SiN Episodes: Emergence Q&A Feature

The phrase "Episodic Content" has been bandied around the videogames industry for longer then we care to remember; the Holy Grail for developers that will usher in a new structure for games and provide a new revenue model for the embattled creators. The only problem is it's remained just that... a buzz-word at best; lest we need reminding there was a time when Core was talking episodic content for the likes of Tomb Raider!

One developer hoping to change all of this is Ritual Entertainment with the resurrection of the popular FPS, SiN. TVG had an opportunity to speak with Richard "LEVELORD" Gray, Co-Founder of the Dallas based studio, who was very open with the inspirations and aspirations of SiN Episodes: Emergence...

Firstly, can you please introduce yourself to our readers?

I am one of the co-owners of Ritual Entertainment, along with Tom Mustaine and Robert Atkins. All three of us were on the original SiN development team. We have had the good fortune to be here for 10 years working on various games such as the original SiN, Heavy Metal: FAKK2, Alice, Star Trek's Elite Force 2, Counter Strike: Condition Zero, Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre, and others. I also did half of the levels for Duke Nukem 3D.

"We have wanted to continue SiNning since the first game was released. We have tried many, many times."

With the first SiN title released by Activision in 1998 garnering much acclaim, why such a long wait to continue on with the brand and importantly what are the benefits of releasing the game via Steam over the traditional method?

1998, wow ! ...I feel so old. We have wanted to continue SiNning since the first game was released. We have tried many, many times. We even went as far as making demos in various engines, including Source a few years ago. It just never happened. Now, we have saved enough money to self-fund the game. It seemed like a long time, but it has been worth the wait.

Before I describe the benefits of digital distribution through Steam, everyone should know that we are also releasing Emergence worldwide via the traditional retail avenues.

Ritual believes that episodic gaming will be the next big step in game development and distribution. The model offers too many benefits to be anything less than trend-setting.

The first benefit is the developer will deliver a steady stream of content to gamers. Instead of having to wait for the usual years for a follow-up to their favorite game, gamers will only need to wait a few months. The mod community also benefits from this by getting a regular influx of new textures, models, and so on, for their projects.

Episodic distribution has the advantage of coming with a lower price than non-episodic games. Instead of having to pay $50+ for the typical 8-10 hours of gameplay, they can get one of our episodes for significantly less (approx $20 dollars for 4-6 hours of gameplay). If they enjoy the game, then they can invest more, if not, they can walk away without losing so much money. Another upside of episodic content is the ability to incorporate community feedback into upcoming episodes, which I'll get into in a moment.

For gamers who may not be au fait with SiN the first time around can you expand on what you feel the brand stands for and what new ideas and direction SiN Episodes will evolve towards?

SiN takes place in Freeport City, a futuristic city overwhelmed by rising crime rates. The government has granted individual corporations the right to form private security forces, called Sec-Forces. The most respected among these is an organization called HardCorps, lead by Colonel John R. Blade.

While investigating the source of a new and highly-addictive drug called U4, Blade discovered that a global megacorporation called SinTEK Industries and its CEO Elexis Sinclaire were behind the drug. With the intention of advancing humanity's evolution by several million years, Elexis altered U4's properties to mutate the genetic structure of its users. Blade went after SinTEK, shutting down several of their factories, and eventually managed to confront Elexis Sinclaire herself.

Emergence now takes place four years after SiN. Elexis Sinclaire is back and, despite Blade's efforts, still in control of SinTEK Industries. Blade, frustrated by his failure to bring her down, has grown bitter and sarcastic, and he'll stop at nothing to destroy Elexis for good this time.

As before, Blade is backed up by his resident tech whiz JC, as well as a new character named Jessica Cannon. Jessica is actually going to go on missions with Blade, and although she sometimes loses control of her temper, she'll prove to be real asset to HardCorps.

In the first episode, Blade and Jessica are hot on the heels of Viktor Radek, a local crimelord they suspect is running an illegal drug operation in the docks of Freeport.oo As Freeport continues to suffer from mutant attacks, especially in the poorer parts of the city, Blade has become nearly obsessed with bringing Elexis Sinclaire and SinTEK to justice, and he will stop at nothing to make it happen.

Blade's latest lead is Viktor Radek, a relatively new face among Freeport's crime lords. Radek is suspected of running a secret U4 operation out of a derelict tanker located in an older part of the docks district. Having planted a tracker on Radek, Blade and his partner Jessica are now ready to move in for the kill.

"We are near the end of the first episode now, and we are starting to pre-design the second."

Gamers will see SiN released in an episodic form over a relative short six monthly periods. Firstly, how far in advance are you working in regards to other chapters and what differences in design and development does this allow you to embrace over the conventional method; what's the process to creating such a title?

Ritual sees player feedback as one of the most essential benefits to this new model. We will be closely listening to our audience and using their feedback to design future episodes. This applies to the story, the characters, the gameplay, weapons, and even advances in technology.

All that said, we are currently in pre-design for the next episode. Other than the ramp-up time needed to start this first episode, we have probably experienced what will be a normal episode development cycle. We estimate 6-8 months of production for each episode. We may produce multiple episodes at the same time, some spinning off into varying directions, but we are not sure when this will happen. We are near the end of the first episode now, and we are starting to pre-design the second.

SiN Episodes offers a multitude of clever ideas one being that novice players will be able to progress through the game at relatively the same speed as a hardcore games, with the game adjusting itself to the skill factor and speed of the player. Is this based upon the episodic content idea to ensure gamers of all skills keep up to date with the continuing story; conversely are there any concerns it will dilute the experience at all?

