Archmage Rises News

Last week I alluded to Something Really Big happening this week. It’s here!

[h2]1. We’re Being Acquired*[/h2]

There is a new game studio starting up which really likes who we are (character & culture), what we’re doing (the game Archmage Rises), and how we are doing it (process & culture).

I know! I’m as shocked as you are! 😝

Rather than starting from scratch, they would rather build from the Team & Tech here at Defiance and take it to the next level.

They are impressed with and believe there is “gaming gold” in Archmage Rises. So much so, that they are willing to expand the team and pay what it costs to finish it well (within reason).

Then the plan is to take that base (tech/design) and bring the “live a life” simulator to other genres, titles, and platforms.

I will be co-Studio Head along with Mark of the new studio. I’ve been self employed for 20 years so this new position opens a new chapter of my life, one I am excited to embark on. If Sid is right that games are about “interesting choices” then I think I can say life is about “interesting challenges”. I think being co-head with Mark will work well and is worth figuring out. It worked for Naughty Dog to have co-presidents!

(*for tax & legal reasons it’s not 100% accurate to say we are being acquired but it gets the correct idea across.)

[h2]2. How We Got Here[/h2]

I have spent 33% of my adult life and most of my finances making Archmage Rises. I’ve poured some $1.1m USD into make the game. Perhaps fulfilling the saying “a fool and his money are easily parted”.

Words fail to capture the real struggle of watching the bank account shrink every 2 weeks as payroll processed. All while my wife gently asks, “This is going to work, right?”

It’s easy to make fun of Curt Schilling for losing a fortune on making a WoW-killer at 38 Studios but I know how it must of felt.

In light of this, you can imagine how painful it is to throw out work. The decision to rewrite Combat was super super painful.

On occasion someone has posted on the forums that I’m a scammer working some elaborate con spending $1m to cheat them of their $30 or $10. I chuckle at these as I add “World’s Worst Con Artist” to my resume. 😝

We launched to Early Access because I was running out of money. There was no way to get to 1.0 on what I had. The initial sales of Archmage were good, we got 4-5 months of payroll. We’re currently in the top 10% revenue games on Steam.

But it isn’t enough.

In the years I’ve been making this game, Early Access has changed from something kickstarter-ish ‘build the game with backers’ to just a glorified paid beta.

I think it was reasonable to expect sales to go up with each content update. They haven’t.

Enter Mark Webster.

Mark is a game designer with 15+ years of AAA, previously working with Activision on Skylanders, Guitar Hero, and Sony Santa Monica on God of War 2018 and God of War Ragnarok.

Mark and I have been fast friends since meeting at a games conference in 2019.

After Ragnarok he was independently consulting on game design and offered to help out on Archmage. At first he was helping out on some features and general guidance, but he couldn’t get the game out of his head. Even when he wasn’t working on it, he was thinking about it. I’ll summarize it as “the magic” bit him. We struck an arrangement where he could work fulltime with us on the game and become the lead designer.

But this was always just for a season. What he really wanted to do was start his own studio with a Venture Capitalist (VC). They had been talking for years and was just waiting for the right time to start.

It was back in Jan, with the game industry facing massive layoffs, when he approached me about continuing to work together. A partnership at the new studio. Over the 9 months Mark has been digging into Archmage Rises he’s seen something really special here. Sure there are plenty of things wrong and undone, but there is gold here. And if we do it right, it’s not just a game, it’s a product line.

So that’s the question put to me:

“Hey Thomas, what if we acquire Defiance, help finish the game, and make more games?”

“Uh, let me think about it… YES!”

“OK, what do you need to finish it?”

That is a very hard question to answer!!!

To answer it, I have to know how much effort it will take to get to 1.0. The specific disciplines, for how long.

This was a LOT of work to figure out over Jan-Mar, which is why you may have seen me say on the Steam Forums that I have a better idea on when the whole game will be done than any specific feature. Because that is all I was doing: planning, gantt-ing, budgeting.

[h2]3. What’s Next For the Game[/h2]

George Broussard proved one can make a video game forever. He spent 14 years making Duke Nukem Forever without releasing. I’m make no judgements, I’m not too far behind him!

The new studio looked at Archmage’s Road Map and said “It sounds real great, but probably unrealistic to do it all for 1.0.”

This is what we will do:

• I remain Creative Director on Archmage Rises - I’m in charge of the vision of the game, the experience we’re trying to hit, how it feels to play
  
• Mark takes over as Lead Designer - This is his specialty. He will take my vision and design the game to hit the experiences we’re going for
  
• The team will expand so we can do it better and faster: Senior lead artist, more senior programmers, production support, Illustrator, Animator, VFX, more game designers, content creators, proper QA. We’re going from 11 to 20 people on the team! Right at a time when lots of experienced people are available.
  
• We will release 1.0 Spring 2025. To do so, we have to be feature complete around October of this year so we have enough time to polish.
  
