Great news: Orwell is nominated for the PLAY15 Award as “Most Innovative Newcomer”! We are very happy about this and can’t wait for the jury’s decision, which will be on September 19th. So keep your fingers crossed for us!
The PLAY15 Festival is a computer game festival and conference taking place annually in Hamburg. TheΒ conference isΒ specialised inΒ social, political and education-orientated examination of digital games. PLAY15 targetsΒ pupils, teachers, students, scientists, people from the gaming industry and those who are interested in culture. Everyone, across all ages and from all over the world, isΒ invited to discover the diverse possibilities that digital games offer, try them out and to explore their creative potential.
PLAY15 β festival for creative gaming introduces the new Creative Gaming Awards in the categories Most Creative Game and Most Innovative Newcomer Game. The award is particularly for projectsΒ thatΒ useΒ computer games as aΒ creative medium and encourageΒ the player’s creativity in the game.
The Most Innovative Newcomer AwardΒ focuses on theΒ game idea and the innovation that is connected with the development of the game. This can be showcased by a special gameplay, transmediality, unknown possibilities of interaction within the game, essential graphic innovations, new interfaces, uncommon atmospheres, visual breakthroughs or new topics that are being dealt with in the game. TheΒ awardΒ is endowed with 1.500 β¬, furthermore the developers will be supported by Kai FiebigΒ from Daedalic EntertainmentΒ for 1 year, whoΒ will help them with the development of the game.
For this year’s PLAY award there were over 150 submissions from 20 different countries.
After a long phase of working in silence, some playtesting in the weeks past and with our first exhibition looming at the horizon we finally feel both comfortable and confident to proudly announce our debut project: “Orwell”
A series of suspected terrorist strikes shake the most lively places in the city of Bonton, capital of the Nation. The reasons remain unknown. The only existing clues raise more questions than they answer.
As a new investigator in the governmental security programΒ “Orwell” you are assigned the investigation of an activist group.Β Orwell itself is a software, aΒ toolset that allows you to research online documents, observe messages and chats, wire-tap telephone calls and intrudeΒ into personal devices.Β It is your job as a trustworthy citizen toΒ gather relevantΒ pieces of data about the target individuals and fill their personal profiles to ultimately uncover the perpetrators of the assaults.
But are these peopleΒ really terrorists? Are they really guilty? What if you find out things about themΒ that not even theirΒ loved ones know? What is the real price for maintaining the security the Nation is yearning for?Β Digging through the most private documents confronts you withΒ many inconvenient questions. And there is only one thing for sure: Nobody is innocent.
Orwell is an interactive thriller about digital surveillance in which the player takes on the role of the watcher.Β The game will first be shown (and be playable!) at the Magnology HamburgΒ and is scheduled to be released in 2016.
Maybe you’ve heard the news on social media a while ago or just us screaming at the top of our voices: We got funded by EXIST! Today the official funding confirmation finally arrived at the office!Β Whew!
But … money? Really? Aren’t we “independent”? And still no word of the first game? Why bother with two months of boring paperwork? Well, read on. Also if you don’t know what EXISTΒ is – don’t worry though, you don’t have to.
Most people who are in theΒ so-called “independent” games scene don’t like to talk or even think about it: Money. After all, we are into entertainment and fun. We want to craft games. All day long. So money is a topic which is too serious for us, isn’t it?
Inevitably, the moment you set out to make games for a living, money is somethingΒ youΒ absolutely must take into consideration. The need to make money (or to have money to begin with) is pretty dominant, unless you have the infamous rich uncle paying for your everyday expenses and you can work in the even more infamous garage (or alternatively in an attic).
At the beginning,Β weΒ were fortunate enough to be capable of covering our costs throughΒ the award money that we had receivedΒ from the German Games Award in 2013 forΒ GroundPlay. Shortly after thisΒ we were granted a rent-free officeΒ byΒ HAW Hamburg. Still, it was obvious that this black day whenΒ we’d run out of shiny metalΒ coins would come. And it wasΒ bound to comeΒ before we’d be able to release ourΒ first gameΒ in order toΒ make money at all. It felt like aΒ dead end sign, hinting our path would soon stop continuing. We needed to make more money with the money we had. Quickly.
