Freelancer as I Saw It

[Warhawk]

The Vision

Oh, the “idea guy.” Can’t live with him, but...

The Vision is a catch-all term for what the game “is.” It’s not so much as the gritty details as the image that pops into your head when the name of it is mentioned. It’s not so much the file structure as the feeling you associate with booting the game up. As intangibles, these are not something you can measure, and sometimes it’s difficult just to communicate them. This is the realm of the idea guy, all pie in the sky. Or is it? The inspiration that one person, or a few people, have is just a match, but without that match the fuse can’t be lit. It all starts with this fluffy, intangible Vision.

Assuming you already had a vision (otherwise you wouldn’t be interested in designing anything at all), then your immediate goal is to make that vision tangible. No small part of that is laying down the principles like previously mentioned, but those are for internal guidance. To get the ball rolling, to justify what you're doing, that message needs to get out, even though it's nothing but an image in your head right now. What you need is to flesh it out so that others can understand what you’re babbling about, and that means the catch, the lure, the draw. The idea guy must also be the first salesman of the project. Not many people like that job, but nobody else is gonna read your mind.

So, here goes nothing:

”Remember when you finished the Freelancer campaign for the first time? Remember how it felt when you realized the chains had been broken, and you could fly anywhere you wanted, visit all the places mentioned but never seen during the story, hopeful that you could “be the Order’s eyes and ears in Liberty”?

Do you remember what that ‘felt’ like?

What if that world had life breathed into it, like you were led to believe? What if time kept going, trade kept flowing, cardamine kept growing... What would you do in it?”

Maybe these appeals to emotion seem trite now, but I’ll bet they were roaring hot in 2004. Who’s to say they weren’t still roaring hot in 2012 when Star Citizen became a thing? Or No Man’s Sky? And that’s just this vague space exploration/rpg genre; imagine the nostalgia trips for titles like Doom, Duke Nukem, Blood and Rise of the Triad. In fact, it covers any and every single reboot made or hinted at in the past 30 some-odd years.

What people remember, what they feel, isn’t the game in all its buggy glory. It’s the sales pitch. It’s that potential. It’s the same thing a child experiences when they crawl into a cardboard box and pretend it’s a spaceship. That’s vision.

When Freeworlds: Tides of War made their pitch, what did they emphasize? First of all, the brand, which was obvious enough. But secondly the visuals. Followed by the galaxy map. Star Wars -> Remember how awesome it looked? –> Remember how big this galaxy was? They were proposing a post-Return of the Jedi game. The old “Expanded Universe,”or “EU,” since retconned by Disney. The EU was the bread and butter of Star Wars fanfiction for decades. The movies were often treated like some kind of untouchable holy writ, and so a lot of the creative energies flowed towards this post-movie timeframe. That spelled roleplay, and potential. The visuals were such a step up from vanilla FL that it screamed “brand new.” On top of all that, an existing Star Wars MMO, Galaxies, was on the fast track to being shut down, opening a slot in the market at least a few thousand people wide. It was a match made in heaven. That’s vision.

So let’s try getting a little more specific, shall we? Maybe I can impart a bit more of my little vision to you.

”Imagine Freelancer, but modernized. Remember the ships? Up the polycount, sharpen the textures, fill in detail where the concept art wanted it. While you’re at it, revamp the cockpits, too. Remember the sounds? Amplify them, give some meat to it, tweak it with pseudo-space effects like BSG-ish muffling and in-ship echoing here and there. Remember the music? That airy, open-ended electronica that worked so well with wide-open, futuristic space? Remix them, then expand the library while keeping the theme. Including the bar music. Remember the star systems? Scale them up, reinforce the sense of how huge they were, removing the most immersion-breaking parts of them. Remember the combat? Imagine it faster, bloodier, with more options, less predictability. Remember all that lore about "notorious bounty hunter so-and-so," or "this area is too deadly for police to enter?" Imagine that all of that is true, that there really is some OP bunter flying around, that you can't solo half the system by yourself and that there are, in fact, places too dangerous to go without help.

Now imagine all that, and ask yourself: Isn’t this what you thought Freelancer was going to be in the first place?”

... Not enough?

” Imagine an environment where every item you trade affects a market, where every kill you land affects a war, and where every click of the mouse changes the game forever. Imagine a galaxy full of riches and dangers, where every encounter may be your last, where even your renowned skill may not be enough. Imagine the tension of going off the beaten path, into unknown territory, with nothing but the tall tales of old salts and whispered secrets to guide you. Imagine that jump hole, but instead of a known destination, it could lead anywhere. In fact, it could even tear your ship apart and leave you stranded in the deepest, darkest reaches of space. Imagine Freelancer, but alive.”

Melodramatic, but you get my point. I hope, anyway. The emphasis is on the experience, that gut feeling, not on statistics or fancy screenshots alone. It’s an idea, greater than the sum of its parts. To convey it in text is extremely difficult. It's much easier to do so with audio-visuals, but beware: You're selling the idea, not the assets, so whatever you showcase should be the game, the process, the emotions, not simply particle effects and planets. Can't tell you how many mods I've seen fall flat on their faces because someone's pet hi-poly model got more attention in promotional materials than, y'know... the game.

Now... how the heck to build it. Pretty bold words, huh? How much of that is even doable with the engine’s limitations? It sounds like all kinds of workarounds would be needed. How un-fun could it end up? And how do you square it with a small playerbase? And how, and how, and how...

Well, I’ve still got a few more ideas kicking around, if you care to listen.

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