By Chris Pasetto
Gamasutra
December 4, 1998
Vol. 2: Issue 47
Originally
Published in Game Developer Magazine, November, 1998.
| Postmortem: SANITARIUM |
Introduction- The Designers' Tale
The
Artists' Tale
The Programmers' Tale
The
Sweet
|
|
SANITARIUM |
|
DreamForge Intertainment
Inc. |
The Designers' Tale
SANITARIUM was born of a simple desire to create something special, something different. About two years ago, a few of us at DreamForge were feeling burnt out. We were tired of bandwagon games, eager for a fresh concept that we could dig into with enthusiasm. Most important, we wanted to make a fun game with substance and soul.
So, over some lukewarm cheeseburgers, Chris Straka (Director of Creative Development) asked Chad Freeman (Lead Programmer), Jason Johnson (3D Art Coordinator), Mike Nicholson (Lead Art and Design), Eric Rice (Art Director), and Tracy Smith (Post-Production Art Coordinator) what games they liked and why. Ideas were offered, counter-ideas brought forth, cheeseburgers grew cold and at times were nibbled upon. We discussed other forms of entertainment that would pertain to the game we wanted to make. Movies such as Jacob's Ladder, Seven, and 12 Monkeys were mentioned repeatedly, television shows such as The Outer Limits and the original Twilight Zone episodes were discussed. At a certain point in the discussion, it became clear that we wanted to make an adventure game.
However, predictably, each of us had his own ideas of what the game should be about. Once the sound of human heads cracking together reached a deafening pitch, Chris Straka suggested that we make a game incorporating all of the ideas. He drew a crude wheel on a piece of paper, with a central hub and spokes radiating outward. The spokes would eventually become the diverse worlds within the game. The hub, that all-important plot framework that linked those worlds, had yet to be decided upon. Soon we realized that those separate ideas could be played out as psychotic episodes seen through the eyes of a mentally disturbed character. From that point on, the project was code-named Asylum. This would have been the game title, but we later discovered that the name was in use elsewhere. Hence the game was called SANITARIUM.
Once the design process started in earnest, we had SANITARIUM on the brain twenty-four hours a day. Each of us put a lot of fist-clenching, heart-soaring, spleen-churning effort into the project. It was a rewarding process for us, because most members of the team were new to the design experience. Sometimes at the end of the day, loose ends remained - questions regarding some story element or problems with the configuration of a certain puzzle. Many a wide-eyed game designer went to bed with visions of gargoyles and deformed children dancing around his head. When morning came, new angles and twists would reveal themselves like spirited flashers in the dawning sun.
We knew that we were on to something good. Though the core story was an afterthought in those original design meetings, we were determined to create a main plot line that held the game together and evoked strong emotions in the player. Working from disparate design notes, Mike Nicholson, the art and design lead, assumed the monumental task of scripting the game dialogue and creating the dialogue trees. As if he'd been suddenly transplanted into a Roger Corman movie, Mike quickly found himself neck deep in awkward lines and weak characters. After several days of confusion, he realized that the problem resided in the game worlds themselves. They had no true history, thus making it impossible to create detailed, realistic dialogues for the worlds' inhabitants. He went back to the design document and wrote background stories for each of the worlds, fleshing out the underlying themes and character motives, and smoothing over any inconsistencies. Mike also pushed the Sarah/Max connection and drafted the infamous "death scene." When he read his proposal to the design team, three of them nearly cried. With a concrete story in place, the characters all had rich backgrounds from which to draw and the same reference points to which they could refer. Scripting from that point on became relatively easy.
After Mike put together a rough draft of the script, DreamForge hired Chris Pasetto as the project's writer. His primary responsibility was to refine all character and cinematic scripts. As the development process went on, the scripts became more complex (as we noticed things we'd missed) then simple (as we tried to streamline the dialogues). Eventually, the script files looked like a slaughterhouse - tatters of butchered text casually strewn about like soggy meat by-products.
