The End … For Now

September 14, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

This is the last blog post I will be writing for Reactuate Games. And while the full impact of that statement has not really hit me just yet, I am very much saddened by the thought.

For the past three and 1/2 months, I have written about this company, the game we were creating, and the people who brought it all to life. I attempted to show the world what it was like to work for a game studio, including the fun you can have (that sometimes doesn’t feel like work) and also the crappy situations that arise. We wanted to share our experiences with the viewers — share our ups and downs, share our wins and losses– because it was important for us to build a group of friends around us to trek this journey together. We always wanted to do more than just create a great game for people. We wanted to create a community.

We have strived to be completely honest with our followers. And we won’t quit now. Our Kickstarter will be canceled in the upcoming days. As a team, we have decided to end the campaign early because of insufficient funds being raised and the probability that that will not change within the next two weeks.

Crowdfunding is a tricky monster. Though we researched and prepared for the beast, we could not gain the following needed for a large project like Colony Rush to be funded. Of course, things could have been done differently, and probably from each member of the team, but right now, honestly, we don’t want to analyze the “what-ifs.” We don’t want to go back over our trail and spot the errors.

Depressed yet?

On a much happier note, we are still excited about what we’ve accomplished on this project. The fact that the game has a real name now still makes me smile. But besides that, we’ve developed an idea into a playable, living game, that a lot of people were actually interested in — and that’s pretty awesome.

I am beyond proud of my team. I am blown away with Austin’s expertise in creating this game from scratch, using a foreign coding language and mysterious concepts. I admire Katey’s persistent faith in herself to succeed in difficult tasks. And I pray to have Ron’s courage to take a chance like this on other amazing opportunities.

Our time together was short, but it was meaningful. And I’ll be forever grateful for this adventure with Reactuate Games.

Building A Company, Creating a Game

“No Rest for the Weary” — Week 15 Recap

September 8, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

By Friday afternoon of last week, the Reactuate team was practically drooling over the Wii remotes during our Play&Learn. We were exhausted and sleep deprived. As we struggled to stay awake and entertain our Twitch audience, we aimed red turtle shells, threw opened bananas, and transformed into racing bullets. Mario Kart was fun. But we were tired.

We officially launched our Kickstarter campaign last Tuesday, September 1st. Within hours of our launch, we had over $5000 dollars raised. We watched the number of backers rise throughout the day, mesmerized, as if we hadn’t known before how numbers worked.

Wednesday we celebrated Colony Rush by having a launch party at The Mill Winery in Abilene. It’s a local hot spot that has recently become “the place to go” in this city. Here, we showed our game and the development behind it; we also thanked our backers and set up a computer for those who wanted to support us. (We actually got a couple of people to back us at the party!)

This event was a great opportunity to show our family, friends, and colleagues exactly what we’ve been dedicated to this last summer, but it was also a moment for us at Reactuate to just look at all we’ve done and give ourselves a pat on the back.

It the midst of all things Kickstarter and the statistics of how many campaigns succeed after 20% is raised within a 7-day span and yada yada yada … it was nice to sit back and hang out with those that care about what we’re doing.

A lot of different interactions took place last week, too. We were pleasantly surprised when contacted about an interview with The Abilene Reporter-News, who put us on the front page of the business section. In this Sunday edition, the reporter wrote about Ron, the company, and Colony Rush, which enabled more Abilenians to find out about us. We also received a phone call from L.A., but more on that story later …

Ron was asked to give a presentation at a local Rotary Club meeting last week, too. This was another chance to share what Reactuate Games is doing. The presentation, entitled “The Narrative of Our Age,” discussed the history of story and its future place in video games. Ron shared Reactuate’s vision and our own push for progress in virtual storytelling.

Our latest episode of Say Something Smart with Craig Fryar of Wargaming.net is now up on our website, our YouTube channel, and iTunes. Craig, who specializes in game data for projects such as World of Tanks and World of Warships, shared insight on how analytics can influence game design. Check out the episode here.

