Jun 4, 2014

Night In The Woods Coming to PS4

So no biggie whatever but NITW is coming to PS4:

You can find out more about NITW on PS4 here. We will also be reaching out to select press to arrange meetings at E3, where NITW will be playable at the Sony booth for the duration of the show. We’re really excited to be bringing NITW to PSN, and want to thank our contacts at Sony for helping make this not just possible but kind of fun! FINJI PARTNER PROJECTS Night In The Woods is Finji’s debut “partner project”, games that we are helping to produce in non-development ways. However, we want to clarify that Finji is not really a publisher, either. For our partner projects, Finji acts like a weird mix of agent, distributor and accountant, but we also help with playtesting, press relations, mentoring and feedback. Some of these are publisher-like responsibilities but some are not, so simplifying Finji’s role with these games as “publisher” still feels weird to us. “Partner project” sounds fine for some reason? Words are weird. We have two other partner projects that will be announced later this month, one of which launches before July, so stay tuned!

May 28, 2014

CAPSULE: Available now on Steam!

Today’s goal is to not freak out that CAPSULE, our collab with Robin Arnott and Venus Patrol, is available now on Steam.

May 20, 2014

Building a New Team, Part 1

Midnight on a Tuesday may not be the ideal time to tackle this but I can always take a nap with the kids tomorrow I guess. I really want to get these thoughts down while they’re still fresh. This will be the first post of many (well a few anyways!) talking about the way we’re building our first team here at Finji. We have never done this before, and I’m hoping that documenting it will make me more analytical about what we’re doing and maybe help others too. THE PROJECT Finji’s first big internal project is a game called Overland. We haven’t shown this game publicly much at all, so there’s probably not much point in me going on at length about it here, there will be plenty of that in the future. Suffice it to say for now that it is a Unity game with 3D characters and environments. Based on some previous experience we are pretty hopeful that we’ll be able to build this game in the way that we want with a team of roughly 3-5 people in various capacities. Of course, Finji is only 2 people, so we needed to find the other 3. THE PROBLEM Even a year ago, my approach to build this team would be very different. In fact, it would look a lot like the way we found our programmer and brilliant co-designer Shay Pierce; I’d ask a friend, someone I trusted and knew already, if they wanted to make a game together. This is in almost every regard a relatively good approach to building a team, as long as you’re not just blind-hiring every friend you have or whatever (although I’m sure there is some project and some team out there for whom that approach could actually work somehow). The reason I say “almost” is the pool of friends I have to hire from are… a lot like me: white middle-class cis-bros in their late 20s/early 30s. That sounds dismissive toward the geniuses I’ve been collaborating with for the last 5-6 years, which is definitely not my intent, but at the same time I have no choice but to recognize the… homogeneity of the teams I’ve built in the past. This concern is motivated primarily by two things: the first is a purely practical concern for the final output quality of the game, and its ability to stand out from the pack. I have this theory that (call me crazy) a homogenous team with homogenous interests is going to produce a game that can’t help but reflect many if not all of the same inspirations as every other Steam game, even if it expresses itself in a different way. To put it another way, I feel like I have to acknowledge at this point in my life that maybe I’m not… maybe I’m not a brave enough artist to stand out, period. A good team of people with a broader base of inspirations should, in theory, lead to a more interesting game. At the same time there is obviously a kind of moral or community motivation to show that even an idiot running a company out of his spare bedroom can build a virtuoso team that does NOT look and act exactly like every other game team out there. I think that has the potential to send a powerful message, and it’s something I would love to be involved in. The thing is, it’s actually pretty hard to hire a diverse team, but not for the reasons everyone thinks. THE PROCESS It’s pretty chilling, but the main issue we ran into at first is that women simply wouldn’t apply for the jobs we were posting. I’ve seen people use this excuse to try to justify the ongoing imbalance in hiring in the games industry at large, or to excuse gross imbalances in speaker diversity at games conferences, etc. I have since learned this is… misguided, at best, and deliberately