Archmage Rises - the play-how-you-want mage simulator - now available on Early Access

[Cryomancer]

Any chance that we can get undead rising, golem crafting and etc?

 

[Mortmal]

Any chance that we can get undead rising, golem crafting and etc?

It's on the roadmap , but on the paid dlc part...

 

[Jarmaro]

Weekly Dev Update: Feb 5, 2024

Happy to have you join us for more behind the scenes of what our team is working on and why.

Mage Rivals
The next major feature we are adding is
the ability to fight mages, starting with rival mages. James and Tyler are working on this.

Zach and Nolan are working on better NPC reactions and greetings. Tech we developed and will use in the dynamic quest system on the way.

No release date yet.

Update #3 Exploration

Last week I gave a rundown of this update’s features. Mark, Michel, Thomas, Jessi, Josh, and Phil are working on it.

Today I’d like to focus in on one of the big features: a new User Interface (UI).

As we build the game we get a better sense of how it should play, mainly from your feedback. We’re taking that knowledge to the interface.

HUD
Here is a WIP mockup of what we are thinking for the HUD.

• Bottom left is your character portrait with gold and legacy score
  
  • Yes, you can customize the look of your char.
  • No, you can’t have more than 1 billion gold.
• Center is the spell schools, which will contextually hide/expand to show spells you know for the current situation (world/combat), as well as primary buttons like character sheet, relationships, quest log, inventory, etc.
  
  
• Top left are buffs/debuffs affecting you
  
  
• Middle right are notifications for events, like if an NPC sent you a letter and/or gift, or warning of some upcoming event like an NPC birthday. You know, game notifications!

QUEST SCREEN

We looked at a lot of game quest screens and generally like this layout. Showing a history of discussion from the quest is an important feature raised by players.

Priority Bug Fixes
We put out weekly patches. As I write this, we’re investigating a “black screen after combat” soft lock issue reported over the weekend. This is serious and if we can resolve it quickly, we’ll hotfix it.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I don't think this game will ever be finished. Just morphing and changing until the updates stop. If you like something about the game now, it will be changed in half a year. The dude is a psycho.

 

[Jarmaro]

Weekly Dev: Feb 12, 2024

As I look over what I’ve written below, this would have been a good “Start of 2024” post… except we were neck deep in NEW Combat. This is the first chance we’ve had to really reflect and make some strategic choices. I hope you can read it in this context.

We read every forum post and every review. Game dev is hard partly because it involves a series of guesses, like taking shots in the dark. Feedback helps improve our aim.

Negative Review Analysis

Last week Phil analyzed every negative review since we launched to Early Access April 2023. He broke it down into 12 categories. Our goal is to understand how people feel and make sure we work on tasks that matter.

(There are a few special case scenarios we culled out of the data, and I’m not addressing the < 5% issues here, even though we did discuss them internally)

1. Liked the game and think it has potential (59%)

• Over half liked what we are doing and the project vision. But somewhere along the road we let them down. We simply have to deliver.

2. Game is repetitive / not enough content (56%)

• Totally understand. We haven’t closed the game loop and this is hurting the experience.
• Our next update, Exploration, contains Dynamic Quests based on NPC goals. It will be basic no-frills at first, but we have to start and improve from there.
• We are also adding our first Faction of the Conclave earlier than expected to help flesh out the world a bit more.

3. Bugs (37%)

• Yes. We’ve had some lousy showstopper bugs.
• Quality has been incrementally improving, but we’re not there yet. Every major bug we encounter gets a testcase so it can be tested before the next release. Some of our test cases has your name as the reporter on it. In the spirit of “Melf’s Acid Arrow”. Our battery of tests continues to improve.
• The demands of running this business and building the game have led to shorter dev cycles. Starting now, we’re changing how we build/release our larger updates. Rather than design and programming working simultaneously, then shipping, we are going to do programming first then bring in design after to polish, allowing it to ‘bake’ longer. Then we’ll put the update into Beta for a week or two and see how it sits, before releasing it.
• I’m doing a lot of studio planning right now and one of our initial hires in April/May timeframe will be a Quality Assurance person. Not a tester, but an actual Quality Assurance person who can play and guide design with wise feedback.
• Every Thursday (or sometimes Friday) we put out a patch fixing the bugs we could resolve that week.

