CD or not CD

One of our pre-order deals involves a DVD version of Blackwell Deception that you can nab for a limited amount of time.  This "limited time" thing has led to a lot of you asking the same question:  Why, dear Dave, did you decide to do it this way?  And didn't you used to sell the hard copies as a regular part of your store?

You'd be right.  When I started Wadjet Eye, there was a small but eager demand for CD copies, and it seemed self-defeating to not supply that demand.  There weren't enough orders for me to use a CD duplication service, so I constructed and shipped all the hard copies myself.

With some moral support from my friend here, of course.

It was a pretty good system.  I only got a few of those orders a week, so I could easily keep up with them.  The customers got something they wanted, and I got a bit of extra cash. Sometimes I would even sign the CD if the customer asked for it.  It worked well, but... not for long.

Time went on and things got busier, and I began to dread getting those CD orders.  Even though I only got a few of them a week, I found myself with less and less time to deal with them.  Sometimes I would be so busy and harried that I'd almost resent having to fill a CD order. I'd rush through the process, copying a file incorrectly or smudging the ink into something ugly, forcing me to start over and get even more frustrated.  I knew it couldn't last, and round about the time I was working on Emerald City Confidential and Blackwell Convergence at the same time, I bit the bullet and discontinued the CDs altogether.

I hated to do it, but I also had to face a hard truth. In the year they were available, I sold only 30 CD copies of each game.  With so little demand, and as time-consuming as they were, the choice was obvious.  I had to stop selling them.

But as a gamer from forever ago, I remember the sheer joy of holding a physical game in your hands.  One that was actually in a box, with a proper manual (that you actually were expected to read).  I hated that hard copies of my games didn't exist anymore.  So I decided to try another tactic.  If there wasn't a high enough demand for them, why not try and create a demand?

And lo, the "limited edition pre-order CD" offer was forged.  You couldn't just buy the CD whenever you gosh darned pleased.  No sir.  You had to buy it NOW.  Or else it was GONE.  FOREVER.  And it worked. The CD of Gemini Rue became a hot item.  We had to hire a duplication service to handle it all.  Our little apartment began to fill up substantially with all the packages we assembled.

If you ordered a CD of Gemini Rue, your copy is in this pile somewhere.

It worked so well before, that we are doing it again. We are even going all out and throwing more stuff into the package to make it a more attractive deal.  So much that we had to upgrade to a DVD instead of a CD to accommodate it all.  But I'll shut up about it before this turns into a sales pitch (but you should totally buy it anyway).

Anyway, that's why I do it this way.  It seems to work for us, at least for now.

-Dave

Emerald City Commentary (part 5)

Hola!  Another day another episode:

Most everything in this episode I've covered in some way or another on this blog, mostly how the VO got processed a little too much.  I also address another concern that a lot of reviewers had - the lack of save slots!  I did try and lobby for them, but I was successfully convinced that they would be "too confusing" for the casual audience.

In retrospect, I still wonder about this.  Would they have been as daunting as the market research led everyone to believe?  It's hard to say.  When you think about it, not many games use multiple save slots anymore.  It's just gaming dinosaurs like me who enjoy the security of having them.

-Dave

Emerald City Commentary (part 4)

And another eppy is here:

Emerald City Commentary (part 3)

What a great excuse to update my blog every day.  Here is part three:

A bit of a followup. As you can see from the thumbnail, one of the characters looks like a certain former Alaskan politician that I'm sure you all are aware of.  It was a total coincidence.  The character had been designed six months before Sarah Palin came on the scene.

In August of 2008, I was visiting my parents in Virginia.  Since I had a deadline and I'm a stupid nerd, I brought my laptop along to get some work done.  They were watching the television when John McCain's running mate was announced.  I brought up Glinda's image in the game, turned my laptop so my parents could see, and said "Check it out.  The game has political commentary now."

I'm also still quite proud that the whole Betsy Bobbins thing didn't get nixed.  Perhaps I was too subtle.

-Dave

Let's Play My Own Game: Part 2

I've gotten some nice feedback from various sources, so I've decided to make this a daily thing!  I'll be posting these LPMYG vids until I finish the game. And I think I'm going to call this "Emerald City Commentary" from now on.

A bit of a followup.  I have NO IDEA how the whole missing textbox thing happened.  Every version I played on my computer had the textbox, but somehow the game shipped without it.  I vaguely remember PlayFirst QA telling me that a lot of the description text wasn't voiced, and I vaguely remember replying that PlayFirst had told me to do it that way.  They didn't mention that the textbox was missing, but if they never saw it in the first place, maybe they never knew it was supposed to be there? 

Oh well.  It'll remain a mystery.  It happened, and it's a bit too late to fix it now.

-Dave

Let's Play My Own Game

For awhile now, I have become fascinated with the whole "Let's Play" phenomenon on YouTube.  For the uninitiated,, here's the gist: someone plays a game and records themselves doing it.  While they play the game, they give a running commentary on what they see and do.