There were a few possible waysΒ to go from here:
Make aΒ publisher deal.
Find an investor.
Pick up a loan.
Try crowdfunding.
Find workΒ for hire.
Apply for public funding.
The list could certainly go on a bit, but these were the main options to choose from. However, our very own self-picked constraints narrowed the options down a little. If possible, we wanted to keep out third parties and obligations to those out of the equation. That excluded options 1 to 3. Also 4 to a degree, because even if we like the idea of crowdfunding, the crowd is yet another “party” to report to.
Work for hire is something we considered and already did to a degree, but it isΒ nothing we are planningΒ to continueΒ on a larger scale. Since this is very time-consuming, it would have taken us much longerΒ to get anywhere near the amount of money necessaryΒ to completeΒ our first game. We feared that splitting resources, on the other hand (likeΒ some of us working exclusivelyΒ on assignedΒ projects, and someΒ exclusively on our game), might beΒ discouraging and counterproductive to the teamΒ spirit.
So we kind of chose the risky shortcut: We applied for public funding. In Germany, there are several ways to get public funding for games: FilmfΓΆrderung (movie funds) usually includeΒ games nowadays. But most of them are tiedΒ to a certain federal state or region. Unfortunately, there is no such thing inΒ Hamburg, where we are located. Although Hamburg has a really awesome game dev scene, this is somethingΒ that is really missing inΒ the self-proclaimedΒ “Gamecity.”
Alongside InnoRampUp, which is only considerable when you already have something close to a prototype,Β EXISTΒ was our best publicΒ funding option, since it is a scholarship, closely tied to aΒ college or university (just like our office). EXIST is public funding from the European Social Fonds for technologically-oriented start-ups.Β To get funded, allΒ you have to do is apply and describeΒ your idea, financial plans, and market research as detailed as possible. But that is easier said than done.Β For us that meant doing research and writing plans for nearly two months. With three people. Full-time. We never imaginedΒ it to be this time-consuming.
To make all the tedious paperwork worthwhile, EXIST will, when accepting your application, fund the living expensesΒ of three people for up to one year, while granting additional money forΒ hard- and software as well asΒ hiring more people. There also is a small budgetΒ for business coaching.Β But if they refuse you, you get nothing. You lose.Β And to make things even worse, many promising game development studios who had applied for EXIST in the past got turned down. SoΒ we pretty much went all-in with that. Not getting the funding would have meant losing 2 monthsΒ we couldΒ have used to work on the prototype, which in turn is essential in order to pitch the gameΒ elsewhere.
This is whyΒ weΒ wereΒ eagerly waiting for the result during the next three months to come, anxiously calling our advisor Werner Krassau again and again and asking for a response from EXISTΒ – to no avail. Finally, theΒ relieving result came in:Β “Decision positive.”Β And what a relieve that was! We can still hardly believe our luck, as you might witness below.
How do you celebrate a lot of money? Right! Champagne from plastic cups.
This does not mean that we’re rich now, nor does it guarantee success of what we do. This does mean that we are able to work on our gameΒ for anotherΒ year, (for the most part) without troubling thoughts of the unpleasant, but yet essentialΒ money-issue. The dream of the “indie” game developer has come true!
Thank you for being so tremendously supportive, HAW Hamburg, Werner Krassau and EXIST. We’llΒ make it count.
At this yearβs Respawn β Gathering of Game Developers there was one question which came up several times: What does it mean to be indie? There has been much discussion about βthe i-wordβ lately, especially since indie studios are getting more and more support and acknowledgement from the big players. At Respawn, apart from getting to know great new people, we got lots of input on the struggles of βwearing many hatsβ, βthe suitβ or just trying to be yourself in the games industry.