Say Something Smart Podcast

Ep. 5 Craig Fryar

September 3, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In episode 5 of the Say Something Smart podcast, Stephanie and Angel interview Craig Fryar, head of Global Business Intelligence at Wargaming.net. The three talk about Star Wars Land, how data influences game design, and why despair is needed gaming.

Time Stamps

Star Wars Land: 0:40

Data analytics in Gaming: 4:06

Surprising gamers: 6:20

Analyzing millions of players: 8:50

Suffering, enjoyment, and despair in gaming: 10:07

Data influencing game design: 13:07

World of Warships: 16:48

Gaming past and future: 17:19

Augmented vs virtual reality: 22:23

Games affecting people: 26:46

References

Earth and Beyond game

Craig’s LinkedIn

Creating a Game, What We Think About ...

Reactuate Games does Dominion

September 1, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

The Reactuate team played Dominion, a strategic, table top card game based in the Middle Ages. While the player is busy ruling his/her kingdom, he must worry about the other monarchs trying to expand their own territory. About thirty minutes into play, we were evilly laughing as we placed our militaries against one another … so it got a little competitive. And fun.

P.S. No video. Well, actually, we have video but no sound. So just imagine us, sitting around a table, staring, confounded at the cards in our hands for half an hour.

The Pros

Preparing for the future. Although this game can be fast-paced once you get going, there is ample time for future planning. As the other players go around, playing their cards, you can be thinking about what action you’d like to take, what you’d like to buy, and how much you can spend. Situations can change fast of course! For example …

The action cards can do some unexpected damage. Throw your military out there at the exact turn your opponent wants to buy a province and gain the lead, and he might just lose that money to your armies. Oh how the tables have turned.

The chains created. If you play an action card, sometimes it will allow you to take another action, or draw more cards, or have two rounds of shopping. In these moments, the strategy is against yourself. Put out the wrong card and your opportunity could be lost.

The Cons

Game doesn’t make sense at first. Like most strategic games, this one takes a while to warm up to. We spent a good thirty minutes trying to figure out all the intricacies of the game. And even though short clues are given on the cards themselves …

Rules aren’t clear. We got about 3/4 of the way through the game when a player asked a specific question about choosing cards. No one had asked the question because it didn’t seem right that one would be able to make that play. And yet, the instructions didn’t clarify that one couldn’t. Therefore, read ALL the rules and come up with some clear instructions before playing. And yes, I’m still a little bitter about it. Why do you ask?

Here’s how to play the game:

Building A Company, Creating a Game

“The Time Has Come” — Week 14 Recap

August 31, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

This is it. Our Kickstarter campaign has finally arrived. And with that arrival is the tremendous urge to throw up.

Just being honest.

Though the nervous energy consumes us all as a team, we still managed to work together and have fun last week. Especially, Friday. For our weekly Friday Team Lunch, we tested Taco Bell’s ordering app together, which turned out to be a team-building exercise oddly enough. And slightly pointless.

Afterward, we worked on our Kickstarter Launch poster. As one creative force, we designed a spiffy, detailed poster for all of our upcoming events. Once the poster was finalized, we played Dominion, a strategic card game, for our streamed Play&Learn on Twitch. We joked, we laughed, and we forgot, for a moment at least, that this job could be over in just a month.

It’s difficult to discuss this reality. But it is our reality. If we don’t make our Kickstarter goal, this Command Center at Reactuate Games will turn back into a regular old office. And that is disheartening to think about.

But on Friday afternoon, during our game play, we pushed these thoughts away.

Very few tasks were on our to-do list last week. This was mostly because we prioritized items and issues that concerned our Kickstarter. The full week looked like this:

When Ron wasn’t working diligently on our Kickstarter page, he grew crystals (which would mimic our game’s mineral shards) for the party tables at our launch. Ron also ordered various swag gifts for our supporters, the poster, and other essentials for our promotion.

I posted the fourth episode of the Say Something Smart podcast, featuring Jose Sanchez. You can view that here. I also worked on preparation for the party. I bought the plates, cups, forks, decorations, etc. The majority of my time was spent contacting the press and others about our KS, though. Lots of emails. Lots.

Katey was the woman behind the wheel for the poster. She’s the one who took all of our critiques and suggestions into consideration and designed the piece. On another note, Katey also animated our colonist and got him to walk. Click the pic to see him strut.

