Interviews

Alexander Tait interviews Jon Cooper,
creator of the independent game, The Key

January 30, 2003

1. Jon, thanks for your time. Tell me, what is The Key about?

The plot for The Key centers around a conflict between two galactic powers that have been waging war against each other for the better part of two thousand years. The losing side, called the Exiles, realized that they could win if they could restart an old power source in the heart of the galaxy, but the only way to do that lies through the planet Arcadia and none of their race can pass through the shield protecting the planet. With that in mind, the Exiles grabbed you (who happened to be on a deep-space-expedition from Earth at the time) and transported you to the planet.

Up to this time Earth had not had contact with any alien civilizations, so you know nothing about these two parties. It’s your job to not only solve the puzzles of Arcadia, but to also find out who these two galactic powers are, why they are fighting, and choose which side you are going to support.

2. Who will enjoy it?

The Key is very similar to Myst and Riven, and would definitely appeal to people who like that sort of game. Anyone who likes wandering around strange alien planets, trying to get a lot of ancient device to work, and delving into the past of two different civilizations would probably enjoy the game!

3. Is The Key your first game?

The Key is the first serious adventure game that I finished. I wrote a number of very primitive text-adventure games that definitely aren’t worth releasing, and I started a number of other serious projects that I never finished, but The Key was actually the first to be completed and released.

4. Why did you decide to make The Key? Were you inspired by other games or other media to make The Key?

Myst was a big inspiration to me. When I first played it a number of years ago I was impressed and told myself, wow, that’s the sort of game I would like to make. I really loved the idea of creating alien worlds and being able to walk around in them and actually be there; the only drawback was that I didn’t know a lot about programming and I knew nothing at all about 3D graphics.

When a friend of mine showed me Bryce 3D, though, I knew the time had come to start creating my own worlds. Unlike other 3D modeling programs that cost thousands of dollars, Bryce was cheap ($200), easy to use, and would run on my computer (a 266 MHz Pentium II). So, in January of 1999 I bought a copy and for my first project I started modeling the graphics for The Key. I had almost no graphical experience up to that point, but I had a vision for the game and I did my best to learn Bryce and turn it into reality.

Another reason I wrote The Key is because I couldn’t find any games on the market that reflected my Christian beliefs. All the adventure games I could find were completely "unreligious", and religion was a big part of many people’s lives. I thought it was strange that apparently no one had written a game for people like me, so I wrote one. It was a little hard to find a balance: I wanted to write a game that had my Christian worldview, but at the same time could be enjoyed by those who didn’t. The mix I chose seems to have worked pretty well: no one has complained and a number of atheists have written to me and told me they enjoyed the game, which was a big surprise to me because I was really expecting The Key to be controversial! When I added Christian overtones to the series of science fiction books I write a number of people hit the roof and really told me off for doing it, but not a soul has complained about The Key. Maybe computer games are played by different people, or maybe because the game is free nobody minds, but I've only received positive feedback about the game, despite the fact I know it's a beginner's first attempt!

5. It’s interesting that two recent independent games, The Key and Nacah, are partly the result of a void in games that cater to or interest Christian gamers. Randy Sluganski has alluded to the endless religious possibilities that exist that could be lent to adventure games. Do you think this is a possible future marketing source for adventure games?

Yes, I do! I think it is a large untapped market, and one that is beginning to attract interest. I can think of a number of people who have serious projects under way. Many of the people who contacted me about The Key have told me how surprised and pleased they were to find a game like it; they had never seen anything like it before. Christians go to bookstores and buy books and videos; I think they would be willing to buy computer games as well if there were any targeted toward them. There are certainly vast amounts of possibilities, many of which would have broad appeal – I have more ideas on my desk than I could possibly accomplish.

6. How long did it take to make the three parts of The Key?

I began The Key in January of 1999 and I uploaded the last part of the game in November of 2002, so the game took me roughly four years to complete. I didn’t spend ten hours a day working on the game, though; I enrolled in a four-year program at Marshall University in January of 1999 and began writing a series of books at about the same time. Since then, I’ve finished The Key, graduated from college, and have written five books. I’ve discovered that all it takes is just a few hours a day: if you can keep things simple and work just a few hours a day on it you can accomplish quite a lot!

7. How long have you been doing this?

I’ve been making adventure games for the past twelve years (since I was ten years old). It has been a real learning process: each project I attempt teaches me a little more about how to create a plot, how to make puzzles that integrate with the environment, how to make an enjoyable game, and so forth. Writing good adventure games is not an easy thing, and there is a lot more for me to learn!

8. What is your background? Are you a computer programmer?

Way back in 1990 when I was ten years old I developed a love for adventure games. A few of my friends and I started using QBasic to write them. I kept at it over the years, eventually moving to Visual Basic, and when 1999 rolled around and I entered college I decided I liked programming and got a degree in it. Today I have a job as a computer programmer working for a company called TaxAutomation. I don’t think I would have it if it hadn’t been for adventure games!

9. Will there be more to The Key or have you got other game plans?

Yes, there will be more to The Key: I have a rather ambitious sequel planned that incorporates all my ideas concerning what an adventure game should be. Before I attempt the sequel, though, I have a lot to learn on a whole lot of fronts. I need to learn how to work with a real 3D engine (as opposed to the static screenshots I used in The Key), how to incorporate people/live actors into the game, and my personal holy grail: how to create an adventure game that is as replayable as a game like The Sims. One of the things that has bothered me about adventure games is that you can only play them once, while you can play simulation games or first-person-shooters over and over and over again. I think it’s possible to make adventure games much more replayable, but it’s going to take some experimentation.