4. Missing features (35%)

• Absolutely. No one is more frustrated than me with all the unfinished systems or systems lacking content depth. The game is unfinished, so this will be valid criticism until it is.
• Negative reviews significantly decreased around the time we re-wrote the new store page to better clarify where the game currently is at.
• Our path forward here is to continue to work the roadmap and close the game loop.

5. Combat-related issues (31%)

• We’ve written a whole NEW combat system (and much of the rest of the game).

6. Quests are too simplistic (27%)

• We feel your pain. There are currently only 2 kinds of quests: gather resources and kill generic monsters.
• Our tech has limited us in the kinds of quests provided. We are adding two new quest types in Exploration:
  
  • Unique Itemn- the quest creator can create as many special/unique items as necessary for the quest: secret love letters, political overtures, long lost tome of knowledge, a storied sword like the Sword of Fargoal.
  • Specific Monster - don’t just kill any goblin, but 5 goblins from a specific lair. Not just any goblin in a lair, but the one named “Grubnub” who has been terrorizing farmers. With this the quest creator can create elite forms of monsters.
• These quest types are staples in rpgs and it’s been rather silly we haven’t had them to date.
• I don’t believe the solve here is just a matter of more people writing more elaborate quests. The real solve is a dynamic quest system able to generate tasks based on NPCs of opposing or competing goals. This is coming in Exploration.

7. Dungeons lack variety / don't like dungeon system (23%)

• We’ve heard everything from throwing the whole thing out, to just increase the number of assets.
• Update #7 is to solve the dungeon experience. Make it more interesting, engaging, and rewarding.
• I’m considering possible extreme solutions to this. The only thing that matters is it feels like a dungeon crawl and there are interesting choices to make as you proceed. Everything else is subject to change.

8. Bad UI / UI issues (20%)

• Agreed. As posted last week, we are revamping the HUD and main player screens.
• The new UI is coming in Exploration.

9. Lacks purpose / driving factor (12%)

• There isn’t a strong game loop yet. We’re working on closing the loop and providing more interesting purpose
• I believe introducing a faction and dynamic quests will help this
• I also believe improving the spell progression to involve upgrades, choices, and chases will address this. I just had a design meeting on it for Exploration today.

10. Lacking variety of monsters & monster difficulty progression (12%)

• I think some of this is already addressed in the new combat update where the monsters are much more interesting. This doesn’t mean we’ve solved it yet.
• In Exploration we’re adding the ability to have elite monsters and monster progression. This will create tough boss fights and have areas of the world feel different.
• In a few weeks we will be releasing Mage Rivals which allows you to fight a rival mage. These are new combat experiences and intended to be like a boss fight.

11. Game feels slow (UI/animations, etc) (11%)

• One of the reasons we rewrote combat from the ground up (started a new scene in Unity and new code in Visual Studio, went from there). By making combat into smaller pieces (combatons) we got rid of the delays in the old system.
• User Experience (UX) is more of a priority now and hopefully you see this in the new UI.

12. NPCs dull and repetitive; World not Responsive (10%)

• Agree. Broadly speaking, we are working on it through the roadmap update features to bring this to light.
• The next minor update, Rival Mages in a few weeks, will allow rival mages react more realistically to you
• Rival Mages will also contain a new NPC reaction system to improve their responsiveness to your recent actions. It’s not a total solve, but initial testing results look really promising!
• The dynamic quest system and the factions will improve world responsiveness.

What you think about the game matters to me. I’d love to be able to fix it all right away with a magic wand, but it will require steady regular progress to get there. I hope this explanation behind the thinking of our current development priorities helps.

Mage Rivals
This update is almost ready for internal testing. It is being worked on by James, Zach, Tyler, and Nolan.

Key features:

• Hunt down your rival mages in the world and kill em.
• Make rivals appropriately respond to you (instead of being clueless when you talk to them)
• Add a better reward to the Mabren’s Tower for completing the quest
• Add in a new NPC reaction system. This is prep for the next big update.

Update #3 Exploration
Mark, Michel, Thomas, Jessi, Josh, and Phil are working on this. It’s still a ways out yet, no firm idea on date yet as we still are sorting out some of the design scope.

1. Dynamic quests - having the game generate quests based on local data. Starting with two types:
   
   • Kill Named Monster quest
   • Find Named object quest
2. Create our first faction: The Conclave. A simple version of it.
   