Cool, huh?

For Austin, much of the week was concentrated on taking screenshots and filming in-game scenes for our KS video. It was extremely important to arrange the best images and segments for this highly influential clip on the KS page. When he finished that, Austin went back to working on the saving/loading system in the game.

Say Something Smart Podcast

Ep. 4 Jose Sanchez

August 27, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

*Note: The Skype call did falter some, but we tried to edit this episode to the best of our ability.*

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Angel and Stephanie interview Jose Sanchez in episode 4 of the Say Something Smart podcast. The group discusses the connection between porn and video games, community in gaming, and how city-builders can teach valuable life lessons.

Time Stamps

Porn and Video Games: 0:44

Intro Jose Sanchez: 5:35

“Gamescapes”: 6:00

Bloom Project in London: 8:40

Games Bringing People Together: 12:16

Block’hood video game: 13:28

Future of Game Development: 19:00

References

Creating a Game

“Tesla’s Legacy: Wireless Power”-Engineering Log 5

August 25, 2015 Austin Graham 1 Comment

If you have read Stephanie’s article about Kickstarter, then you already know how much Kickstarter has been on our minds, and so I have been focusing on rather large systems than individual buildings in preparation. Since last time, I have finally finished getting colony cams into the game. Right now the cameras can be placed and deleted from the UI, and there shouldn’t be anymore problems with that. I also took a bit of time to add some simple icons to the camera panels for ease of access. The icons are as follows: center game camera on this camera’s location, move the camera to a new location, delete the camera. The delete button is the only button that works for the moment.

Green particles indicate a valid position for the tower.

In addition to the colony cams, I was able to implement a new system: power. With Katey’s power plants operational, players can now build wireless power towers (wouldn’t Tesla be proud) that send power to a certain area. These power towers can only be placed next to a power plant so to help players find the location. I added a smaller particle effect around the power plant that only shows up when placing power towers. Also the visual for the power area (a yellow ring of particles) only shows up when constructing or selecting a tower so as to minimize clutter in the world. Several buildings, such as luxury housing and colony cams, require power to be built, and to get Katey’s Luxury House (aka the Shark House) built, a player must provide power.

As if getting power and the colony cam systems weren’t enough, I have also been working on a log in screen that will eventually pull data from a server to give access to a player’s colony. For the time being, we are working with an offline version. Below is the scene used for the log in screen.It is a deceptively soothing scene before the player is thrown into the chaos of managing a colony.

Currently I have the game switching back and forth from scene to scene. I am looking into what it would take to save information and what all needs to be included and what can be loaded later from data stored. Finally, I have created development builds for the team so that everyone has a working copy of the current project to play with.

We have 7 days left before Kickstarter! It’s getting crazy around the office, and we are hard at work getting everything together.

Past Engineering Logs:
Engineering Log 1
Engineering Log 2
Engineering Log 3
Engineering Log 4

Building A Company, Creating a Game

“Are We There Yet?” — Week 13 Recap

August 24, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow Leave a comment

The term Kickstarter has been heavily integrated in our vocabulary here at Reactuate Games. Phrases like, “On September 1st, we’ll be Kickstarting our Kickstarter campaign on Kickstarter” have been said, and it’s totally normal because we are up to our eye holes in Kickstarter planning.

Yes, our eye holes, people.

Fortunately, we’ve had a few other tasks that have relieved our minds from KS. Last week, Angel and I interviewed two new guests for our Say Something Smart podcast. Jose Sanchez, who is not only a game developer but also a professor at the School of Architecture at USC, was our first guest. His video game Block’hood will be released within the next few months. Our second guest was Craig Fryar, the Head of Business Intelligence at Wargaming.net. Craig has helped with the data analysis on numerous games, including World of Tanks and World of Warships. Both episodes will be posted in the next couple of weeks.

Also, episode 3 with Dr. Brian Burton, a professor of digital entertainment, is up on our website. If you missed it, you can watch that here.

