Yeah, right.

There are always a lot of ideas and misconceptions of the wonderful world of video games. Even more so, as office manager people outside the studio say, “so does that mean you just make coffee so people can have the energy to make the demo for GenCon?” Because of this, I have decided to clarify some common misconceptions about what goes into preparing for a big event like GenCon.

So, Valerie, don’t you just get the guys on a plane and they pop the demo in a contraption at GenCon and say “Behold!”

As awesome as that sounds, it is so much more than that. Before our team can even go to GenCon,  a room must be reserved for us to make the demo presentation so we don’t end up showing it in the back of truck to tourists in the GenCon parking lot. We need to make sure we have the right equipment and definitely make sure it works so the demo runs quick smooth and without any disgruntled looking Juggernauts. Then I start making sure the team has beds to sleep in and flights so they don’t have to hitchhike old school to GenCon. As anyone can see, just getting to the event and making sure that everything works takes a little more than fairy dust.

But you guys work at a video game studio, isn’t preparing WARMACHINE just fun and people just sit around and play XBOX and eat candy?

This is my absolute favorite idea that I hear about working here. We actually do have a lot of candy here, but between handfuls of that there are also handfuls of work that need to get done. There are so many components from art to engineering to visual effects and they all must get done. It does not good if a character looks great, but he can’t even move! Every detail is constantly being looked at. I don’t work on the game, but I get to observe everyone working hard to make sure the game looks great when that demo goes on at GenCon. If we all just sat around challenging each other on xbox and eating red vines, there wouldn’t even be a demo! Just a bunch of xbox junkies on a sugar high.

I don’t believe you! Is it EVER stressful to work in such a cool place when you’re getting ready for GenCon?

I’m not going to lie-working here is cooler than cool. That’s not to say that every day is unicorns and puppy dogs.  During the time we have been spending on preparing the demo, we have had everything from power outages to people losing data. Now, you would think that during those times we are going crazy and yelling profanities. However, the key during this crunch time is the people you work with. We support each other and most of all laugh at a lot of bad jokes.

GenCon is right around the corner and everyone is busy, computers are buzzing, but at the end of the day we’re pretty stoked at what is coming together. As anyone can now see, we work extremely hard, but play just as hard. And for the record for those at the beginning: I make some damn good coffee.

You enter a dark room. You see a desk with several computer monitors. There is a Creative Director here.

> look director

The Creative Director is slouching in his chair, his pasty features alit by the monitor glow. He doesn’t seem to notice you.

> look desk

The desk is covered with sticky-notes and game books.

> look books

There are stacks of faction books for the awesome table-top game WARMACHINE.

> examine sticky notes

The scattered sticky-notes seem to have hand-written messages scribbled on them.

> read notes

Deciphering the scrawl, you identify them as to-do messages. You glance at some of the multi-colored notes:
“Test Trenchers pathfinding to waypoints.”
“Put in VFX for Arcane Blast.”
“Review animatic for Cutscene 2.”
“UI for focus is too “zappy”
“GET EVERYTHING READY FOR GENCON!”

> look monitor

The various monitors show a development environment for the WARMACHINE game in production. A note on the monitor reads, “Remember Scott, F5 launches the game, F4 CLOSES the game!”

> press F5

You cannot play the game without a controller.

> look for controller

The Game Director seems to be clutching a game controller.

> say hello

His blurry eyes and drooling visage are a sure signs he is mentally elsewhere.

> poke Director

Poke him with what?

> poke director with stick

With a flurry of pokes, the Creative Director begins to show signs of life – slapping at your stick and shouting, “Gyaa! What do you want!?”

> Ask for controller

The Creative Director rubs his blood-shot eyes, stammering “How long do we have until GenCon? Huh? The Controller? Sorry, man, I gotta get this demo working. We only have a couple weeks left! The Trenchers aren’t pathfinding, the Juggernaut is still…”

> poke director with stick

“Ow OW! OK OK! Here’s the controller… geesh…”
You receive the game controller.

