We are indie game devs Muse Games, creators of Guns of Icarus Online. Ask us anything.

More questions: 1. ETA on Adventure Mode playable release? 2. How big will the Adventure Mode world be? Do you plan on making it ever expanding with DLC? 3. What will the loot be like in Adventure Mode? Will it mostly be aesthetics or will there be loot that can upgrade your ship/character? 4. No question, but I just want to say that Guns of Icarus is amazing, I definitely have to say it's been one of my best online gaming experiences. The community is the nicest I've been apart of. Keep doing what you are doing!

1. We're hoping for Summer 2014 if we can grab all the funds we need.
2. Adventure Mode will definitely have a large network of towns that are economic actors, meaning they have their own goals and self-preservation instincts. They will create missions for players to take in order to further their goals and fulfill their instincts. The same way will work with player-controlled factions, there will be 6. Faction actors will control towns but behave similarly by creating missions. As a player gains rank in factions, they will be able to vote for specific missions to be created like raid X town missions.
3. Loot relies heavily on what our funding looks like. At first, we won't really have loot or any player owned economy-affecting goods. Missions will be the tranpsportation device for these goods like grain, metals, and other resources that towns are interested in. It's never really in your inventory. When in a town, you can interact with the town to craft these goods into other things. You'll still have cosmetic goods that you own and probably trade. If we reach our higher funding goals we will include a full player economy full of various items that can augment your ship and characters. We'll at least have some basic purchase and inventory system for ships though. Lots of the things on the table. This response only covers some of our ideas.
4. Thank you so much for the support! Please tell your friends about the Kickstarter!

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I tried the Game of Thrones beer while nerding out to the season premiere. It was alright.

I'm a big IPA fan.

Have you guys ever thought of adding aspects of GoI to the GoIO gameplay?

It would be nice to have adventure mode contain PvE elements where you can play Co-Op with some people against some sky-whales, dragons or giant birds... Or perhaps some MMO aspects where you can fly around the over-world and go from city to city doing quests as you're in queue for Skirmish. And perhaps make vendors at certain worlds with in-game points to buy your cosmetics at... Perhaps even have a bay where you can repair your battered up ships and change the weapons.

Is this somewhat the direction of Adventure mode? Is adventure mode going to be integrated with skirmish as in you enter a zone/land and then it's basically skirmish? Or will you need to either play Adventure mode OR skirmish?

Yes, Adventure Mode will have PvE aspects where you don't have to pilot the ship just like in GoI. We recognize that playing by yourself is very popular in online games (playing alone, together) so that's definitely on the table. You may not get 100% of the experience but you'll get a good subset of it. Just like in WoW, you can't raid on your own but you can still find a good niche for yourself and enjoy the game.

Your points are similar to our ideas. Flying between towns is flying a route. Routes are very similar to what you see in skirmish but with additional game modes like escort, raids, etc... They'll be much much longer (in length, not necessarily time) in Adventure.

You'll be playing either Skirmish or Adventure. However, we're trying to plan for some overlap in some areas. Some of the more basic game modes that exist in both Skirmish and Adventure may be those areas we can have cross play. However, it's a huge balance concern that we'll need to keep an eye out for.

And just a general note for the world, it's as if WWI never ended and we blew the crap out of each other. So no giant birds or weird mutant creatures (no nuclear tech). Sky whales may not be the sky whales you imagined... we definitely have an idea of what it can be to fit the setting :)

What caused you to go. "Oh hey! Let's do an AMA on April 1st!"

No one was scheduled. Was hoping April Fool's shenanigans would be fun. Although the formatting nonsense threw us off. Oh well :P

Will the character limit on ship names ever be raised? I used to fly The Inebriated Octopus, The Belligerent Bumblebee, and The Unkempt Albatross, all of which are now cut off by one to two characters. Silly as it may sound, I'm rather fond of those names and find myself reluctant to fly the ships in question because of this. I know the limit was put in place to prevent people from making spammy ship names that wouldn't display properly, but the current 20-character limit strikes me as just a tad excessive.

Also, would you rather fight 100 Squid-sized Galleons, or 1 Galleon-sized Squid?