 Figure 1. The original SANITARIUM design team: (left to right) Eric Rice, Jason Johnson, Mike Nicholson, Tracy Smith, Chad Freeman, Chris Straka, and Scot Noel. (The author is off to the side, chasing squirrels.) |
To maintain a consistent flow of game play and story, Chris had to balance
the amount of dialogue that occurred during any one non-player character
interaction with how NPCs were distributed throughout the levels. During
beta testing, testers complained that many of the dialogue interactions
were too long and that the keyword-based interaction trees were sometimes
too complex. In addition, characters could end up talking about subjects
that seemed strangely out of order, jumping between disparate topics like
a bad news segment. Since a lot of us here tend to work that way anyway,
we didn't find it too confusing.
Travis Williams, our executive producer, insisted that we trim some of the
encounters and link many keywords together to prevent confusion. A lot of
the original dialogue was purely atmospheric and time-consuming for the
player to wade through in search of real answers. The final version had
an improved narrative flow and better pacing through a balance of dialogue
and action.
We were constantly concerned that the emotional content of the game would
be lost in the medium. Our goal was to give the player the creeps. We took
the time to think out what we wanted the player to feel on each level, what
message and mood we wanted to get across. Our efforts in creating a cohesive
atmosphere included not just a good storyline, but an immersive audio experience
as well.
SANITARIUM was DreamForge's first product to utilize
stereo sound. The point-sourced sound system made for very natural-sounding
effects within each level. But technology alone couldn't make the sound
great without the right people to take advantage of it. Steve Bennet, our
music and sound effects composer for the project, did some awesome work
with the soundtrack. Working from lists generated by the design team, Steve
searched a huge sound CD library for the necessary effects. Then he processed
the sounds using Cool Edit Pro and Sound Forge, sometimes working over a
sound effect multiple times to match the atmosphere of the level. The moody
music he added, entirely original compositions created on a Kurzweil keyboard,
brought a definite style to the levels that enhanced the creepy atmosphere.
Nonetheless, the voice acting should have been better. It's difficult to
compete with other developers who have access to name actors and meet everyone's
expectations. This isn't an excuse, but a simple matter of economics. Would
we have liked to have, say, James Earl Jones for the voice of Morgan? Of
course. But with 80 NPCs and a limited budget for voice acting, big-name
actors were an impossibility.
The final hurdle in the design process came from our publisher. Late in
the project, during beta testing, ASC Games approached us with a significant
design change. Dave Klein, the president of ASC Games, was wholeheartedly
behind the project and loved our game. But... "Could you make it easier
to play?" He explained that ASC Games wanted SANITARIUM
to have mass-market appeal and to be accessible to everyone, not just adventure
game players.
Our faces turned Barney-purple with indignation. We felt that such a move
would both compromise the game's sophistication and seriously jeopardize
our completion of the project. We were a few weeks away from the final ship
date and being asked to undergo a major revision of our basic approach to
the game design. Also, we were stubborn.
Travis Williams came out to discuss what could be done and what couldn't
be done in a reasonable amount of time. Our original approach to game play
could be summed up as, "You're an adventure gamer. Figure it out." This
new way of thinking forced us to ask hard questions, such as, "Where in
the game is this information conveyed to the player?" In many cases, it
simply wasn't. This led to a lot of easy fixes - having the main character
utter a strategically placed bit of dialogue or even altering existing dialogue
to help the player make puzzle connections. When this couldn't be done without
a metric ton of contrivance, we adjusted the puzzles to be more user-friendly.
Admittedly, the changes made SANITARIUM focus more
on entertainment than frustration. Players aren't perpetually stuck on difficult
puzzles, so they participate in the story at a consistent pace and are able
to enjoy it. Even the hardcore adventure game players that we initially
targeted were satisfied by the balance of puzzle difficulty and richness
of story.
