GK3 Designer Diaries - by Jane Jensen
February 23, 1999
About now I'm getting lots of e-mails and strange phone calls from gamers asking me when GK3 is coming out. Don't head for the stores yet. The date the team is shooting for is June; the official ship date, where caution reigns, is August.
So where are we? I've been spending the past month getting the first five time blocks, aka "day one," solid enough to ship to beta (there are 13 time blocks total). Everyone on the team is anxious to get to beta and elicit general comments on the game, the interface, camera model, etc. so that we have plenty of time to do any underlying functionality changes that might be necessary. And, of course, we need to make sure the puzzles are solvable so that any unforeseen voice-over hint lines can get added before we do our recording "pickup" session.
Our goal is to have day one 95-percent complete by the beginning of March, spend about six weeks on day two (complete by mid-April), and another four weeks on day three (complete by mid-May). That will give us an additional four to six weeks to do a final spit-'n'-polish and go gold sometime in June.
Day two and day three are roughly "clickable" now but still have outstanding animations here and there, some fatals, no final cameras and expressions, and generally need to be polished up and ironed out. Fortunately, I consider day one to be more than a third of the game, since many process issues will be dealt with, and we'll have set our bar for how good things need to look. By now we've passed all our "how" hurdles, and implementation is proceeding rapidly. These things take on a momentum of their own.
Now that people are seeing the game, I'm starting to get the PR-type questions. Why does the storyline go where it goes? How controversial do we want to make the box? What secrets do we leak before the game ships? What kind of backlash plan do we need to deal with any potential controversy? Do we feed or suppress it?
The story and controversy
In truth, we've done a fairly lame job of keeping things under wraps so far. This is the third GK game, and on GK1 and GK2 we didn't see the kind of pre-ship anticipation that this one has, no fan sites trying to figure out the plot, hazarding guesses, or quizzing team members. So we put out information not realizing that people would take the ball and run so far with it. Some fan sites have gone to great lengths to delve into the subject matter of GK3 - Rennes-le-Chateau. I hope their research will only help their enjoyment of the game, but there have been a few times we've had to ask people to take things off their sites because they were spoilers. Make note for next time: Be more Lucas-like.
And as for controversy: Yes, GK3 does deal with issues that certain religious groups might find questionable. Why deal with religious topics in the gaming industry at all (as an editorial I read recently queried)? Well... why not? How many "stories" can we have that deal with alien monsters, blood, guts, and babes in bras? I wrote a story about Rennes-le-Chateau, a subject I thought was perfect for the GK universe and great game material. The story naturally went were it was going to go. And that's the point. It's not a game that delves into religious subjects, it's a story that delves into religious subjects that happen to be - I hope - a great game.
So how will people react? Given the recent disinterest in adventure games, I guess the worst-case answer would be that no one would care - or even notice. And even in the best case I'm sure I'll get a few irate letters. I hope the majority of players and reviewers will fall somewhere in between. Provoke a thought or two? Hopefully. But mostly GK3 should be intriguing and fun. That's the plan anyway.
Last update: October 24, 2007
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