Hearts and minds
With Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, Strange Scaffold is finding ways to make games “better, faster and cheaper”
How Strange Scaffold is working smarter to make better indies
At a time when the game industry’s operational practices are under closer scrutiny than ever, how refreshing it is to talk to someone who’s seemingly hit upon a much healthier, more efficient, more enjoyable way to work. Xalavier Nelson Jr is in buoyant mood as he gives us a glimpse into the making of his studio’s next game, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. “You’re getting direct access into The Matrix,” he says.
The concept was very loosely inspired by the 3DS game Market Crashers (or StreetPass Trader, as it’s known in Europe) and is, in Nelson’s words, “a combination of long-term market dynamics and fast-paced organ trading action.” Your goal is naturally to buy low and sell high where possible, while fulfilling the requests of a range of clients who need organs for a variety of amusing reasons: one has seen something so terrible that he requires new eyes, while another needs new lungs because he started screaming and couldn’t stop (“relatable”, Nelson quips). Each in-game day you’ll compete with a variety of traders, each with unique personalities, desires and habits. You’ll also need to consider what these organs might do when placed in your cargo hold – some alien variants, for example, are combustible, while another spills dry ice everywhere.
While you’re thinking about stocks and taking storage issues into consideration, you’ll also need to keep an eye on your rival traders so they don’t buy the organs you need from under your nose – and they might, in fact, include noses. (There are 31 organ types in all, Nelson says.) Meanwhile, the market shifts according to the overall state of the in-game universe. Should peace be declared, some traders will be outraged and prices will fluctuate. And when war breaks out, you can expect a flood of new organs to come in. There are questlines besides, while the core loop of buying and selling proves moreish enough that Nelson struggles to pull himself away from it as he talks.
Then he gets to the point he wanted to demonstrate, showing us how it’s possible to create an NPC with a portrait, a biography, a unique personality with individual desires and trading habits in next to no time. “That’s a new character that populates the world emergently in terms of storytelling, and in terms of gameplay dynamics – as we saw with eccentric interstellar kajillionaire Chad Shakespeare buying things out from under us – gets to affect us on a pretty radical level.” It’s all part of a plan to reduce what he calls the “time to goof” – the space between thinking of an idea or a gag and seeing it live within the game. For most games, particularly in triple-A development, that might take months or years. “It is addictive to gain that ability to not just quickly iterate on problems, but be able to inject life into the worlds that you build,” he says. “So I’ve made it a priority to discover ways to make games better, faster and cheaper, with a focus that allows us to also make the creative process itself enjoyable. Because three years after you tell a joke is a long time to wait for a punchline.”
Getting to that stage has involved building the tools to make it happen, of course, and the ones he demonstrates won’t necessarily translate directly to what the studio makes next. But here they’re working a treat. As he illustrates with a scale model, the screen space for this pixel-art game is actually several football fields tall and wide. Because the pixels are rendering on a scale of metres, he explains, this allows the studio to slot in any new graphical asset “without having to futz with Unity scale factors”. And if that makes it simpler for the developer, it should make it much easier for modders to introduce new organs, too. “If a player decides that nostril hairs are a worthy addition, they can pursue that with all of the joy and desperation in their hearts,” Nelson laughs, adding that Strange Scaffold is investigating the possibility of crossplatform mod support. “We know the exact type of data that players will be adding, and how that relates to our own and other players’ systems so they can mod their experience without altering code or introducing the possibility of a virus. I’m excited because I never realised this was possible in game development before. Until we saw that it was.”
After what he says has been a tough year – “not just because of the pandemic, but a lot of personal stuff” – the process of making Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator has been an epiphany for Nelson. “As a project director and studio head,” he says, “finding ways to make games that are fun and won’t destroy us or put us at risk is an honour. Instead of looking at where this all leads – like the question of whether I move into triple-A or whatever – for the first time I’m enjoying being right where I am, and feeling like what I’m doing is good and worthwhile. And that’s a hell of a thing.”
It’s all part of a plan to reduce the space between thinking of an idea and seeing it live within the game