> press F5

The WARMACHINE GenCon demo begins. You are overwhelmed at the overall awesomeness of the game in production. You are left with a longing to tell your friends about it.

> talk Game Director

He grins and says, “Glad you liked it, but the real demo won’t be shown until August 7th at GenCon. We should have even more to show then…”

> reset system clock to 08-07-2010

I’m afraid I can’t do that…

> pout

Hey folks!

So, we’ve made this big todo about the WARMACHINE game and I know that you all have tons of questions. Maybe it’s time we coughed up some info about who we are and what it is exactly we’re doing So, here comes a loooong post.

Scott, Kevin, Norvell and myself started WhiteMoon Dreams back in the lavish year of 2006, when most of the world was peering curiously at the strange mortgage situation that was about to topple and saying “hrm… that doesn’t look so great – ah well, hand me another beer”.  Scott and I had initially put together some designs, artwork and prototypes to get publishers interested in our work and we brought Kevin on because he was a badass designer with a head for business and Norry because he was a badass marketing guy with experience in making this kind of starting-a-company-thing go. We assembled our dream-team of developers and began working away at our first product from an up-and-coming publisher who we aren’t allowed to name.

Unfortunately econopocalypse (as Kevin likes to call it) hit, and we were hit just like everyone else. The project we were working on was cancelled, our publishing partners (who were very supportive of us and liked our project immensely) were thrown into disarray and disappeared. As you can expect, we had to do some incredibly fast thinking.

The thing you can always bet on with game developers is that most of them have their hearts solidly placed in their dreams and when you join a startup crew, you can bet every single person in that crew shares in the dream of the company. Through the madness, the staff stayed on to figure out how to keep everything moving smoothly.

We managed to score some contract work to keep things barely alive and began rebuilding our tech. By February of 2009, we had enough to build a small sample of a game (that was somewhat reminiscent of the game we were previously building with a full team). 5-6 of us crammed for a month (to make it to March GDC 09) and built the demo for the game Aftermath that you see on our website. The team consisted of a couple of people who rolled on and off the project as they could – two artists, two designers scripting, and two programmers.

Aftermath is a game that we have a lot of passion for still. We plan for it to be an XBLA/PSN downloadable title that is essentially Diablo 2 with guns (because we’re all nuts about D2). Get together a bunch of friends on/offline, grab some alcohol (or whatever floats your boat), grow your player, collect tons of items and lay complete waste to some baddies with a myriad of weapons. You can’t really argue with that.

Meanwhile, we were still alive. We took Aftermath as far as we wanted to in order to demonstrate the ability of the team so we then decided to push the boundaries of our technology in order to further show the versatility of the tech and the team. We iterated on a couple of ideas while continuing to handle small contracts and one day, we got to talking about how badass WARMACHINE was. See, Kevin and Scott had been regularly hitting our nearby gaming watering hole – Game Empire  - and had gotten us all into playing some delicious DnD. The entire company had now taken to playing board games and DnD on the weekend – everything from Arkham Horror to Bang to Kill Doctor Lucky. Gaming started to get more serious and we turned our attention to something that some of us had been fans of for quite some time – WARMACHINE.

Emergent, who we work very collaboratively with, had recently done a tech demo using the WARMACHINE property and had ties to Privateer Press. They graciously gave us the introduction to Matt Wilson of Privateer and furious copulation of Warjacks began.

So hopefully, from all that backstory you’ve learned about the passion that we have not only to keep WhiteMoon Dreams going, but you can see how we’ll channel that into making WARMACHINEsomething that you guys are going to love. We are not a shop that has been slapped with a project that they have to do – we have chosen this project to do on our own and we work hand-in-hand with Matt and his crew in order to make sure that we stay true to their vision of this world.