   • Ability to climb up some ranks with some rewards
   • Hands out quests using the Dynamic Quest engine
3. Update the map generation
   
   • It’s way too mountain heavy in the middle
   • Have better more meaningful biomes
   • Better distribution of lairs for where the player starts
4. Improve interacting with Points of Interest on the map
   
   • Finding lairs
   • Seeing and encountering patrols
   • Finding resources
5. A new UI with new HUD

 

[Mortmal]

Maybe, just maybe, instead of writing his long blog post, he could try working on the game and adding content. The best post in this thread is still Lhynn advising to play Tales of Immortal instead. Those Chinese guys clearly worked 18 hours a day for years, and the result is evident.

 

[Jarmaro]

Weekly Dev Update: Mar 3, 2024

Rivals

Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• We’re trying to learn from our mistakes and give features time to “bake”. Rivals is ready for me to playtest, which I will do tomorrow. If everything is good, we’ll announce a launch date to Beta. If it needs more lovin’ in the oven, then we’ll do that.

Exploration

Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• This is one of those moments where I’m challenged by how much to share I share now because some some things aren’t 100% nailed down but swirling around…
• We’re going to make this update a big update. We will close the game loop(s) and make the game a game. Adding in player progression is important.
• We’re actively working on how we handle the player’s lifetime.
• We’re adding in a major world altering problem which significantly affects play and provides a win condition. We’re working through how we can add the first one, now. It’s going to be a dragon like Smaug, who shows up and pursues his own goals over time
• We’re looking into our map generation and how we can support “regions”, clusters of towns which all know each other and interact with each other
• We’ve started the programming work for our first dynamic quest in the game. Once we get it working we can build from there

Other News

I’m happy to report we are hiring an illustrator artist May 6! Lucas and I have been conversing since August of last year and finally we are able to pull the trigger. Above is his art test to sketch up some frost orc ideas. Lucas’ first task? Sketching dragons!

 

[Jarmaro]

That map. Holy hell, it's cursed in so many ways. Other than that, solid developement. Game needs some meat on its exploration's bones.

New weekly post

Weekly Dev Priorities: Mar 12, 2024

This week our update is more designy focus, as we are right in the thick of designing the
game’s structure and player purpose.

Update #3 Exploration

Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• Zach is busy working on the Dynamic Quest engine and making good progress putting the prototype into the game.
• Jessi and Phil continue on the new UI. It’s about 2/3 done the design process, hopefully the design work will be done in about 2 weeks
• Regions are a core component to the Exploration update, so I’ll explain them a bit more

Regions

• A region is a self contained section of the map like a a territory on the Risk board.
  • A region is one administrative unit
  • It has a name, people can refer to it, “You’ll find dyes in Fessex province.”
  • Contains a small number of towns (2-3), with roads between them. The region functions as one political unit.
  • It has one leader - a noble of a certain house
  • It has one set of rules/edicts that govern it
  • NPCs in a region all feel the same way about topics: like the nobles, a kingdom, or the people of another region
  • A region can be at war with another region (instead of town vs town)
  • A region is affiliated with the Conclave or Renegades
• A region has a specific biome - swampy, desert, forest, rolling grasslands, ashen mordor
• A region has one (or a few) resources natural to it. This makes something special about each region.
• A region has one kind of base problem in it: it has a giant spider problem, or plague, or drought, OR marauding goblins, instead of everything everywhere like we’ve currently done
• Regions have a difficulty level. This region is Level 1, that one is 10, that one is 20, another is 30. (We don’t actually have levels but you get the idea).
• Later when Kingdoms are added, they are simply a collection of regions ruled by one monarch. Any region not affiliated with a monarch are ‘free city states’ like medieval venice or ancient Sparta
• A region has specific ins and outs the player can travel between them.
  • They can no longer just walk through the mountains, have to take a pass.
  • The pass can be blocked by problems like avalanche, bandits, or a gryphon
• We can focus the map generator on making interesting regions well. Then we make a map by generating N number of regions.
  • You will be able to customize your experience at 1.0 where you can change the size (# of regions) for a map.
• Each region will have historical events, which you will see in the world gen screen.
• Regions represents a massive change to the world structure and game map. This will be a save breaking change. But don’t worry, it won’t be out for several months so you have plenty of time.

