Hello there!
First of all, we want to thank all of you for the AMAZING reception American Arcadia is getting! So a huge thank you from the Out of the Blue Team for the warm reception and the incredible feedback!
And this is especially rewarding considering that American Arcadia was a risky bet from the start: a game about an escape, with two different gameplay styles in two perspectives, who delves into how our privacy and daily lives are affected by the involuntary overexposure that corporate greed corrupted companies impose on us.
We are huge fans of Walt Disney's original project to build an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). A metropolis of tomorrow designed to ensure the well-being and comfort of all its citizens. Turning this idyllic arcadia (pun intended) into a place to escape from seemed like a fantastic starting point for our game.
But shortly after we began development, we expanded from that original concept. Thus, Walton Pictures and their founders are an amalgamation of different Golden Age Hollywood moguls, such as Loew, Goldwyn and Mayer, the Warner Brothers and of course, Walt and Roy Disney. But have to confess we also took George Lucas’ middle name to give it to the founding father of Arcadia.
And for Arpad Kovacs (sorry to all our Hungarian players about the deliberate mispronunciation of his last name, this is a reference to Hollywood actor Ernie Kovacs) we also took some celebrities to create a friendly neighbor hybrid of Steve Wozniak, Fred Rogers and Bill Nye.
But that idyllic Walton Pictures has nothing to do with the media company it became. We wanted to represent how a company born from illusion and creativity can easily end up corrupted by making the worst decisions if they are driven only for cash. Corporate greed is not exclusive to a specific company, sadly it’s a common phenomenon nowadays.
Diving into the Dystopian Dreams & Nightmares
Being a game about escape, the most obvious references were cinematic. Whether these dystopias are reasonably kind like "The Truman Show" or much more twisted and cruel, as in "The Island," "Logan’s Run," or "The Prisoner," we were interested in all those elements of seemingly perfect societies with a dark side.
But not only that, we were also interested in other classic elements of escape movies. From classics like "North by Northwest," where an ordinary man has to escape from a conspiracy he accidentally confronts, to "The Fugitive," influenced us. In fact, the character of Agent Gerard in "The Fugitive" was the main inspiration for creating the tireless pursuer Chief of the Interceptors, whose surname is a direct and rather on the nose reference to "Les Misérables."
Setting American Arcadia apart
But we didn't just connect to that idyllic dystopia. We also wanted to make a reference to a much closer and much less beautiful society like the one in the real world. It's not a world so far from fictions like "Black Mirror," where it's assumed as normal to observe the private life of people locked in a place. We live in a world where similar things happen, and we have people addicted to consuming the lives of others or exposing their own.
Pop culture
In a game about the media, and where audiovisual culture plays such an important role, it was very easy and convenient for us to use pop culture references for our advantage. The game is full of this, but always in a non intrusive way. Some are direct, but some others are more subtle. The keen eye will find nods to Hollywood movie classics, Canadian progressive rock bands, 21st century manga authors… and even Out of the Blue Games itself!
Follow us on Twitter at @AmericanArcadia, where we'll keep sharing nice facts about the game!
- Out of the Blue