This is our Personal Challenge System. This is not a new feature in itself and has been attempted by many developers. We believe, though, that we have engineered the next advance in automatic skill level tailoring. Our lead programmer, Ken Harward, has developed a very cool 5-faceted system that closely monitors and maintains the player's performance. It then adjusts the gameplay in ways that I can't reveal. I can say that this is not the typical tweak-hitpoints-and-enemy-counts. It is quite amazing!

As you have mentioned, it works very well keeping the level of gameplay within the scope of the particular player. We have held many, many testing sessions with groups of people that span the entire gamut of gaming experience. From novice to diehard, the entire group always finishes within 15-30 minutes of each other.

The player can check, at any time, their performance and how the system is monitoring their execution of the game.

Players reprise the role of Colonel John R. Blade with many of the cast returning from SiN; can you tell us a little about the continuing storyline and the various characters featured within the game?

Blade, Elexis, and JC have been described above. We have a few new characters to introduce here, though...

...Jessica is a new character we're introducing in SiN Episodes: Emergence. Unlike J.C., she'll actually go on missions with Blade and help him out in the field. She's got a fairly hot temper and doesn't hesitate to speak her mind, which sometimes gets her into trouble. Jessica can't remember much about her past and that is one of the things we'll be exploring over the course of SiN Episodes.

Viktor Radek is the newest face among Freeport's local crimelords. Blade and Jessica suspect that he's somehow tied to Elexis, so they plant a tracker on him to find out what exactly he's up to. This is where Emergence picks up and he is kind of the main bad guy in this episode.

" To have been "beaten" by the original Halflife was not a bad thing, as it was an inspiring thing."

SiN was originally noted for its high level of interactivity within the game; is this a feature you're aiming to continue throughout Episodes and perhaps you could give us a few examples?

We consider interactivity to be a trademark of Ritual! When the original SiN was released, it broke a lot of new ground; it took interactivity to an entirely new level. Obviously SiN Emergence will have plenty of environmental interactivity. SiN Episodes will feature the same amount of interactivity and a little extra, since we now have a fully-fledged physics engine to play around with. So not only will you be able to blow things up, but it'll happen in a physically correct way!

Beyond the normal sense of game interactivity, we have a new system called Context Look which allows JC and other NPCs to respond to what the player is looking at. As an example, if the player needs to find a certain device in a room full of gizmos, JC or Jessica will be able to tell what the player is looking at and react appropriately, such as providing hints.

SiN originally found itself up against Half Life, and now SiN Episodes comes at a time when Valve have all but confirmed episodic content for Half Life 2; what are your thoughts on this competition and do you believe the age of episodic content is finally upon us?

Well, the word "competition" may be misconstrued too harshly by many readers. We certainly feel a sense of competition between each other within the game development industry, but it is more like that felt when playing football with your friends on a weekend afternoon. To have been "beaten" by the original Halflife was not a bad thing, as it was an inspiring thing. Halflife 2 was even better, I mean beyond just the advances in technology and such, and it is THE best shooter I have ever played.

As many people know, we have worked with Valve over the years since the original SiN and Halflife. Our new projects having met and interlaced is nothing but an honor for us, and I believe the folks at Valve feel the same way. It is a bit of cool history - Ritual releasing SiN on Steam and developing it Halflife 2's Source.

I think episodic games are here to stay and that this paradigm will become as popular, if not more than the current non-episodic model. Episodic has been talked about for many years, but it was never an effective answer until digital distribution like Steam came online.

SiN originally featured a sense of actions affecting outcomes and this appears within Episodes via the possibility of community-driven outcomes; can you elaborate on this for us and the role it's currently at?

Yes, yes, these were our Action-Based Outcomes (ABOs). On a grander scale, Ritual will be expanding this ability of the player to change the course of the game themselves in SiN Episodes to include multiple episodes. We still are not sure to what extent this will happen, but we also plan to include players' actions in previous episodes to effect alternatives and derivatives in future episodes. There are actually several ways for the fans to influence the game. As an example of players' action affecting the game, we will be using Steam's ability to track how players respond at certain decision points in the game for something we call Global Action-Based Outcomes.

"Episodic has been talked about for many years, but it was never an effective answer until digital distribution like Steam came online."

SiN was noted for the many Easter Eggs to be found within the game; can fans expect a similar level of treats through Emergence and following chapters?

Well, they wouldn't be secrets if I told! Of course there are lots of cool secrets and Easter Eggs in Emergence!

Finally, what are your thoughts on both the Source engine and the STEAM network; what changes have you made to the engine and do you consider any of STEAM's criticisms to be an issue?

As I mentioned, we have worked with Valve and their tech multiple times before, including Source. We are big fans of Source. Steam? Steam is sheer genius. I must admit that I was skeptical at first, but now I'm hooked. I eager await more and more games to be provided over the service.

The biggest addition we have made to the engine is our Personal Challenge System. This system is built to tune itself to each individual's play style. It monitors your abilities, your movement, and how effectively you deal with the obstacles and enemies in the world. The game learns how good of a player you are, and can adjust the game to your skill set and play style. One problem with such systems in the past is that they can learn how good you are, but they cannot know what your personality is--what kind of experience you personally are looking for when you sit down to play.

Our system enables you to customize the experience you're going to have. The default behavior is to provide a rich challenge that matches to you. But we provide custom tuners that let you tell us if you want a casual challenge, a very difficult challenge, or anywhere in between. We even allow you to tell us how quickly you want the system to intervene when you get stuck. In this way, we've provided players with the ability to not only get a unique game experience tuned to their ability, but also tuned to their personality.

TVG would like to thank Richard "LEVELORD" Gray for providing such a comprehensive look at the world of SiN Episodes: Emergence. The first episode is still planned for an early 2006 release and has yet to be nailed down, so expect plenty more coverage on the title to appear across TVG soon...