So, in order to learn the skills I need to create the sequel to The Key, I’m going to tackle a number of other projects first. On the drawing board at the moment is a game called The Artilect, which centers on a sentient artificial intelligence. By the time it’s done I should have a good grasp on 3D technology and will be one step closer toward The Key’s sequel.

10. The CD includes the BMP version of The Key as well as the downloadable JPEG version. How are the two versions different?

The primary difference is that the graphics in the BMP version are not harshly compressed. The Key is a graphical adventure game, and graphical adventure games take up a whole lot of space. In order to keep The Key’s download to something almost-kind-of-reasonable, I took the beautiful original images and turned them into harshly compressed JPEG images. The compressed images were 95% smaller than the original image, but the images had compression artifacts and some details were lost.

Since I still had the original images and since the original images looked so much nicer than the compressed ones, my friends urged me to release a version of the game that used those images. I had already made the game available on a CD because the download (45 megs for Part I and II, 80 megs for Part III) was so large that people had requested it, and since there was room on the CD I just added the BMP version.

11. What do you do outside of computer game designing?

My day job has me writing Java, JSP, ASP, and Visual Basic programs to help large corporations manage the sales tax they owe – not a terribly exciting job, but someone’s got to do it! When I’m not working on that I spend time working on the Starman Series, which is a series of science-fiction books I’m writing: so far five have been released and two more are being written at the moment. I’m also heavily involved in my local Baptist Church. I love to read science fiction and anything by J. R. R. Tolkien and I have a girlfriend that manages to keep me pretty busy…

12. Is the adventure game dead?

I don’t think so, and I don’t think it will ever be. I believe that the human race has in it a desire to explore the unknown, to solve mysteries, to do great things, and all these are fundamentals of adventure games. Right now first-person shooters with the latest-and-greatest 3d engines may be getting all the attention, but I still believe that a good, thoughtful adventure game with a terrific plot could outsell them all. The adventure game field may have its ups and downs and at times it may need some new ideas, but as long as the human race remains the human race there will be a demand for adventures!

13. What is the most important part of an adventure game?

I have always believed that the most important part of an adventure game is its plot and the way the plot is executed. Adventures should tell a story, and the better the story is the better the game will be. Maybe I’m crazy, but I still enjoy playing text-adventures: some of them were highly creative, had outstanding stories and made you use your imagination. That field should never have been tossed aside simply because it seems a bit old-fashioned; there’s something to be said for a product that (like books) makes you exercise your imagination. Graphics are nice, but they’re secondary: they ought to be just a tool to better tell the story, and I wonder if they are always necessary (books seem to get along just fine without them!).

I’ve seen a number of games recently that have beautiful graphics and lots of puzzles but very little plot, and I think they miss the point. When I play a game I want a story: I want the location to have a history and I want to learn what’s going on and who the different people are and I want to care about what happens. Everything should make sense in relation to the story: the puzzles shouldn’t be thrown in for the sake of puzzles but should make sense in the context of the story (perhaps even add to it) and should fit into the environment. A dynamic environment would help, too: it would be nice if, as in Kings Quest VI, you had a wide environment that didn’t force you along a set solution path. Anything that makes the game seem more like a real place and makes you concentrate more on the story and less on “what were the programmers thinking here?” is good.

The story is what puts the adventure into adventure games. I would love to see a game that had as much story as a good Agatha Christie or Frank Peretti novel! People still read and love Sherlock Holmes, a century after the books were written, and people still love and are confounded by Agatha Christie’s mysteries, decades after they were written: that is the caliber of story adventure games should be aiming for.

14. What has been the response to The Key?

It has been very positive! The people who have written to me have loved the game and have been very supportive and grateful (which, believe me, is very encouraging). I know that the game, by modern standards, is fairly primitive; I’m not a professional game programmer, I had never attempted a game of this scope before, and I had no previous experience working with 3D models. I was not expecting much of a response to the game, but there have been well over 20,000 downloads, the game has been picked up by a host of companies that are putting it on game collection CDs, and I’ve received mail from many different countries about it. Most of the mail I receive about the game comes from overseas, and that really surprised me: I never even thought that someone outside the United States might be interested in The Key. The game’s response was one of the main factors that kept me working on the game even when I was tired with it and pushed me to finish Part III.

15. Do you have any advice for would-be adventure writers?

Yes! I can say by first-hand experience that it is possible to create an adventure game, as long as you keep your expectations reasonable; I did 95% of The Key alone. However, realize that it is going to take a lot of hard work and a long time, and you’re going to get tired and want to quit. I avoided this by setting out a map of all the things I needed to do to finish the game and then accomplishing them one at a time; breaking the large task into smaller, achievable tasks helped immensely. I also released the game in three parts, which enabled me to have something to show for my years of work. Releasing the game in parts also generated feedback, which was very encouraging and gave me the energy to actually finish the project.

It also helps to work on a game with a team of people, instead of trying to go it alone. With more people involved, the work will go faster and you can keep each other inspired and focused.

The Key can be downloaded for free at http://www.godcentric.com/thekey/gamelist.htm or the high quality graphic version can be purchased from Jon Cooper at jon@godcentric.com.