misleading at worst. The main reason, as far as I could tell, that women weren’t applying for the jobs we posted, was because they assumed they wouldn’t even be considered for the position. I’m having trouble putting into words exactly how much this disturbs me. Maybe I’ll be able to articulate my concerns here better in the future. Fortunately, this was not a significant obstacle for us. With help from the folks at Bento Miso I tried using less combative and intimidating language in my job posts, tried being more informative, and stressed the collaborative element of the work we have planned. I also emphasized the fact that we were specifically interested in building a diverse team and that we were encouraging POC and women and other under-represented groups to apply. Eventually we were able to convince people that normally would not have applied (for reasons too numerous to enumerate here) to go ahead and send in their info. And I’ve been enormously happy with our results. ON EXPERIENCE Others have said this with much more eloquence but I think it should go without saying that the idea that building a diverse team means sacrificing quality along any axis is offensively absurd, and absurdly offensive. While we have seen under-represented applicants generally have less experience than over-represented applicants, that’s an obvious systemic side effect of discrimination, and not a showstopper for us. Something that also only became clear when we started the audio tests, is that hiring by portfolio is, perversely, a biased and unfair practice. This is the main reason we actually did the audio tests. Portfolios are primarily indicative of experience, and experience is something that is easier for some people to earn than others. Tests and demos are one way to help level that playing field, when done correctly. THE PLAN Our hiring plan is a multi-step process that looks something like this currently: 1 - prepare a project-specific brief explaining what we’re looking for. This brief should be very carefully considered and constructed, to ensure that we are not unnecessarily intimidating artists 2 - solicit applications by publicly posting the brief to our company blog* 3 - work through the applications and select a subset of favorite applicants and invite them to do a paid practical demo or test 4 - based on the application, the applicant’s work experience (quality, not quantity), and the quality of the demo or test, select our most promising candidate** 5 - hire the candidate for a one month contract, in which they will work full-time on the project. if after one month it just isn’t working, both parties will be free to go their own ways, little harm done. 6 - if that one month trial period goes well, formally make the new hire part of the project team for the duration of the project. There is one big problem (*) and one big caveat (**) with the list above. The big problem is with #2, posting the brief to our blog and twitter accounts. This is probably the greatest flaw in the way we’ve been approaching this so far, and is a difficult problem to solve. Basically, our efforts to reach out to under-represented groups and artists have been fundamentally passive in nature. We post to the blog, let the emails roll in, pick our favs. This is not an effective way to reach a wider community of artists. We need to find a way to do this more actively in the future. The big caveat above, in #4, is that we are not just looking for the most promising candidate in general. We are looking for the most promising candidate for this specific project. Which of the applicants seemed to have the strongest connection to the material? Who created the work that resonated the most? It may not be the applicant with the most polished work or the most impressive portfolio. THE STORY SO FAR We’ve done one round of paid art tests, and one round of paid audio tests. 5 visual artists participated (3 women, 2 men) and 12 audio designers participated (4 women, 8 men), representing some 6 or 7 different countries on 4 continents. I think this was a good first step but I think we have a lot of steps to go still, especially when it comes to actively reaching out to outside collaborators. We will be announcing the Overland team in our own special, Overland-y way, and I’m really looking forward to that. I’m also hopeful that we’ll be able to do some interviews with and publicly recognize some of the people that we ended up not bringing on for Overland specifically, but who made a huge impression on us during this process. Ok, it’s getting late, time to wrap this up. I would love to know what you think of our process - it’s a work in progress, obviously, and we do intend to do it better next time. That said, we have the luxury of having pretty thick skin, so if you see ways for us to improve please do not hesitate to let us know, either on twitter or via email.