I'll ask about the character limits.

I'd rather fight 100 Squid Sized galleons. Their medium weapons would be smaller and easy to deal with. Imagine a galleon sized squid... oh jeez that flamethrower would be nasty.

Will the 6 skirmish mode ships be playable in adventure mode or will the idea be to fly something different?

There's no reason why we shouldn't include them. We're also always going to add new content. Ships are a little tricky right now for the reasons here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1bfhmb/we_are_indie_game_devs_muse_games_creators_of/c96djre

Our biggest inspiration is Tom Cruise.

Any more ships (specifically larger ones) planned?

I'm a big fan of giant battles (literally)

For Adventure Mode, we're seeing if we can get larger airships in. More than 4 people on it crewing. Basically what we're limited by is system performance. For now, co-op and pve is 4 ships on a team. The 4 ships that would be on the other team is resources saved for AI planes and whatnot.

So if we get a big ship, it'll maybe be 1 big ship and 2 regular ships on a team.

The system resources and performance is the only real thing keeping us back at this point.

Would it help if I threw money at the screen?

(can't wait for adventure mode)

Even better is if you tell your friends about the game and our KS, and get them to their friends, and their friends to tell their friends, etc etc etc. :P

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Hey thanks for being patient. I just spoke with Emily about it and she says she's really sorry that it hasn't been finished yet! The both of us will attack Tim, the art director, and get on his case when he's back in the office :P

Any plans on adding new ships/new weapons? Maybe gametypes with more than four people manning one ship?

Heck yes! We're always adding new content. The next gun is a Mine Launcher. Imagine shooting a bunch of mines that float in the air. You can try to avoid them or be sneaky and shoot their balloons down to make them drop... or you can shoot mines you laid yourself to drop them on enemies :D Maybe hide them in clouds? So many possibilities.

New ships are blocked by system performance issues. They're actually very very heavy assets that need to be loaded. Galleon being one of the worst. We're turning our ship customization UI to full 3D to accomodate future features like cosmetic customization (fins, decals, maybe skins?). But yeah, we have a lot of ship designs that are itching to be released.

4+ person crews... not for Skirmish Mode. It's something we'd like to investigate for Adventure Mode though! Check out the Kickstarter and help us out! Maybe something like a bunch of people on that ruined ship you see in Dunes :)

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musegames/guns-of-icarus-onlineadventure-mode

Mine launcher sounds SO COOL

Early look at them :)

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/581828_352439924856543_925117344_n.jpg

Hey guys, Kensai of the Late Night Gaming Let's Play group currently covering Guns Of Icarus here (also game dev at /r/MineZ). Character customization is almost non-existant in GoI Online - can we get some more faces, hair styles even an unlockable outfit from achievements or something? We absolutely love the game and the group pitched in a couple hundred for the kickstarter. Pretty please with sugar on top - give us an identity, we all have the same face. Much love from us YouTubers, thanks for the retweets and support. We plan to keep playing for a long while!

Our next round of achievements will offer unlockable costmetics. We got you covered there. I'll speak with the artists about the faces too. For the hair, though, it's an issue with how the hair works with the hat. Big hair is basically a hat. Because hats are positioned at the same point on the head all of the time, you'll get clipping with the hair if we separate those hats & hair. It's tough :(

Thank you for your support too! Please let your viewers know about our Kickstarter!

what are your favorite kinds of muffins?

We get this awesome mini farmer's market on Tuesdays and Thursdays near our office in the Financial District and they have this awesome cream cheese chocolate chip thing. They have it in muffin, loaf, and mini loaf form. It's so dense and delicious.

It's when I fall asleep at my keyboard and inadvertently type something dumb into the balance numbers.

The same market stall also has a really good lemon-ginger scone.

Holy shit I never knew!

What's with all the quacking?

One of the clans in our game is called The Paddling and they have a bird theme going on, mainly with ducks :P

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Ah gotcha! I was a little confused when I posted that, I was expecting someone to step in and clarify that. Thanks!

What made you guys become game designers?

So there are two game designers at Muse, myself and Jess. Jess is out of town right now but I believe she knew she wanted to be a game designer for a while.