Regions solve tons of problems with the game! It is time we get to it. This is a core component to the Exploration update Mark and Thomas are working on.

Mini-Update Rival Combat

Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• Phil and I playtested Rivals and found some issues. We’re both off this week, giving the team time to find solutions. Next week we’ll playtest again and see where it is at. It’s real close!
• James, Tyler, and Nolan are improving some of the aspects

No Patch This Week
With Phil and I off this week we decided to just pause the weekly patch. There will be a patch next week. We’ll also be off Steam forums and Discord for a week. I think you can manage without us.

 

[Jarmaro]

Weekly Dev Update: Mar 18, 2024

This week’s update is a little sparse as I just returned from a week’s vacation where I took the kids not once, but twice!, to Legoland. I believe the whole theme park is built around the singular fact it is hard to leave Legoland without new lego!

Update #3: Exploration

Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• Zach has a rudimentary dynamically generated quest working in game. There is still lots to do, but this is a significant milestone!
• Michel is working on tooling for the new Exploration gameplay
• Tyler is working on the Conclave and player progression
• Jessi continues on the new UI
• Mark and I are working on something that has always been a problem with the game: the pacing of a life.
  
  • For those that remember Nic, he always questioned “Thomas! How are you going to fill the time? 70 years, by hours, is a lot of time!!!”
  • I put off dealing with it until now. One idea is instead of playing out every hour of every year, instead play through more abstract stages of life: young adult, adult, middle years, eldership

Mini-Update Rival Combat

Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• Rivals has been updated and ready for another internal playtest, which I will perform this week. If the experience is good we will package it up and ship it out.

Other Studio News

• New Hire!
  We just hired a Associate Project Manager to help with the production side of the studio. As we work towards 1.0 there will be increasing production responsibilities and complexity. Phil and I have been doing it, but having someone dedicated and focused on it will really help run things better and free us up to focus on our core responsibilities. Emily starts May 1st.
• Related to the above, Phil is off this week dealing with a serious family member illness. It is sudden so we don’t have a plan. There won’t be a patch this week, nor will he be on the discord server. We expect him back Mar 28th

 

[Jarmaro]

Weekly Dev Update: Mar 25, 2024

The purpose of these dev blog updates is to answer the question “What are those Defiance people up to ?!?”

I believe in transparency in all aspects of life but especially work.

But THIS week at THIS exact moment in time, I can’t share something Really Big I’ve been working on for months. It all comes to an apogee next week Apr 2nd. (I use the word apogee as a throw back to that great shareware company in the 90’s)

I usually break up the update into sections of initiatives, but I’ll just do a bullet list of stuff going on:

• I think I can test the Rivals build tomorrow.
  
  
• We’re having design meetings about the player’s life span and the nature of time. Time is a central pillar of the game concept, but how we implement and express this is what we’re working on
  
  
• I’ve put a lot of time into planning how we get to 1.0. I’ve said this on the forums already, but I have a better idea of when the game will be 1.0 than when a particular feature or update will be available. This is related to The Big Thing.
  
  
• A fan recently asked if we will be updating the Roadmap. Yes. Based on The Big Thing we need to update it. We know better what the game is, versus last year when we posted the roadmap. As developers we need to listen to the game and you our faithful co-adventurers, on what it needs and how we add to it, not just ploughing through feature lists.
  • I can already see the concerned looks and hear the questions “Are you cutting features?” We’re still making the same game and pursuing the same play experience of being a powerful Archmage in a semi-realistic fantasy world, the experience you see represented on the roadmap. It’s more about how we are tackling it. Some features we didn’t think of will need to be added. Some will no longer fit as well as we once thought. Some will be pushed to post 1.0 free updates and some might simply need to be cut. This is game dev.
  
  
• We’re having design meetings about map events and how you play through Points of Interest, track monsters, and gather resources.
  
  
• We’re ideating the kinds of region problems that can occur and how the player can resolve them in different ways.
  
  
• We’re dealing with overlapping vacations of three people which is causing some difficulties to keep everything moving. When 33% of the staff are gone, it’s hard to get things like patches out the door. Phil is back later this week.

Currently in Design
We’re exploring how we can do the town view better in the new UI. I’m thinking a top down view might be better than the 3/4 view we have. When I look at the time and cost of making the 3/4 view look really good, I need to explore other options before deciding.

