Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: etc.

"it has almost no competitive products, which is our advantage."

Today, FTL: beyond the Speed of Light (FTL: Faster than Light) is widely regarded as one of the most influential independent games of all time. Ten years ago, it, along with the burnt offering of Isaac and Spelunky, pushed the Roguelite category to become more popular.

The game originated from the humble idea of Matthew Davis and Justin Ma, two developers of 2K Shanghai Studio. Although the working environment was good at the time, they were not interested in the games they developed there, they recalled, and then left 2K to work on a part-time project to keep them busy while looking for a next home.

"at least in my opinion, at first it was just intended to treat 'FTL: faster than Light' as an interest project or prototype." "this is one of the things we do during the workplace window to make our resume more beautiful and use it to find a new job and invest in a project that we are more interested in," Davis said. over time, however, the magnitude of the game went far beyond the original idea. "

Davis and Ma won the "excellent Design" award at the Independent Game Festival on GDC in 2013. according to them, they took inspiration from the offline strategy board games they usually played in order to make the new independent game. "We love board games like Battlestar Galactica and Red November, which include a lot of crew management and collaborative play." Davis said.

Before starting the development, they wrote down a list of board games and added some prototype mechanisms. "We want the player to play the captain, not the pilot." "at that time, most games were for players to fly spaceships and fight fiercely in space," Davis explained. "but we prefer to make players feel like Picard and need to do something like power distribution, shield protection, damage repair and so on."

"We want players to manage the ship's various systems and experience the pain of losing crew members because of their own wrong decisions." Ma added. He also revealed that in order to stimulate players' feelings, he was influenced by random scenes and permanent death settings in Roguelike games. Ten years ago, such design elements were infiltrating from traditional turn-based adventures to other categories of games.

In addition to board games such as Red November, FTL: beyond the Speed of Light is also inspired and influenced by films such as Firefly and Star Trek. "in the past few years, I did play a lot of traditional Roguelike games, but it wasn't until caving came out that I really began to think about how to apply the principles of Roguelike to other categories."

Still, the two developers decided to include a large number of mechanisms similar to Roguelike games in FTL: beyond the Speed of Light for pragmatic purposes. "for example, we want players to be forced to face the consequences of their own decisions, so the permanent death setting is appropriate." "We want players to get the feeling of exploring the unknown world, and designing random text events with different results seems to be the easiest way to achieve this goal," Ma said. "We are also a little masochistic and enjoy the feeling of failure, so we made a rather challenging game."

What is little known about the downsizing is that in the original scenario, "FTL: faster than Light" was far more complex than the official release. In order to make the game easier to use and fun, they have to give up a lot of content.

"you may not even recognize the early development version of FTL: faster than Light." Davis smiled and said, "it's too big a step."... we hope that when players manipulate an object on the ship, they can zoom in or out, adjust the direction, and see what the crew is doing. It turns out that too much content makes the game look confusing and boring. "

About two or three months later, the pair re-examined the project and decided to make the game experience more refined, gradually turning FTL: beyond the Speed of Light into what players are now familiar with. "We completely cut down the mobile system and instead let players focus on crew development and resource management while playing. These adjustments have proved to be quite effective."

The early game prototypes shown by the two on GDC2013 were in the early stages of development, and "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light" was an interest project for the two developers. But in 2011, when FTL: beyond the Speed of Light made its public debut at the Chinese Independent Game Festival, they began to take the game more seriously.

"there were two things that made me particularly unforgettable in that game festival." "A man came to our booth to try out 'FTL: beyond the Speed of Light' and stayed there for almost a whole hour," Davis said. "when he left, he asked us where we could buy FTL: faster than Light, because he wanted to keep playing... it was the first time we met a stranger who was very interested in our game. It was really interesting."

"the other thing is that we met Adam Sotzman, co-founder of publisher Finji, who loved FTL: beyond the Speed of Light, even though it still looked more like a stupid amateur project than a game that developers would really care about. It was during that time that we changed our minds and felt that what we were doing was very useful."

A few months after raising funds to leave 2K Shanghai, the savings of the two developers are bottoming out. In order to raise funding for the research and development of "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light", they launched crowdfunding on Kickstarter to ask players for help.

Today, crowdfunding has become one of the common ways for independent development teams to raise money, but in 2012, it was a relatively new concept. In a sense, the Subset Games studio they founded caught the early bus of the crowdfunding platform. In February 2012, Double Fine just raised $3.2 million for a new book, "broken time" (Broken Age), released two years later, through Kickstarter.