For me, it was pretty random—I didn't know you could really do such a thing and make a living, let alone study it. In fact I was pretty against games development in general. My senior year I took my university's first game dev class. It was started because the professor was "tired of grading papers and would rather play games instead." We were in Baltimore so we had access to some great studios at the time like the former Big Huge Games and Firaxis. Each small team was paired with a dev from some of the companies. The whole class fell flat on its face for me for several reasons and I wanted to avoid game dev.

Graduating in 2009 was a crappy time, not getting a job and etc... Without anything to do I decided that going back to school for a master's degree would be a good thing to do. Work on an advertising portfolio and hopefully get some work after 2 years of learning new skills. I didn't really know what program I was applying to, it was the MFA Design & Technology program at Parsons in NYC. It's an inter-disciplinary program where you can do pretty much whatever you want with tech. It's definitely got a design focus though, solving tough world problems or speaking about some human condition with your work.

Game design was one of those things that was taught. During a summer program that we were required to take before we started the fall semester, there was a presentation about game design from one of the professors. Right then my opinion about what games were and how they were made was fundamentally changed. It was game design and development taught for the right reason and the right way.

I never dropped classes or switched my schedule up in undergrad but after that presentation I immediately dropped all my classes and focused my study around game design.

The most amazing thing is that game design marries both technical and creative skills. I'm designing systems, which in and of itself is technical and follows rules. However, there is artistry and craftsmanship that is borne into that process. I was science heavy in high school and then I did a 180 in college and studied creative writing. I feel like I'm doing both those things now.

So that realization was about 4 years ago and that's how I stumbled into it.

Is it easier to develop for PC compared to developing for a game console?

For a game designer, it's more or less the same. What a game designer does is intangible. It's just rules and systems. It gets interesting when you talk about hardware like mouse keyboard vs kinect vs controller.

I'll have an engineer jump in here to give you another look at this.

You are given 3 years and $2 million to make a new game.

What do you make?

Personally, I would make a better Mirrors Edge. Hear me out: Mirror's Edge should have been this incredible game that flew in the face of the modern first-person shooter. With an emphasis on hand to hand combat and avoidance in a sterile world, it's about as far away from the genre as you could get. Alas, it was clearly rushed out the door and was never able to live up to what was obvious potential. (The gameplay broke down in many places, there weren't enough alternate routes, characters that had clearly been deeply developed appeared for mere seconds.) The world needs more games like this and I'd love to carry that torch just a little further.

I second this. It was such a beautiful game. Very rare that you get that sense of fluid momentum. Other simpler parkour games never came close to it, unfortunately. I hope they do a sequel. EA is missing out big time.

I can give you a pound.

My game design partner, Jess (Clara in-game), in crime is an avid drinker of English teas. I'm sure you can bribe her with some feature requests using a tin of fine tea.

I spent a lot of time researching new ways to tell better stories—or just how to use games to tell stories, period—in grad school so I'd probably do something really experimental.

My thesis game concept involved what some people called emotional progression where the main story doesn't really change that much (avoiding the branching insanity some games have) but the way you interact with characters colors your interpretation of the story. Mass Effect is a partial example of this. You really didn't have too much control over the major elements.

At PAX East 2013, I found out that Perrin (creator of Kairo) is working on a new game that focuses on emotional progression. It's called Journal. http://journal.lockeddoorpuzzle.com/

Mostly Just swinging by to plug /r/gunsoficarus , the Subreddit for the titular game, but I should ask something so this isn't completely self-serving - Are you planning to head down to PAX Australia in 2013 or 2014? Also, is it true that Gomidog is actually a highly advanced, sentient robot from the future where artists have taken over the world?

Oh god, I had no idea we had our own subreddit. And I thought I quit you, reddit!! If balance goes to shit, you know what happened (r/adviceanimals).

Man, I really want to go to Australia again. It's pricey for us though :(

No questions and I'm not even sure you'll see this, just wanted to say I bought Guns of Icarus three years ago and I'm amazed at how far you guys have come. Really impressed. Will definitely give this one a look at some point :)

Hahahah let's forget that game...