So now, a group of us has decided to go head down in development and do nothing but eat, sleep and dream WARMACHINE and it is paying off. The little rag-tag team is still growing –  still under-financed, but burning with the furious coal-fires of this incredible dream project. We will continue to fuel ourselves however we can, but our vision and execution for WARMACHINE is clear and continues every single day through the efforts of each individual at the studio; this project is farther along than people might think.

GDC next year is going to be awesome

Love,

Jay K. and the rest of WhiteMoon Dreams

Hi everyone!  Our team has just released a demo of one of our games, titled “Aftermath”.  In conjunction with this release,we have also created a slick new website that showcases much of the art, and even some gameplay video to show all of you what we have been up to.   Mr. Scott Campbell was recently interviewed by Pete Redding, a friend of the studio and freelance journalist, to get the lowdown on this game.

Scott, so tell everyone out there a bit more about this game, Aftermath.

SC: Well, the best and simplest way to describe this game is to say it’s “Diablo 2, with Guns!” We wanted to make a fun retro-style shooter (ala Robotron or SmashTV) with some light RPG elements (like leveling up your characters, upgrading your weapons, skill trees, etc).

Unlike most retro-style shooters, we wanted to keep the art quality to next gen standards. (But we still love you Geometry Wars!)  Also, we wanted to focus on cooperative multiplayer, so you and your buddies can shoot up the place either gathered around the same console or over the ’net.

So you guys are big fans of Blizzard?

SC: Never heard of ‘em.  What, are you kidding? Absolutely!  I mean, we love everything that those guys put out.  They put a lot of love and design thought into building their games, and we definitely were inspired by the Diablo series for our game Aftermath.

The story behind Aftermath concerns a group of 4 Wanderers who exist in a post-apocalyptic Earth.  They are tasked to save humanity from hordes of mutants, domineering military forces, and murderous robotic entities.  Ok, so I shouldn’t really tell you much more.  More of the story can be found on our game website for those fans who are interested!

I love the art-style you guys have going on there, what was the inspiration?

SC: Yeah, thanks!  So for the art style, our original inspiration believe it or not, came from Burning Man, which is the annual art festival held every year in the Nevada desert.  All the crazy, funky clothing, art, and music was a direct influence to how we wanted to present the characters and environments in Aftermath.

So, all you guys are “Burners”?

SC: Heh!  I think 80% of our studio will be going to the big event this year.  We are a pretty tight knit crew, and we all enjoy listening to new music and seeing bizarre and wondrous art.  Our studio, in fact, lends itself pretty well to a creative space.  By the way, every Wednesday we hold industry dinners where we cook some good food, drink some wine and listen to some good music.  Any and all other dev houses are encouraged to come by any time and hang with us!

Ok, don’t make me take you up on that offer!  I will bring our whole crew!

SC [Laughs] No problem man!  The more the merrier.

So I know you were one of the lead designers on the original Fallout.  How much has that game influenced Aftermath?

SC: Well no doubt I have a strong fascination with nuclear wars, and what happens to mankind after such an event.  I also am intrigued with mankind’s search for meaning when their history of themselves has been cut off in some tragic way.  How do we make the right decisions in face of catastrophe?  Are our instincts correct in determining a particular course of action.  What makes us human?  Just what would we do to survive? Would we destroy ourselves or rise above to rebuild? I mean those types of questions are definitely ones that I love to explore in designing games.

Of course, that’s not all that I am interested in!  Quite a few of our designs are completely different and touch upon a wide range of genres.

Oh great, when will we be able to see more?

SC: All in due time!  Our first goal right now is to get Aftermath a publishing home.  We are releasing this demo for people to get a glimpse about how cool this game could be if it is picked up by a willing publisher.  We think it will be a blast to play on XBLA & PSN! Check it out for yourself!

Alright, well we wish you and the rest of the team the best of luck in this endeavor!

SC: Thanks!  Make sure to check out our website at www.whitemoondreams.com/aftermath