I’ve finally reserved a venue for our Kickstarter launch party, which will be September 2nd (the date had to be moved a day after our actual KS launch). We’re beyond excited to celebrate what we’ve accomplished these last three months and to show others the game’s progress so far. The event will be held at a casual winery here in town, and it will be a come-and-go party. A few monitors will display the KS video, in-game images, and perhaps even our YouTube collection.

Speaking of our launch, Ron has officially started up a page for us on the website. Before it goes live, we want to create a promotional video that will be at the top of the page. Ron and I have researched a lot into how we can produce an entertaining and yet persuasive video because it’s one of the most important items on a KS page. Ron prepared the script that we’ll be filming today, so be on the lookout for that gem!

Austin has been working tirelessly on many lengthy projects. He now has the power plant and power towers working in unison with the power’s reachability. The colony cams now appropriately work within this range, too.

He’s also successfully built a log-in/quit scene with username and password blanks. At the time of this post, the game wasn’t able to be saved, but Austin is working hard on getting that fixed.

Our KS page was in need of a great visual that will entice people to click on our page, so Katey created that image. Katey has also been rigging our first colonist, which turned into a tougher task than we had first imagined. But Katey, the great perseverer she is, finally got the job done. Our colonist, seen here, is quite the kung fu artist.

It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come as a team. We’re rigging art, recording podcasts, and making a game that we are really proud of. We have a long way to go, of course, but the journey thus far has been immensely fulfilling. On to week 14!

Say Something Smart Podcast

Ep. 3 Dr. Brian Burton

August 20, 2015 gamemaster 1 Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this episode, Dr. Brian Burton visits Angel and Stephanie to discuss the health benefits of video games, old-timey word processors, and the mistakes game developers make. Dr. Burton is an assistant professor at Abilene Christian University and teaches digital entertainment and information technology.

Time Stamps

“Electronic Medicine” : 0:45

Using computers for training: 6:35

Legitimizing passion for video games: 8:02

Dr. Burton’s influences :9:47

Processors and Dyslexia: 11:55

Mobile app developers: 18:12

Attached to phones: 19:04

Future game development: 26:04

Games’ influence on us: 41:38

Mistakes of game developers: 45:09

References

Akili (Video Game Medicine)

The Bard’s Tale (1985 Video Game)

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

BurtonsMediaGroup.com

Creating a Game, What We Think About ...

Reactuate Games does World of Tanks

August 18, 2015 Stephanie Whitlow 1 Comment

In preparation for an upcoming podcast guest (Craig Fryar), we played World of Tanks, a strategic warring game that involves war tanks from various countries battling for territory. In this “capture the flag” game, people can play in large groups or mano a mano.

Surprisingly, we had a lot of fun just playing one-on-one. And though there was a bit of scheming and spying going on, the excitement shook our office’s walls.

Oh, and I came out undefeated.

Just thought I’d mention that.

Pros

Numbers don’t matter. Though we only had two people playing at a time, we all still engaged in the game. Sure, there was a little cheating going on to quicken the battle, but that was part of the fun and camaraderie-building. Game play in a group or alone would probably have a different energy, but the hide and seek aspect of the game is just plain thrilling. No matter how many players you have.

Controls are simple. The mouse, WASD, the scroll wheel. That’s basically all you need. Double-tap “R” and your tank gets a little kick. A quick tutorial also shows you all you need to know, like how to hide in a bush or move and shoot at the same time.

Realistic movement. Whether your tank is moving up hill, through the lake, or on a dirt road, it’s going to respond realistically. Hills are slow to climb. You have to sludge through water. Every decision affects your game play, making the battle more interesting and life-like.

Cons

Countdown before battle is so looooonnnnggg. For thirty seconds, players must sit still, twiddle their thumbs, and question all of their life’s decisions. Seriously. It’s pointless to wait that long. (Although, if you were cool and strategizing with your team, it would make sense to have this time.) But for one-on-one play, it dragged on.

Boring stretches. Especially during our play, there were lengths of time where the players couldn’t find one another to even start the fight. And because the tanks move slowly, it can take about an hour for any legit shooting can take place. (However, we understand this game can be enjoyed methodically and slowly for others.)

Watch the trailer here and tell us what you think.

Creating New Worlds