It's all about Guns Online now :)

your game sounds realy cool, i havent gotten a chance to try it yet though because i am unsure if it will run well on my computer, most games dont, but i am looking forward to it

Pretty much if you have a computer that's newer than 4 years old (bought new 4 years ago) it should be alright so long as you turn the settings down. We think we do a pretty good job at this.

However, we don't support Windows XP due to limited test machines available.

I was just wondering if you could make a quick explanation of how adventure mode works? Is it alike any game already on the market or is it something new? And I would also like to take the moment to thank you for an awesome game :) already plowed 40hours into it :) EDIT: I just donated 50$ to your kickstarter. first time i have ever donated to something there :)

Thank you so much for your support! It means a lot to us!

Some people have looked at our concept and told us it reminds them of Sid Meier's Pirates and even Puzzle Pirates. Basically it comes down to travelling from town to town doing stuff where traveling is part of the doing. While going from Town A to Town B you are carrying cargo, raiding cargo, escorting a VIP. Maybe you're defending Town A from Town B. Attacking Town B. The mechanic to succeed is crewing your airship well—the airship combat part which we've ironed out in Skirmish Mode. That's the kind of thing we're aiming for.

As far as economics and politics go, EVE Online has the best economy because it's a real one... however it's too complex to easily understand and makes it very hard for most people to play. We want to simplify that so each mission you take (getting on your airship going to a place) creates meaningful, predictable, and measurable effects on the econo-political system. It's not going to be just another ripple in the ocean, as we say.

For politics, there were some MMO's that we researched but I can't think of any of them right now... basically 6 player-run factions. Factions, in our minds, are the next step from guilds. Guilds and function within factions as well as freelancers or loose unions. As you gain rank in your faction, you'll be able to vote on what kinds of missions you want it to generate and therefore pursuing some kind of goal.

Let us know if you have any questions! Since you're a backer, probably best if you do so on the Kickstarter messaging system. We'll be monitoring that more frequently.

Holy shit! Sid meier's pirates used to be one of my favourite games! Can't believe it's been 9 years since the release. By the way, another question.. Will there be a story, or like a bigger picture for everything, or are you just doing it for gold and pvp control? And I saw an earlier comment about more than 4 person ships, and I would just like you to know that I adore that idea. And also one way to make it could be to maybe have a big floating hangar ship, with guns and everything that someone controls, and crews of 4 can fly out and do, for example raids and such. A little bit like Star Wars Battlefront 2 if you're familiar with the concept :) Thanks for answering, you're really the game studio which I wish others would learn from, being polite and answering all questions :) Thanks alot :)

The setting is if WW1 never ended and be bombed the crap out of each other. We're a few hundred years after that where airships have become an essential mode of travel and transport. Our 6 factions will be their own characteristics and real humanity (culture, aesthetic, goals, fashion) that will color the interactions in the world. As far as quest-like stories, it's very hard for us to do as an indie as it requires a lot of content. We just don't have enough people to pump all that stuff out. What we want is for the players to roleplay a little and discover stories from the basic outline that we've laid out.

Big ship carriers would be cool although it's tricky to pull off since we're already bound heavily by our asset load. System performance and resource constraints are very real here. We'd have to do something clever to get that in but so far it's not yet off the table.

No question from me, just wanted to let you know what a fantastic job you've done with Guns Of Icarus Online. Keep it up guys!

Thanks, man. We really appreciate it. Please tell your friends about us!

I have been playing this game since it came out on Steam. I have enjoyed every second of it and love playing with my team. I also really love the costumes that the characters can wear. Where did the inspiration for the costumes come from? Also I was wondering if ya'll are going to put in more customization, like colors, or more interchangeable outfits...and long hair? Please please on the long hair? If not long hair are you thinking of using more colors for hair or changing the outfit colors? Ooh and one more thing, I'm not for boarding at all, but can we have sky whaling?

That's really awesome! A long time player! Woo!

Our artists get inspiration from everywhere. One of them has a big book of Alexander McQueen's work. He's a brilliant fashion designer who unfortunately took his own life. I went to exhibit of his in NYC and while I originally didn't give a damn about high-fashion, this guy was the real deal. His work is truly inspiring, a real artist. So that's just one example.