Here is the concept coming from TTRPG:

Here is a UI wireframe mockup:

I think we can better show variety of locations and scale with this approach. Thoughts?

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.archmagerises.com/news/2024/4/2/future-of-the-game

FUTURE OF THE GAME

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:

1. 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.
2. 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!
3. 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.
4. 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 change 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.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I think it was reasonable to expect sales to go up with each content update.

Not realy.

 

[Haba]

Those Chinese guys clearly worked 18 hours a day for years, and the result is evident.

The devs died of overwork and their parents inherited the profits?

 

[Mortmal]

Those Chinese guys clearly worked 18 hours a day for years, and the result is evident.

The devs died of overwork and their parents inherited the profits?

I don't know what happened to those devs, and if the death of a dozen Chinese developers was needed to fulfill my entertainment needs, then it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.

 

[Tyranicon]

Yo wtf.

First:

We’re Being Acquired*

And then:

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.

And then:

We will release 1.0 Spring 2025

And then:

willingness to invest about another $1m USD

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Cohesion]

willingness to invest about another $1m USD

Rich western capitalists strike again. I wish I'd have $1k. Or even $100. I have ten bucks it will be enough for food till the end of week, I hope.

 

[Lhynn]

Yo wtf.

First:

We’re Being Acquired*

And then:

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.

And then:

We will release 1.0 Spring 2025

And then:

willingness to invest about another $1m USD

How the fuck do you plan to make 1m usd from this game?
How the fuck do you plan to get 1k usd from this time?

 

[Grunker]

https://www.archmagerises.com/news/2024/4/2/future-of-the-game

FUTURE OF THE GAME

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:

1. 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.
2. 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!
3. 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.
4. 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 change 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.

 

[covr]

• This represents a willingness to invest about another $1m USD

I think he meant that this new party acquiring his current entity will invest $1m into the game. If the team is approx 15-25 ppl working full time is not a big sum for a 10 months of work.
Personally I would not invest a single dollar in it, but some people are just rich and stupid.

 

[Jarmaro]

 

[Infinitron]

That's a very good question, Thomas! https://www.archmagerises.com/news/2024/4/8/how-were-developing-the-game-now

HOW WE'RE DEVELOPING THE GAME NOW​

​

How Do you Make a Good Game?​

One evening a week I teach a game dev class at a university in Vancouver, BC. Hopefully not fulfilling the phrase ‘Those who can’t, teach!’.
I ask my students: How do you make a Game?
I surprise them by telling them it’s a simple 2 step process. Here is my teaching slide:

Works for books, music, painting, sculpture, and even articles!
Step 1.
Step 2. Working on it! Opinions will differ on how far along we are.
I use Redfall as an example for the primary reason games fail on release: they weren’t able to finish Step 2. They needed more time (which usually means budget) to complete Step 2. If you ever play a game that dissatisfies, it’s because step 2 was cut short. Several reasons cut step 2 short, but this is not a class, it’s a news update, so let’s get back on track!
While writing this, I happened to catch a post by new player Mordred who decided to jump in and play. He lost 4.5hrs into the immersion of the game.
We have something. Some of it is engaging/compelling. Some of it is real crap. We need to make it a lot better.
Language note: When I say below “we need to make it fun” I’m not discounting the parts people are enjoying, nor am I trying to persuade anyone having fun that they really aren’t. I mean “it isn’t fun enough”. Meaning it can be much more engaging.
So how do we do this?

Games Ain’t Software​

I have 15+ years in Enterprise software, mostly web and mobile platforms.
In software, we have a set of features we must have. Usually, these are dictated by higher ups like the CEO for specific business purposes or to address specific operational pain points. From there, it is up to the team to determine the rest of the system features.
Point being, you make a feature list up front, budget accordingly, and prioritize. This can be done waterfall-ish where the finish line is all decided up front, or agile where a Product Owner decides which ideas become features worth doing as the team builds.
Software just has to work. It is mostly binary: Can I do the thing - send the cost sheet - or can’t I?
There is something to be said about UX and how wonderful or terrible the user’s experience is with executing the feature.
Yet not once, in any of my field tests, did I run up to a user and ask, “Are you having a good time?! Do you want to click that button again?!?”
The system did the thing it was supposed to, we move on to finishing all the features.
This doesn’t seem like the right path…

