Kevin Willis

By Randy Sluganski

Kevin Willis is one of the developers of The Forgotten: It Begins ..., the first in a planned series of adventure games developed by Ransom Interactive and published by DreamCatcher.

When and how was The Forgotten conceived? It seems to have been inspired by the recent publishing trend toward serialization popularized by Stephen King's The Green Mile and John Saul's The Blackstone Chronicles.

Actually, both of those were executed after we came up with the overall story arc for The Forgotten. Additionally, such serializations are a form of marketing that takes great advantage of the popularity and familiarity of the authors of those series. Since we are a new product, we really can't expect that. However, there are some similarities in terms of the flexibility and the openness of the stories. King commented that when he first started delivering The Green Mile, he wasn't sure how it was going to end, and that telling a story that way was as exciting to create as it was for us to read.

In a sense, the same is true of The Forgotten: It Begins ... Although we do know how the story ends and the overall story arc will not change, we have flexibility in terms of developing the back story, the mythology, and responding in future modules to what works well with the gaming public and what does not in terms of delivering the story. In the first module, for example, we focus on the importance of decoding the story from implicit clues in the journals, the environment, how items are used, symbolism and even the manner in which the interface operates. While this will remain true in future modules, gamer response has suggested that we should deliver more brain-teaser style puzzles and a more explicit information in addition to leaving important pieces of the story up to the player to decode.

As such, more energy has been and is being devoted to developing puzzles and explicit story segments that are more satisfying to a certain style of adventure gamer, while staying true both to the original vision and our original principals: (1) That the main puzzle is the plot, or at least important parts of the plot, that remain implicit in the game but are not specifically stated, so that the players have to consider and involve themselves in the story to enjoy the full benefit of the game, (2) no irrelevant puzzles for the sake of regurgitating brain teasers found in "1001 Puzzles" books (and some very popular games have completely derived almost every challenge from classic puzzle books), (3) that the game remain as accessible as possible to players most interested in the interactive fiction aspect of the game, and (4) the we leverage our years of experience in design to make a beautiful-looking game with gorgeous graphics and great audio.

However, the original process of serialization was decided on early in the development of The Forgotten storyline in 1995. When we came up with the complete story, we knew it was a bigger story than we could tell in one module. We also knew that parts of the story would require resources not currently available to us, yet we knew we wanted to start. We also had to come up with a method that would allow the franchise to, at some point, become self-funding so that the full story could be told, with each segment funding the next. As an unanticipated side benefit, interaction with gamers, both pro and con, over the first game has helped me see ways that future modules can be improved, and better tell the story, than I might have otherwise if the entire project was brought to fruition in a vacuum. It has also been helpful to note that, while some reviewers have complained about the brevity and the novice-level of the puzzles, that there are players out there that get the concept completely. I've found it interesting that one reviewer complained that there was no plot and yet another not only said they enjoyed the story but invested the time to successfully decode all the implicit plot points, just as we intended. Not only did they experience a longer playing time by looking at everything, rereading journals, and thinking about the plot, but they enjoyed the game more fully. That was exactly the effect we were going for.

Early comments on The Forgotten seem to focus on its brevity and ease of puzzles. What was the reasoning behind this decision?

A focus on decoding the story as the primary challenge of the game, rather than arbitrary puzzles, in addition to wanting to create credible challenges that were natural to the environment presented while keeping the game accessible. The relative brevity was as practical as it was strategic. We are a smaller developer, so we had to define a stopping point at which we could deliver a game we were satisfied with in a time frame that could allow us to accomplish our goals for the franchise. When we finished, we felt that it was shorter than we would have liked, but not that short. Obviously, some reviewers disagree, but I've lurked on some puzzle boards where people are asking for help because they've gotten stuck.

But aren't you taking a huge chance that this decision will fail to attract the hardcore adventure gamers that you need to support the product?

We are taking a chance with our approach. We need hardcore adventure gamers, but we are also hoping to attract, over time, a wider market of players interested in The Forgotten's story rather than the density of puzzles. During beta testing and after entering the market, responses from story-focused players have indicated that they got a lot out of our approach. That, while the puzzles are not nearly as dense as many contemporary adventure games, the story and environment offered a lot of rewards for players willing to involve themselves in it. Future modules will have many more puzzles, and more difficult and more involved puzzles, but they will be tied to the story first and foremost. There will certainly be titles that offer more and more difficult brain teasers. Despite increasing difficulty, we do want to keep the franchise accessible to more than just hardcore puzzle-solvers. We also want to focus primarily on story and graphics, as that is where we can distinguish The Forgotten the most in the long term.