We're investigating color customization actually. We even have a rudimentary dye system in place but it's kind of clunky and we have to redo some of our assets to make it work so it's not too smart at the moment. That's what we're trying to figure out: how to make these customization systems play nicely with our costumes.

Sky whales is a stretch goal on our Kickstarter :) We'll seriously try to work it in somehow if we reach it... maybe not exactly how you imagined but we'll try to get it close to it!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musegames/guns-of-icarus-onlineadventure-mode

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Hell yeah! We gave them beta keys :) Those guys are hilarious.

My best friend met a team you had at PAX East and after trying a demo for a couple minutes, called me immediately to let me know he just bought a 4 pack of GoI to try out. Since then, we've bought copies for our whole LAN group and have logged tons of hours online. Needless to say, we are absolutely in love with this game, so thank you! We also just donated to your Kickstarter for Adventure GoI and we were literally raving over how amazing it seems.

I was wondering what your personal favorite ship build is, and if you had a favorite map that was overall awesome to design. Are there going to be a lot of character customization options in Adventure?

First of all, thank you for your support. Our fans, like you and your friends are the bestestestest.

My favorite ship is probably the Squid. It's of underrated especially in competitive settings but I enjoy the harassment tactics that it excels at. We found a bug in our ship movement code and ships will feel more differentiated in the next patch. Squid will get some more lovin' this round :)

For character customization, there's a lot on the table. We hope we can do more. One reason it's limited to what it is is that mix and matching too many costume pieces doesn't necessarily look good as far as fashion goes. Fashion and culture at large is really important in Adventure Mode since it represents factions.

oh yeah, I didn't really take faction style into account. It's a really ambitious project and I'm excited to see how it will turn out, since it is so original.

This seems like it'll be the most-asked question, but do you anticipate including the ability to board ships in the future?

One last comment, I can't recall the name of the map, but last night I found a lighthouse that was actually fairly detailed, and we played with it for a while until we fell off the ship and somehow landed in the lighthouse. No room to really walk around or really do anything, but I was genuinely amazed (whether it was intentional or not) that it was included. If you ended up turning that into an easter egg of some sort, I think that'd be really cool.

Sorry, no boarding :(

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1bfhmb/we_are_indie_game_devs_muse_games_creators_of/c96d9ew

You might be talking about Norther Fjords, there's a crazy lighthouse there which indeed has some places where it looks like you might be able to walk in. Our collisions are pretty accurate so if it looks like you can fit in, you probably can. The two guys (Eugene and Chris) who put the level assets together often get carried away all the details. There are tons of things like that. They're super talented dudes.

No boarding...but maybe Sky Whales?

Sky whales is a stretch goal in our Kickstarter :D We're serious about it too... we'll work it in somehow!

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There was never friendly fire in the game aside from Tar Barrel.

I think I'd go with the 1 galleon sized training balloon because that would just look hilarious.

At an Indie game company like Muse, what's the ballpark salary for the programmer and game designer positions?

I'm a game designer and I have health insurance and I can feed my dog. I guess those are the two most important things :P

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/541025_10102153653522890_257373913_n.jpg

EDIT:

To put it more into perspective... I have all the things listed above as well as being able to pay rent in NYC. I can even buy cool things once in a while. So it's definitely manageable on my end. Although more wouldn't hurt ahhahah.

wink. Oh, bubbblesss :D

Hey guys!

I've been using Unity for about 6 months now, and I'm getting ready to begin work on a bigger project. I also live in NYC, would it be cool to come by sometime? I'd really be interested to learn and talk with you guys about game programming and design. It'd be really great to have people who've done it as a resource for guidance.

(Should also mention that I'm 16).

Yeah that's totally cool. We've had people come in before, even younger than you, ask us about game design and what not.

Shoot me an email

[email protected]

To be clear, Adventure mode is an add-on, correct? You either get it from the Kickstarter or buy it later? Or is it like an update to where if you have the game it's free?

It will be a paid DLC for Guns of Icarus Online.

