clear: I’m the one, the guy who read Raistlin’s origin story in Margaret Wies’ The Soulforge and thought “I’d like to make a game about Raistlin” who is making the calls here. The same person on the forums reading and responding to all your questions.

I alluded to this previously in my updates that the Roadmap needs to change and will soon.

This is game dev. Usually it is done behind close doors with no one seeing that you intended to have something like pets in the game, but had to cut it in order to ship.

Well, we’re doing our game dev publicly and so all I can hope for is your patience and understanding as we do our jobs to the best of our abilities. I will continue with the spirit of what Archmage Rises is. While some features may evolve or get dropped, the goal of creating a TTRPG-like mage simulator still remains the same.

Finally, we’re going to change our dev approach. I’ll write more about this next week.

4. Next Update

RIVALS
Rivals is coming. I keep writing this every dev update and it is still true. I play tested it last week, but there were some problems and it just didn’t feel right yet. We’re working on it some more this week and I’ll have an update next week.

PATCHES
We’re going to move to bi-weekly patches. This alleviates some effort.

EXPLORATION UPDATE
Exploration is the next major update and will completely change the game to be a game. This is our primary focus and so saving some time on bunching up patches every week helps.

• We’re working on the structure of the game (meta), the game loops from the hour, day, week, to years.
  
• We’re working on the dynamically generated quests for unlimited replayability in the same world.
  
• We’re working on making NPCs have real personality.
  
• We’re working on lore books to get more world building and lore into the game
  
• We’re working on the new UI
  

It’s going to be a few months to pull this together, but once we do the game will feel good with a proper beginning, middle, and end.