Friends of the Conservatory
As we enter Spring we are planning out, in some detail, what we want to accomplish. On the equinox we met for the Spring Town Hall and went over some of the seeds we’ll be planting and how we want to support them. If you would like to see what was planted, or water a few seeds, you can view the Collaboration Board. It also has details on how to participate, but let’s take a moment to set down in writing some of the specifics:
Community Project
Our next Community Project is going to be an Anthology Storytelling Project, like Feral: A Campfire Collection, the HTML Review, or the recently started Game Poems Magazine. It will have a timeline of <6 months and feature opportunities for authors to write to a shared theme, but within the same technology/framework, learn the technical ins-and-outs of writing for games, have expert and peer review of their stories, and be published on Steam. Because that puts us near the Spooky Season we might go with a horror/thriller theme, but the specifics are still being worked out. Expect a call for intentions mid-April for most collaborators. Before that can go out we’d like to secure 2 volunteers early who will have more responsibility:
Production Lead
We need someone willing to take on the challenging task of coordinating the schedules and deliverables of an unknown number of collaborators on this project. We will have a small number of volunteers to begin, create a technical framework for the anthology of stories to be slotted into, and then open the call for submissions. Someone will need to help write the requirements & expectations of submissions, workback from potential release dates to help scope everything from first drafts to playtesting.
UI Tech Designer
We need someone willing to help create the initial technical base for our anthology storytelling project – this creative position will help support the experience of myriad authors contributing to a single, collective work. This opportunity can be as simple or as artistic as the volunteer wants to pursue, as they collaborate with the production lead to develop a cohesive visual and UX language for the various stories as they are being written.
Develop Better Docs
This was a hot topic of conversation partially because it’s vague and partially because it’s such low-hanging fruit. Since the majority of our time is spent making games and their associated materials (scripts, art, code, music, &c.) there is much outside our games which goes neglected. Exhibit A: this website.
Orientation for the new & interested
This blog post (and the Spring Town Hall in general) were efforts to help folks get acquainted with what it is we’re doing and where they can help, but what about when someone decides to help? How do they learn about Cryptic Conservatory values and practices? How does anyone keep a calendar of what events we’re running if they aren’t a part of the discord server? How does someone suggest an event that could use Conservatory support? Right now the answer is to DM/email the curator, but we need a better way to externalize and democratize that information.
Single Source of Truth
We have run into this problem with every event thus far: the more people are involved, the more scattered the information on it is. As we develop more games we want to get better at keeping volunteers and leads aligned at every step.
Educational Events
Thus far these have been ad-hoc, but there is a good opportunity to help these fit the community’s needs. When Ink Jam comes around we run a Ink Crash Course to help participants learn the syntax and get inspired by what’s come before, but that doesn’t mean that folks wouldn’t want that training opportunity at other times. Likewise there may be things that our community of narrative designers might want more information about, but don’t neatly line up with a current project. We need volunteers to help coordinate a schedule of what is being taught, by whom, and when, so that people can opt in to what is useful to them without needing to watch the discord for things that just happen to pique their interest.
Another Game Jam?
After the last Unknown Cities Jam, which asks participants to collaboratively build a world with each entry, we weren’t sure when we would be able to support another since most of the same leads are actively working on community or commercial games. However there were multiple people during the town hall that expressed interest in helping organize another. All Cryptic Conservatory-sponsored jams are designed to help budding narrative ideas bloom into real games, and that field is constantly bursting with life: maybe it will be a Voice-Over jam which will connect authors and voice actors, or maybe another technology-specific jam like teaching narrative designers how to use Ink or YarnSpinner… those kids of decisions will be made by the volunteers who lead the charge and they will have the full support of the Conservatory behind them.
First Commercial Prototype
A small, secret team within Cryptic Conservatory has been hard at work on a prototype for our first commercial game. We aren’t ready to share the details of this widely yet, but it is a ridiculous, narrative-driven experience that has delighted dozens of playtesters so far. Over the next ~6 weeks that prototype is going becoming a Vertical Slice, after which we will have MANY things to discuss. But before we can get there we are looking for a couple more team members to work with us on a rev-share model:
Stylized 3D Character Artist
This project is going for a cel-shaded, highly stylized and outrageous look akin to Hi-Fi Rush, or The Amazing Digital Circus, while it’s tone and setting are more inspired by the wacky antics of the Muppets and in Futurama. The majority of the work is for alien characters, where the intent is for more inventive designs with strong secondary motion (feathers, barbels, jewelry, &c.) instead of something hyper polished.
Narrative Designer
This project is episodic with a wide cast, which means we need a designer who is comfortable writing in both scene and season long arcs. They should be familiar with popular medical shows, melodrama or soap opera pacing, and have a good sense of humor. On a technical level we are implementing Ink in Godot, so narrative folks who are comfortable working in engine and testing their work that way will be strongly preferred.
All of these opportunities are volunteer-led, meaning that if we have enough volunteer support for them then they will get done and if they don’t then they won’t. We aren’t considering that a failure state, but just a reality of managing a game studio to live in people’s free time. Things will take the time they take, and not every neat idea or nice-to-have feature is one that will actually come to fruition.
Your humble Curator