When I first came across one of these videos, I couldn't believe it was for real.  But yes.  Apparently it is, indeed, a "thing."  There's thousands of them.  There are even several Let's Plays of my own games out there (and a special shout out must go to Resulka, who I think has Let's Played my entire catalog), which pleases me to no end.

Eventually it got into my head to try doing a Let's Play of my own, but instead of playing any random game I decided to play a game that I developed myself.

I chose Emerald City Confidential because, of all my games, I probably have the most to say about it.  It has an interesting genesis.  PlayFirst (a casual game developer) approached me (a old school point-and-click developer) to make a game for them.  Their goal?  To make a point-and-click style game for the casual audience.  We came from two totally different mindsets, and the road to finishing this game was an interesting one to say the least. 

Anyway, here's the first episode. In this first episode, we learn how to pick up and use a crowbar, why dialog options can be intimidating, and the story behind the quest gems.

(If the video is too small, click the "YouTube" button on the lower right to zap yourself to YouTube")

Please let me know in the comments if you find these interesting! I'll probably do more.

-Dave

On headset microphones and my own damn stubbornness

I mentioned in my last post that, until recently, I have been using a headset mic to record all the voice acting for my games.

Rebecca Whittaker, as "Astrid" from Puzzle Bots.

It's always surprised me that I've gotten away with this setup as long as I have.  Back in the dark ages of 2006, when I was making The Shivah, I decided to give the voice acting thing a whirl.  I only had one problem - I knew nothing about audio or voice over production.  Not knowing any better, I downloaded a free audio recording program called Audacity, clipped a headset mic to the actors' heads, then handed them the script and let them go to town. I didn't even adjust the levels, which is obvious when you get to the scenes with Joe DeMarco.

When the game came out and reviews started popping up, there were ranging opinions about the voice actors but nobody seemed to notice or care that it wasn't recorded in a full-fledged studio.  So since the system seemed to work, I didn't bother fixing it and used the headset mic again in Blackwell Legacy.

Abe Goldfarb as "Joey" in Blackwell Legacy

As time went on, I learned a bit more about audio editing and voice directing in general - a common complaint was the constant breath pops, which I eventually I got the hang of removing - but the core method remained unchanged. I was still using a freeware audio program and a $20 headset mic from Radio Shack. 

A few games later and I got a publishing deal with PlayFirst for Emerald City Confidential.  Suddenly, I was flown out to San Francisco to direct voice actors in a real, high-end studio.  An audio engineer sat behind a complicated piece of equipment while the actor sat in a separate room behind sound-proof glass.  We'd press a button to speak to them directly and direct them as we needed.  It was all very slick.  The studio was bigger than my apartment and the cost of the whole thing was higher than the budget of all my games combined, but it was worth it.  For a week we recorded, and I admit - the sound quality was awesome. 

But there was a snag.  PlayFirst guidelines stated that the filesize of the game had to be under 80MB. The only way to do that?  Compress the VO files as far as they would go, and then compress them some more.  The end result of all that money and high-end equipment was VO footage that sounded like it was underwater. 

Suffice to say, this experience embittered me just a tad. After ECC wrapped up, I went back to Blackwell Convergence and back to my headset mic.  This setup - ghetto though it was - became a badge of pride.  Sure it was cheap, but I could create VO footage that sounded infinitely better than what ended up in ECC.  So I kept using it.  Blackwell Convergence used it, then Puzzle Bots, and most recently Gemini Rue.  The only ones who noticed were professional audio people who already have an ear for that kind of thing.  But most people? Nobody cared.

Then, finally, my headset mic decided enough was enough.  The sound quality became staticky and finally crapped out altogether.  I went to Radio Shack to buy another one, but they no longer carried the same brand in stock.  Deciding it was time to bite the bullet, I bought a Blue Yeti microphone at the recommendation of an audio buddy of mine who was extremely vocal in getting me to make the switch.

After spending some time figuring out how to put the thing together (and after being told that I had positioned the microphone the wrong way around), it was ready to go.  I scheduled Abe Goldfarb and Rebecca Whittaker (the actors behind Joey and Rosa) to come over.  After they were done, I had a listen.

And... well, it sounded good.  Damn good.  In fact, I'd go far as to say it was much better than the headset mic.  It sounded cleaner, fuller.  The actors also preferred standing up to deliver their lines into a microphone that wasn't an inch away from their mouths.  Plus, I could plug my headphones into the microphone itself and get a much clearer representation of what was being recorded.  I could listen more closely for breath pops and mouth clicks.  The quality of both the sound and the performances were much improved. Here, compare for yourself:

Joey from Convergence

Joey from the upcoming Deception

The difference is subtle, but it's definitely there.  Once the audio gets mastered, it will sound even better.  So... I guess I feel kinda silly.  It took me almost five years to make the switch to a "real" microphone.  But now I'm never going back.  I am extremely microphone proud.  VO wise, I think Blackwell Deception will have the highest quality of anything we've done.  I can't wait for you to hear the results.