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And this is the exact reason why you can't hurt other players. lol

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Hmm. I think we have a misunderstanding here. We never intended the game to be realistic. We're just authentic, a verisimilitude of reality. We draw inspiration from what's in the world but mold it to fit our definition of 'fun' and the overall design goals of the game.

I have a more detailed response for you here on our forum:

https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,572.new.html

One last question for now.

How does electronics engineering affect your work? I formerly wanted to be a game designer when I grow up and now want to be an electronics engineer, so I am curious. Thanks!

Not sure what you're asking here. Here are the two ways I interpret your question.

1. Electronics engineering as in developing technology and platforms that we deploy our games onto (iphone, computers, etc...)
2. Electronics engineering as an influence on game design and design processes related to games.

Here are my answers:

1. New platforms always affect our work. As a game designer I need to keep in mind a platform's mode of interaction. Controller? Touch interface? Gestural? Kinect? Biometrics? That can all be influenced by electronics engineering and those behind creating the physical thing our game will be played on.
2. I've done some limited electronics in my life and enjoyed it. I'd say its thought process is similar to programming in that logic follows a strict path and is very orderly. This is very useful in systems design, the core of game design. All electronics are an enclosed system. Electricity runs through one end and out the other. Somewhere in between though it interacts with all kinds of things like resistors and etc... The parallel metaphors to game design are immense here: A player entering and then exiting a dungeon, an attack inputted into a damage matrix system and then outputting a final damage number, and more.

Does that answer your question?

I have a good idea for a video game, what should I do with it?

The easiest way to do is to assemble a team and go make it. Yes, that's the easiest way. Otherwise you'll need to pitch it to publishers and there's no guarantee your idea will even see the light of day. It's tough either way.

Don't need to throw all your eggs into a single basket though. I recommend iterating on your idea. Lots of people have ideas but only the ideas that are tested from every angle are strong enough to stand the test of hundreds of players bashing at it. Iterative design means to break your idea into its smallest pieces, build those pieces out, test each one, find its pros and cons, re-iterate by tweaking and changing things for the better, and repeat.

If you break things down enough you can do rapid iteration and really crank iterations out very quickly and come to a point you feel that piece is strong enough to be reincorporated into the bigger picture. Technology is most likely to tie you down... like trying to program something where you can test on paper or even making a physical object (like scraps of paper or throwing dice or balls around). Some things may require programming or art or something more complex, but the idea here is to really strip the mechanics down to their barest form.

From there, you will have a better understanding of what you'll need in your team in order to execute your vision.

Best of luck to you!

my friends and I bought GOI when we had a nice 10 man lan back in February. It was great as we all picked it up on steam when you had it on sale. Quite possibly the most fun we had playing that day day. One question though, do you see any means of adding boarding/takeover of enemy ships? Or ways to dismantle/sabatoge by means of boarding? I was sad when i attempted to jump to one ship only to black out and respawn on mine.

Unfortunately, boarding was intentionally left out of our design. To your point, boarding is our #1 feature request so it makes us sad to always say 'no' to everyone :(

The main reason being is that we wanted to push teamwork in this game and boarding represents the polar opposite. Lots of popular FPS games claim they're about teamwork or squads, but when you get that ridiculous sniper on your team... did your team really win? Or was is just that one sniper dominating?

This is why player interaction with enemy ships is always through your own ship. Your ship is the interaction vehicle and the unit of measurement (ship kills, deaths, etc).

it does make perfect sense for teamwork purposes and I'm glad you pointed out the fact of a good sniper. If you do leave the ship it gets rid of the element of pilot alignment and engineer repair and is soley your responsiblity at that time. I'm actually glad now that you have no introduced boarding as it would probably end up breaking the core mechanics of the game. I was among the first to donate to the kickstarter this round! I know you all wont dissapoint when it comes to quality and imagination! Thanks for doing this AMA.

You sir, are awesome.

Please tell your friends about us and the KS! That's the most important thing for us right now :)

Thank you so much!

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Yeah, it was a risk. There wasn't much going on in the schedule and we thought that April Fool's might bring us some traffic.

People can keep posting though, we'll keep an eye on this for a while :)

EDIT:

Although the funny stuff with the formating, totally didn't expect that.