Apr 22, 2014

Join the Overland Team: Make Sounds, Freak Everybody Out

Adam here! We are actively seeking a sound designer to join our team and work on our new indie game Overland. We are also on a mission to build a more inclusive studio with more diverse teams, and so we strongly encourage applications from people from backgrounds that aren’t always represented in the games industry. If you fit this description or know people who do, we would be grateful if you could pass this posting on! I’ve got some more details about this toward the end of the post. WHAT IS OVERLAND? Overland is a turn-based survival game. It is still what we call a prototype, but if you imagine playing a board game where you move some figurines of civilians and monsters around a chessboard full of rubble, you might have some idea of what the game is like at the moment. The fictional world in which Overland takes place could be reasonably described as post-apocalyptic, empty, and hostile. Players guide a band of survivors on a long journey to… somewhere, relying on a kind of hand-me-down map that helps them find the safer places to pick up supplies on the way. This world has been picked over, though, so you won’t be finding a lot of guns, for example. There are even some good reasons to not kill every monster you see, but we don’t want to spoil too much yet… the important thing to us is that players will make some hard choices while they play, and every choice players make has consequences. One thing that we hope will make Overland stand out is that the characters you meet and with whom you travel are basically normal people. There will be doctors and mechanics and carpenters but also just moms and pensioners. Humans, as it were; not superheroes. We also have a lot of ideas about how we can illustrate relationships between survivors and the obstacles they face on their travels, but these elements are still pretty nebulous. They will play a big role in the final game though! Does this sound like something you want to work on? YES THIS IS MY DREAM PROJECT. WHAT WOULD I BE DOING? Making all sound effects, music and ambience for the whole game. Everything about the way the game sounds would be up to you. Your vision (as it were) for the soundscape is important to us. We are looking for a fourth brain to join us on this adventure, to work with us to build the best game we can. We are looking for someone who can help us to complete these weird new world we are trying to build. Your primary domain will be the sound design, but if you have ideas for new game mechanics, new scenarios, new story ideas, whatever you think would make the game better, lay it on us! For us this is what it means to be a creative partner on the project. That said, you won’t be joining a blank slate project. There are some aspects of Overland that we feel strongly about, and we are looking forward to working with you to help amplify those things and to build up the rest of the game’s audio accordingly. We are doing our best to create a flexible and communicative team environment where there is both direction and self-expression. I will do my best to articulate my ideas about what might be possible with the sound design, and I am looking forward to hearing your ideas for what this world sounds like too. WHAT DO YOU THINK IT SHOULD SOUND LIKE? I’ve been really lucky, and have had the opportunity to collaborate with some really brilliant sound designers in the past. I’ve worked on games with chippy soundscapes, cinematic backdrops, and even weirder things like Capsule. Overland is not explicitly a horror game, exactly, but I think the sound design in games like Capsule or Silent Hill is getting close to the right ballpark for what we’re building. I think the audio in The Swapper is pretty sharp too. I’ve also been referencing movies like The Thing and Alien internally, but that’s because I’m a hopeless cliché; there are probably cooler or more interesting references out there, like these amazing sub-antarctic hydrophone recordings. The thing we’re most interested in is creating something that doesn’t really sound like anything else. I know that’s not the most useful thing to say after giving a bunch of references, but maybe those references are best for getting a sense of the fidelity and detail we’re interested in, not the exact reference sounds themselves. Overland is a road-trip game, in some ways, and is about being in big empty spaces with no help, with very, very strange things surrounding you. We have our work cut out for us on the art side, to bring this to life, but we’re hoping to find someone who can step up and create an equally weird and unique soundscape to accompany the player on their journey. If you have a vision for a non-traditional, beautiful and practical approach for a game like this, we want to see it! SWEET. GIMME THE DIRTY DEETS So earlier I very specifically described Overland as an indie game, which was intentional, because it is a key part of our business model. Our goal is to build a four person team: designer (me), programmer (Shay), artist (announcing soon!!), and an audio person (you??). When the project is released, the vast majority of the revenue from the game will be divided up between the four team members basically forever. As a creative partner you will be entitled to the sort of rev share that comes along with that. To help pay the bills until release, we can also provide monthly advances. These advances must be paid back out of the rev share at launch, but hopefully they help bridge the gap between start of project and launch. This is not a salaried position, and there are no healthcare or retirement benefits associated with it. In tax terms, you will be a self-employed contractor or freelancer. The current plan is to start production on the full game in April, and launch as a paid alpha on Humble and Steam in Q3 or Q4 2014. We will probably continue active development until mid-2015, when I expect the pace of updates to slow down. Also, please keep in mind that since this is an indie game, those dates are subject to change!! We will do our very best to stick to those guns though. WHERE DO I SIGN UP Please email me (adam@finjigames.com) with a link to your portfolio ASAP. Please include the words “overland sound designer” and your name in the subject line. We are going to be looking for:

* good communication skills, ability to articulate new ideas

Mar 14, 2014

Join the Overland Team: Make Art, Decide Everything

UPDATE: I think we’ve found our artist. We’ll be making some announcements on the Overland mailing list about this in the coming weeks! A huge thank you to the insanely talented applicants. What a humbling experience! Adam here! So I have alluded to this on twitter in the past, but we are actively seeking an artist to join our team as a full creative partner on our new indie game Overland. We are also on a mission to build a more inclusive studio with more diverse teams, and so we strongly encourage applications from people from backgrounds that aren’t always represented in the games industry. If you fit this description or know people who do, we would be grateful if you could pass this posting on! More about this later… WHAT IS OVERLAND? Overland is a turn-based survival game that we have been describing internally as “868-HACK meets XCOM meets OREGON TRAIL meets LEFT 4 DEAD meets ROADSIDE PICNIC”. Make of that what you will, just keep in mind that it’s not a zombie game… Overland is still in an (advanced) prototype stage, but currently the gameplay consists of guiding a rotating cast of characters through simplified tactical encounters on a road-trip across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Imagine you have some action figures from Stephen King’s THE STAND and HALF-LIFE 2, and you arranged them on a chess board, and hopefully you have some idea of what the core gameplay is like. The world of Overland is empty and hostile. Your survivors rely on a kind of hand-me-down map that helps them find the safer places to pick up supplies on their journey to… somewhere. Most of the really useful supplies have been taken already, so you won’t be finding a lot of guns, for example. In fact, there are some good reasons to not kill every monster you see, but we don’t want to spoil too much yet… the important thing to us is that players will have some hard choices to make in most levels, and every choice you make has consequences. We’re also working on building up some performative/expressive elements of game narrative. We have a lot of ideas about how we can illustrate relationships between survivors and the obstacles they face on their travels, but these elements are still pretty whiteboardy. They will play a big role in the final game though! Does this sound like something you want to work on? Like really want to work on? YES THIS IS MY DREAM PROJECT. WHAT WOULD I BE DOING? Making all the 2D and 3D art and animation in the whole game. Everything about the way the game looks and moves would be up to you. I am a picky dude with strong opinions and we would be working together to figure out how to make Overland into the best game that we can. In the same way that I’ll be pushing back on and influencing some of the art, though, I also invite you to push back on and influence everything else about the game: game mechanics, new scenarios, new story ideas, whatever you think would make the game better, lay it on us! For us this is what it means to be a full creative partner on the project. You will become, in many ways, 1/3rd owner of Overland. By the time the game is done it will be as much your vision as it currently is mine or Shay’s. WHAT DO YOU THINK IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE? For a variety of reasons we are currently imagining the game as having mostly 3D art, but a really strong 2D vision could probably convince us to change our minds (it just might be a bit more work? depends on the artist I guess). Games like Kentucky Route Zero and videos like Between Bears have really strong aesthetics that we think could work for this game, but we’re open to other bold ideas! Some of the practical reasons we are leaning toward low-poly 3D art include:

* looks good at lots of different resolutions

Mar 3, 2014

hello world