Respawn is a very small conference, which is why it is easy to get to know people even if youβre not the super connector in your team. It is also much less of a hassle to get around and easier to switch between the talks than at large conferences. This is owed to a very neat idea: Since all the talks are in one large hall, only separated by light curtains, it would usually be hard to focus on the talk you want to attend. But at Respawn you get a headset when picking up your conference badge which you can use to tune into the channel of the talk you are attending and hear what the speaker says in crystal clear. This gives you the advantage of being able to tune into the talk on the other side of the hall and hear this just as clearly. Kind of like a radio station.
It also has some downsides though. As some speakers pointed out, they never know whether you are really listening to their talk or a different one because you discovered you find it too boring/it is not the topic you expected/you have an MTV-generation attention span of ten seconds and need to zap around. Another rather unpleasant disadvantage of this is that you basically canβt hear a thing without the headset. This wouldnβt have been much of an issue of course, if theyβd had ENOUGH HEADSETS! So we arrived in Cologne after a five-hour drive, happy to finally soak up all the information from the talks and they told us theyβd run out of headsets.
We were especially upset because two of us three had come to Cologne just for Respawn. So at the beginning, it felt like watching a silent movie β only with large audience background noise instead ofΒ the ridiculous music.
This is us looking really irritable because we couldnβt hear.
Even when the speaker talked really loudly, it was barely audible and hard to listen to. This resulted in me spamming the organisers with complaints on Twitter during the first three talks since I was really disappointed (I had missed the talk with Wolf Lang from THREAKS!!). Their Twitter account apologised and admitted that this was their mistake. During the last talk of the first day a few people returned theirΒ headsets and so we could hear in the end. Luckily, the problem didnβt return the next day. Still not amusing. But back to the content.
Yes, we found it! It was a sexy turtle.
One of my favourite talks was by Sebastian and Mareike from Studio Fizbin, who won this yearβs German Computer Game Award in the category βBest German Gameβ for their charming adventure βThe inner Worldβ. The talk was about character design, titled βFinding the Hunakelβ. MareikeΒ explained the difference between inner and outer character, which can be quite contradictory. Together with the audience, sheΒ thenΒ created a cute turtle that was also a great womanizer.
Andreas Suika from Daedelic Entertainment Studio West
Another highlight was Andreas Suikaβs talk, who just co-founded Daedelic Entertainment Studio West in DΓΌsseldorf. His very entertaining presentation about communicating game design was packed full of hands-on experience tools and approaches.
Tim Schafer (left) is the kind of guy people want to give thousands of dollars to. Jason is fine, too.
If you have read the editorial of the latest Edge Magazine issue, you might have noticed that there is much discussion going on about who or what is really βindieβ and whether this word is appropriate at all. Since the release of βIndie Game: The Movieβ everyone has this picture of the struggling artist on their minds. But how do we get to earn a living from it without Phil Fish insulting us on Twitter?
Jason della Rocca from Execution Labs gave a great talk about the struggles of βembracing the artist mentality as an indie devβ versus running a successful business that is actually sustainable. He had many examples of indie developers who did things right in his talk β7 Habits of Highly Effective Indiesβ.
Gender (and Diversity) design in video games β βtotally!β or ββ¦not againβ¦β?
There were also a bunch of discussions at this yearβs Respawn. One of them was aboutΒ gender issues. I had feared it would be a classic fight between machos and feminists, but it was, refreshingly, as much about character design and stereotypes in games and the industry itself. One of the discussed questions was how much thought you put into the male/female point of view as a character designer and whether male designers can make believable female characters and vice versa.
Conclusion: This is definitely an informative and fun conference for every indie game dev or freelancer in the games industry. It is easy to get to know people, even if youβre not the most extroverted person. This is all under the premise of Respawn getting the headset availability problem solved, of course β¦
Finally, after months and months of struggle, our website is finally online. Okay, it really wasn’t THAT hard. It neverless took its time. But forget about it! What’s done is done. The most important part is: We have a web page and are hereby now officially digitally existent!
Feel free to take a look around, browse here and there. You may find something interesting. Also, maybe not. Who knows? Certainly not you, ’cause you’re still here reading this uninteresting news!
Have a most awesome day,
the Osmotic Team
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