"all of a sudden, game media around the world are talking about crowdfunding, and FTL: beyond the Speed of Light happens to be one of several games that appeared on Kickstarter at the time." "in just a few hours, we reached the goal of $10,000, and eventually raised more than 20 times the initial target," Ma recalled. "

One of the donors supported $2000 and helped design a secret race in the game, Crystal Man. To be honest, we were both excited and scared. At first, our idea was to let dozens of people try the Beta version, but now we have to think about how to manage the psychological expectations of more than 9000 players and how to provide them with a closed test version. The crowdfunding of "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light" and the closed testing before the game's official release put a lot of pressure on us. "

With R & D funding, Subset can finally expand to the goal set by "FTL: faster than the speed of light". The studio paid the composer Ben Pronty to create music and sound effects for FTL: beyond the Speed of Light, which he had been working for free. In addition, Subset hired screenwriter Tom Joubert to help improve the text of the game.

Interestingly, because the total amount of crowdfunding was much higher than expected, Subset spent a lot of time thinking about how the money should be allocated. "it's a challenge that you have to find ways to improve the game and finish it on time to ensure that the game meets the original vision." "We're not going to hire an art team, abandon all the previous content and create more gorgeous 3D images from scratch," Davis explained.... we need to strike a balance to properly manage resources while adhering to the creative vision and spend money in a way that is helpful to the game, so that players can see that we are taking their vote of confidence seriously. "

In 2012, conceptual art design in game development skyrocketed on the day when "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light" was officially released, the enthusiastic response from players far exceeded Subset's expectations.

"to this day, we are still shocked by the reaction at that time." "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light has won high praise from players and commentators, selling 100,000 copies a month or two after its release and sparking a lot of discussion," Ma said. Many players thought it was an exciting and exciting game, and we were very excited by their comments. "

Although Subset has never disclosed detailed sales figures for "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light," it is clearly very popular with players. In the field of independent games, "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light" has a huge influence and has attracted a considerable number of loyal fans. As the developer of the game module beyond the Speed of Light: captain's version, Stefan Vedani is one of them.

"my goal is to create more content for FTL: faster than Light all the time." "the game itself already has a lot of content, but I think more can be done under the background design," Vedani said. At first, the captain version was just an equipment module, so we added new ships, new weapons and drawings. Over time, I added two new areas of space and some events. Later, this module began to develop outward again, and I hope to expand the game on the basis of the developer's intention. "

It has been 10 years since FTL: faster than Light was released, but most of the time, the game has at least 1000 simultaneous online players, according to SteamCharts tracking data. Vidani pointed out that the persistence of "FTL: faster than the Speed of Light" has something to do with the timing of its launch.

To this day, the "FTL: beyond the speed of light" data is still very good. "I'm not an industry analyst, but I think" FTL: faster than the speed of light "did a lot of the right things at the right time. Ten years ago, the concept of "FTL: beyond the speed of light" was so novel that no game had explored the captain simulation system before. The space science fiction elements of the game are so attractive that many people can understand it immediately. In addition, story setting and text writing are so open that you can project any science fiction you like into the game. "

The key to success is, to some extent, the success of FTL: beyond the Speed of Light is also due to the transformation of the media ecosystem, which, like other Roguelike games, is well suited to a rapidly emerging media at that time.

"FTL: faster than Light" is perfect for live streaming and Let's Play video. " "anchors can pause game sharing ideas at any time or decide what to do next, which means they can display 'FTL: beyond the Speed of Light' on live and video platforms," Vedani said. "this makes it easy for anyone watching the video to understand how to play."

But Vidani believes that the simple and solid design of FTL: beyond the Speed of Light is the fundamental reason why it can attract players for a long time. " All the systems in the game are very deep, almost all characters and props have multiple uses, and the functions of the system are intertwined and intertwined. Players will experience a variety of ups and downs when playing, the battle may be very intense, and you will experience the next event after the end. "

The subsequent "FTL: faster than Light upgrade" includes the Lanius species and designs a new spaceship system. In Ma's view, design and narrative have contributed to the continued success of "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light". " I think the main reason is that it is like a story generator, giving players the opportunity to experience romantic space fantasies. The journey of a spaceship often contains many ups and downs and can bring unforgettable experiences to players. In addition, although the game is very difficult, I think it is more interesting for players to fail in this game than many other difficult works, and the story of failure may be as great as success. "

Davis mentioned that the unique combination of play elements in "FTL: beyond the Speed of Light" is difficult to copy. " Compared with making a platform game inspired by Super Mario Brothers, it is much more difficult to make a game like FTL: beyond the Speed of Light. Over the years, few people have tried to do so. If you want to play a similar game, you can only continue to play FTL: beyond the Speed of Light, because it has few competitors, which is our advantage. "

This article is compiled from: https://arstechnica.com/ gaming / 2022swap 11 / ten-years-of-ftl-the-making-of-an-enduring-spaceship-simulator/

Original title: "10 years of FTL: The making of an enduring spaceship simulator"

Original author: ALEX CALVIN

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