The Way We Got Here, Doesn’t Get Us There​

We have some assets to our advantage:

• An idea that seems worth pursuing.
• A player community 10,000+ strong, growing every day.
• A moldable base clay of basic features (map, combat, towns, quests, simulator) which can be shaped and formed the way we want

But when I playtest the game it isn’t fun enough.
This leads to a key question. One of upmost strategic importance:
“Add more features, hoping it becomes more fun?
- Or-
Find the fun with what you have?
In software development we talk about tech debt - tech that isn’t quite the way it should be, but you keep putting off dealing with it until some later time. Building on top of this foundation usually just multiples the tech debt.
It sounds ridiculous to say, but I wasn’t terribly interested in how fun the game was, I wanted to get through all the features. I made my list of features, set the roadmap, and started plowing through like it was a software project.
Oops.
Now I have a pile of Fun Debt to work through.
“We have Fun Debt.
For a solution, let’s look outside of software/games.

How Is a Song Written?​

Confession: I’ve never written a song. Not even accidentally!
But I am a curious student of the process. I watch music documentaries of acts as varied as U2, Queen, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Taylor Swift. I read Rick Rubin’s (co-founder of Def Jam) book on creativity. I’ll even admit to watching every episode of the TV show Nashville! (That’s 40hrs of my life I’ll never get back!)
My interest is wrapped up in my niece as a budding musician. I’ve been able to go to the studio with her a few times and coach her a bit in her career. Recently she wrote a song with hit-band Maroon 5.
Not once* have I seen a musician first write out all the lyrics of a song: course, verse, & bridge. Then try to set music to it.
It starts with the music. A melody, a hook, a few bars from the aether. The musician listens to it, plays around with it, and builds on it. Music and lyric come together, each supporting the other.
In games, if lyrics are the features, then music is the fun. When a game is well made, it truly sings!
(*I believe rap is an exception where lyrics are written first, then a beat is dropped in, then orchestration and producing occurs to make the ‘song’ - but it kinda ruins my analogy!)

The Musical Melody Approach to Game Dev​

We need to take the musicians approach by listening. Where is the game’s melody flat? Screeching? Too loud? Too soft? Then adding to it only what makes it sound/play better. To ensure lyric and music, feature and fun, are supporting each other in harmony every step of the way.
As I wrote last week, we (team, new studio) are committed to making this game great. You deserve a great game.
Now is the time to do this. The game is mostly stable (we’re working on that combat first round issue). We’re working on a new UI which includes controller support (oops let that slip).
Now is the time to unite the clans!!!

Unnecessary Braveheart reference, but I love it!
We are working hard on designing the structure of the game, the game loops, how time passes, how you interact with the map, how you get into combat.
We don’t need more features to make this fun. We need to form the disparate notes and words into a beautiful melody.
Once we have that core, we can add features as long as they don’t upset the balance of the music.
So we need a new roadmap, but I don’t even know what it will look like until we get the core loop right.
This new ‘beautiful melody’ fun version of the game is Update #3 - but it is so much more than just changing how resources are found and harvested. It’s turning the pieces of game we have into a game.
For the time being we’ve taken the roadmap off the Steam page game description.

Finally, About The Price Increase​

We’ve said for a while now the game price will increase as we reach certain milestones. The roadmap has shown this for 6+ months. We intended to increase the price with the launch of Rivals Combat, but that has been delayed a few times pending improvements. There are Steam rules on when the price can be changed, last week was a window where we could so we increased from $10->$15 USD. This is just one step along our road to $40 USD.
I totally understand how a price increase on the heels of announcing a new studio acquiring us, looks like the new studio is making changes already. It is not. Just a coincidence. In fact, the VC person doesn’t even know I changed the game price.

 

[Tyranicon]

Fun fact: the indie dev community generally looks down on people who "teach others how to indie dev."

A common insult is "why don't you go start a youtube channel?"

 

[mediocrepoet]

Fun fact: the indie dev community generally looks down on people who "teach others how to indie dev."

A common insult is "why don't you go start a youtube channel?"

Have you considered making something and then making it better?

 

[Tweed]

How bout get it right the first time so you can focus on either making new content or a new game, how bout that instead?