Are there currently any plans to bundle future versions of The Forgotten, for example, include an OEM version of parts 1 and 2 with part 3 so you can attract the gamers who may have missed the first two parts? Maybe retail part 3 as a standalone for $19.99 and the version with all three parts for $29.99, thus enabling newcomers into the series?

I am not at all opposed to that as a future option. Right now, DreamCatcher is our publisher, and The Forgotten II is in its preliminary stages, so it is premature to say, and I really can't comment on what will happen or what DreamCatcher will feel is the best strategy for marketing the franchise a year or two down the road. I don't know. The approach sounds plausible to me, and would be a good way for newcomers to experience the story for the first time and old players to revisit and see how everything connects.

If, for budgetary reasons, you are not able to continue The Forgotten at the retail level, is there a possibility you may just act as your own distributor and sell the continuations from your own web site?

Yes. That is, The Forgotten franchise will continue. The timeline and retail strategy has to remain flexible. We can't say what the market will do in two years, or what DreamCatcher will want to do in terms of marketing future modules. We don't know what our likely revenues will be at this point, and, of course, a lot depends on that. All I can promise is that The Forgotten will continue, and it will get to the marketplace in some form. We are determined to tell our story.

Realistically, if The Forgotten is a runaway success, what kind of timetable do you have planned for future releases?

If it's a runaway success, our resources make all the difference. Considering that the story is done and that most of the puzzles are outlined for the second module, what is left to do is create art, do animation, shoot video, and assemble elements in the final engine. Allowing for time to ramp up additional staff, the second module could be released in roughly a year. The next module could be released in six to eight months. Since we have the story complete, with adequate financing we can do modeling and shoot video for several modules at once, for example. Without the windfall of financial resources that a runaway success implies, the timeline for development is two to three years, and the materials for each module would have to be developed separately to manage to budget, etc. We will tell the story; we are prepared to execute it in either framework, although I would obviously prefer the "runaway success" scenario. Long development cycles are not ideal for an episodic franchise.

Why was the original module of The Forgotten created for the Mac and then ported to the PC? This seems to be in opposition to the normal state of creation in the industry.

The Forgotten was developed in mTropolis, a Mac-only authoring environment that supports compiling for both platforms. All graphic development, 3D modeling, and audio was done on the Mac, so it made sense to test and compile for the Mac first. Although I'm a big fan of mTropolis, future modules will be developed in our own proprietary engine on the PC, and then be ported to Mac. Quark, Inc. acquired mTropolis and then killed it as a product, without future upgrades or even maintenance releases, so it is not practical to use it for future development despite its great power as an authoring environment.

You have stated previously that preliminary work on The Forgotten began back in 1995. Did you ever begin to doubt that your work would see fruition?

No, but we all thought it would be delivered sooner. That is the small developer's traditional lament.

Are all seven installments already planned out in detail, or are you improvising as you go along?

The first three are detailed. The final four are essentially paragraphs about how they fit into the story and what we want to accomplish. For example, the fourth module will put you at odds with the builder of the Hotel through a variety of environments and various stages of the hotel's existence. The fifth module will run parallel to the story of the first three, where you now find your current agenda sometimes at odds with your previous agenda as you seek to avoid Thibideaux's Curse. The sixth module will involve the player directly in the mysterious destruction and disappearance of many prominent collectors in the past, and the seventh will involve a confrontation directly with "The Creators" and pursuit and assembly of the Forgotten Deck--the most mysterious and powerful collection to have ever existed. Each internal description follows those outlines, each about a page in length. As we get closer to each project, I sit down and write the story out in full. I always want to stay at least a full module ahead of development in regards to the detailed story and puzzle development.

You have also claimed that each title will provide sufficient information to be played as a stand-alone, but will provide a fuller experience if you have played the previous titles. Could you be more specific?

Each game will have a specific goal to be attained while relaying more of the general story, and hinting more strongly at important plot points. Although previous experience will be an advantage, puzzle solutions and game completion will be possible without reference to the previous modules. But the players will have a more complete view of the story if they have played previous modules (and given what they had learned of the story from the module before some time to mentally digest) and will get greater gratification out of seeing plot points and puzzles mentioned briefly or hinted at in previous modules become critical elements of subsequent games. First meeting a character only described in a previous module, for example, can be more gratifying than simply encountering that character for the first time without previous reference.

The Forgotten: It Begins ... takes place in the 1930s. Will each episode take place in a successive decade, or has that not yet been decided?

Actually, it takes place all over time, and that will continue to be true. Most modules start in the ambiguous present; only when the player uses a card to travel back in time does the player actually enter the 30s. Some modules will take place in that decade and others. Others will take place during the construction of the hotel, and one will be predominantly during the heyday of the 20s, before so many of the collectors mysteriously disappeared.

Thank you for your time; we will be looking for the future installments of The Forgotten.