Hi everyone! It's Roman again and welcome to the next Work in Progress report from working on Interactive Events for DevLife. First of all, I want to let you know, that the game is on a -25% sale during Lunar New Year on Steam! So if you have been hesitating with your purchase, or you want to make a gift for a friend, this is a great opportunity to do so.
Today I wanted to talk a little bit about why Interactive Events are taking so long to make and what challenges we have to overcome during the creative process. You will also get to see some more graphs and graphics from events that are already finished.
So first things first. The main reason for delays is the level of complexity and the multitude of branches and options in each event. We need to make sure, that the traits your employees have, actually impact what you can do in them. And as you know, there is a lot of character's traits already in the game and more is coming in the future. On top of that, most of the events that we are adding in the nearest update influence gameplay, and thus they require additional coding to blend into the game systems.
The second biggest challenge in adding Interactive Events are the graphics that will be shown during them. They need to be in a very particular art style, reflect what is happening in the event, and be as inclusive as possible because in DevLife you can be anyone. Unfortunately, it's very hard to pull off, especially without tons of money and resources. We mostly use stock footage that our new, first-time graphic Mateusz is editing by adding some filters and making small adjustments. That's why, at least at the beginning, some of the graphics might not be as accurate and representative as we would want them to be. We will do everything within our power, to make them as best as possible, but we ask you to look upon them with a somewhat gracious eye.
The last thing I wanted to talk about today is partially connected to the previous point. During the writing of events, we need to make sure we are using inclusive language, that doesn't assume the gender of the player. And to be honest with you, it's hard. Being raised in the white, cishet, monogamous culture really impacts how you think and thus write. But on the other hand, acknowledging that forces you to think outside the box and hopefully gives better results.
Let's not forget that we also ship the game in two languages - English and Polish. First of all, it doubles the amount of text that we need to prepare, but also provides additional challenges. English is quite flexible in terms of being gender-neutral because you can just use they/them pronouns. Of course, it doesn't solve all of the problems, but Polish on the other hand is much more difficult in this matter.
Most of the words have both male and female suffixes and varieties and there is no widely used alternative (we have a neuter type, but it is almost not used in our language), and the political situation in our country, especially to LGBTQ+ community, doesn't bode well for rapid change. The option of adding alternative event texts for both options not only requires additional work but would also be dependent on the body type of the player's character. And that would be hurtful for people who don't fall into the binary split.
Anyway, we already have a simple, effective, though not so common solution. When the text can't be rewritten to neutral form we will use words with both of the suffixes and a space for people who would like to use any other form (example: "miły_a", "lekarz_ka" etc.).
So that's pretty much everything that I wanted to share with you today. I hope you will stay tuned for the next updates from us here and on our Discord server. I don't really know what more I can post for you, because I don't want to spoil you too much, about each event. That's why the next post probably will be just screenshots of the finished graphs and maybe some graphics prepared by Mateusz. We shall see.
Have a wonderful day!
Roman