• This represents a willingness to invest about another $1m USD
  

I’m excited. I need to be told I can’t work on this game forever… by someone other than my wife! 🤦‍♂️

I’m going through the roadmap identifying features into Four Buckets:

1. Core experience, have to ship with it - Obviously I/you feel like everything fits this, but with a budget and timeline to hit not everything can be here.
   
2. What can be delayed to free update post release - I’ve made a lot of promises over the years and its important I keep them. This gives me a way to keep it - no additional cost to players. I’m real impressed with how Stardew Valley did this with something as large as Multiplayer!
   
3. Should be moved to DLC - I hope I don’t have to use this bucket, but its an option. I understand people will be upset if I move something from expected 1.0 feature to a DLC feature. I keep you in mind the whole time.
   
4. Cut - I’m using this bucket as a last resort. I’m not sure which upsets people more: moving a feature to DLC or just cutting it altogether.
   

I want to be super clear: I’m the one, the guy who read Raistlin’s origin story in Margaret Wies’ The Soulforge and thought “I’d like to make a game about Raistlin” who is making the calls here. The same person on the forums reading and responding to all your questions.

I alluded to this previously in my updates that the Roadmap needs to change and will soon.

This is game dev. Usually it is done behind close doors with no one seeing that you intended to have something like pets in the game, but had to cut it in order to ship.

Well, we’re doing our game dev publicly and so all I can hope for is your patience and understanding as we do our jobs to the best of our abilities. I will continue with the spirit of what Archmage Rises is. While some features may evolve or get dropped, the goal of creating a TTRPG-like mage simulator still remains the same.

Finally, we’re going to change our dev approach. I’ll write more about this next week.

[h2]4. Next Update[/h2]

RIVALS
Rivals is coming. I keep writing this every dev update and it is still true. I play tested it last week, but there were some problems and it just didn’t feel right yet. We’re working on it some more this week and I’ll have an update next week.

PATCHES
We’re going to move to bi-weekly patches. This alleviates some effort.

EXPLORATION UPDATE
Exploration is the next major update and will completely change the game to be a game. This is our primary focus and so saving some time on bunching up patches every week helps.

• We’re working on the structure of the game (meta), the game loops from the hour, day, week, to years.
  
• We’re working on the dynamically generated quests for unlimited replayability in the same world.
  
• We’re working on making NPCs have real personality.
  
• We’re working on lore books to get more world building and lore into the game
  
• We’re working on the new UI
  

It’s going to be a few months to pull this together, but once we do the game will feel good with a proper beginning, middle, and end.

The purpose of these dev blog updates is to answer the question “What are those Defiance people up to ?!?”

I believe in transparency in all aspects of life but especially work.

But THIS week at THIS exact moment in time, I can’t share something Really Big I’ve been working on for months. It all comes to an apogee next week Apr 2nd. (I use the word apogee as a throw back to that great shareware company in the 90’s)



I usually break up the update into sections of initiatives, but I’ll just do a bullet list of stuff going on:

• I think I can test the Rivals build tomorrow.
  
  
• We’re having design meetings about the player’s life span and the nature of time. Time is a central pillar of the game concept, but how we implement and express this is what we’re working on
  
  
• I’ve put a lot of time into planning how we get to 1.0. I’ve said this on the forums already, but I have a better idea of when the game will be 1.0 than when a particular feature or update will be available. This is related to The Big Thing.
  
  
• A fan recently asked if we will be updating the Roadmap. Yes. Based on The Big Thing we need to update it. We know better what the game is, versus last year when we posted the roadmap. As developers we need to listen to the game and you our faithful co-adventurers, on what it needs and how we add to it, not just ploughing through feature lists.
  
  • I can already see the concerned looks and hear the questions “Are you cutting features?” We’re still making the same game and pursuing the same play experience of being a powerful Archmage in a semi-realistic fantasy world, the experience you see represented on the roadmap. It’s more about how we are tackling it. Some features we didn’t think of will need to be added. Some will no longer fit as well as we once thought. Some will be pushed to post 1.0 free updates and some might simply need to be cut. This is game dev.
    
  
  
  
• We’re having design meetings about map events and how you play through Points of Interest, track monsters, and gather resources.
  
  
• We’re ideating the kinds of region problems that can occur and how the player can resolve them in different ways.
  
  
• We’re dealing with overlapping vacations of three people which is causing some difficulties to keep everything moving. When 33% of the staff are gone, it’s hard to get things like patches out the door. Phil is back later this week.
  

We’re exploring how we can do the town view better in the new UI. I’m thinking a top down view might be better than the 3/4 view we have. When I look at the time and cost of making the 3/4 view look really good, I need to explore other options before deciding.

Here is the concept coming from TTRPG:




Here is a UI wireframe mockup:


I think we can better show variety of locations and scale with this approach. Thoughts?

This week’s update is a little sparse as I just returned from a week’s vacation where I took the kids not once, but twice!, to Legoland. I believe the whole theme park is built around the singular fact it is hard to leave Legoland without new lego!

[h2]Update #3: Exploration[/h2]



Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• Zach has a rudimentary dynamically generated quest working in game. There is still lots to do, but this is a significant milestone!
  
• Michel is working on tooling for the new Exploration gameplay
  
• Tyler is working on the Conclave and player progression
  
• Jessi continues on the new UI
  
• Mark and I are working on something that has always been a problem with the game: the pacing of a life.
  
  
  • For those that remember Nic, he always questioned “Thomas! How are you going to fill the time? 70 years, by hours, is a lot of time!!!”
    
  • I put off dealing with it until now. One idea is instead of playing out every hour of every year, instead play through more abstract stages of life: young adult, adult, middle years, eldership
    

[h2]Mini-Update Rival Combat[/h2]



Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• Rivals has been updated and ready for another internal playtest, which I will perform this week. If the experience is good we will package it up and ship it out.
  

[h2]Other Studio News[/h2]

• New Hire! We just hired a Associate Project Manager to help with the production side of the studio. As we work towards 1.0 there will be increasing production responsibilities and complexity. Phil and I have been doing it, but having someone dedicated and focused on it will really help run things better and free us up to focus on our core responsibilities. Emily starts May 1st.
  
• Related to the above, Phil is off this week dealing with a serious family member illness. It is sudden so we don’t have a plan. There won’t be a patch this week, nor will he be on the discord server. We expect him back Mar 28th
  

This week our update is more designy focus, as we are right in the thick of designing the game’s structure and player purpose.

[h2]Update #3 Exploration[/h2]



Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• Zach is busy working on the Dynamic Quest engine and making good progress putting the prototype into the game.
  
• Jessi and Phil continue on the new UI. It’s about 2/3 done the design process, hopefully the design work will be done in about 2 weeks
  
• Regions are a core component to the Exploration update, so I’ll explain them a bit more
  

[h2]Regions[/h2]

• A region is a self contained section of the map like a a territory on the Risk board.
  
  
  • A region is one administrative unit
    
  • It has a name, people can refer to it, “You’ll find dyes in Fessex province.”
    
  • Contains a small number of towns (2-3), with roads between them. The region functions as one political unit.
    
  • It has one leader - a noble of a certain house
    
  • It has one set of rules/edicts that govern it
    
  • NPCs in a region all feel the same way about topics: like the nobles, a kingdom, or the people of another region
    
  • A region can be at war with another region (instead of town vs town)
    
  • A region is affiliated with the Conclave or Renegades
    
• A region has a specific biome - swampy, desert, forest, rolling grasslands, ashen mordor
  
• A region has one (or a few) resources natural to it. This makes something special about each region.
  
• A region has one kind of base problem in it: it has a giant spider problem, or plague, or drought, OR marauding goblins, instead of everything everywhere like we’ve currently done
  
• Regions have a difficulty level. This region is Level 1, that one is 10, that one is 20, another is 30. (We don’t actually have levels but you get the idea).
  
• Later when Kingdoms are added, they are simply a collection of regions ruled by one monarch. Any region not affiliated with a monarch are ‘free city states’ like medieval venice or ancient Sparta
  
• A region has specific ins and outs the player can travel between them.
  
  
  • They can no longer just walk through the mountains, have to take a pass.
    
  • The pass can be blocked by problems like avalanche, bandits, or a gryphon
    
• We can focus the map generator on making interesting regions well. Then we make a map by generating N number of regions.
  
  
  • You will be able to customize your experience at 1.0 where you can change the size (# of regions) for a map.
    
• Each region will have historical events, which you will see in the world gen screen.
  
• Regions represents a massive change to the world structure and game map. This will be a save breaking change. But don’t worry, it won’t be out for several months so you have plenty of time.
  

Regions solve tons of problems with the game! It is time we get to it. This is a core component to the Exploration update Mark and Thomas are working on.

[h2]Mini-Update Rival Combat[/h2]



Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• Phil and I playtested Rivals and found some issues. We’re both off this week, giving the team time to find solutions. Next week we’ll playtest again and see where it is at. It’s real close!
  
• James, Tyler, and Nolan are improving some of the aspects
  

[h2]No Patch This Week[/h2]

With Phil and I off this week we decided to just pause the weekly patch. There will be a patch next week. We’ll also be off Steam forums and Discord for a week. I think you can manage without us. 😝

[h2]Rivals[/h2]



Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• We’re trying to learn from our mistakes and give features time to “bake”. Rivals is ready for me to playtest, which I will do tomorrow. If everything is good, we’ll announce a launch date to Beta. If it needs more lovin’ in the oven, then we’ll do that.
  

[h2]Exploration[/h2]



Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• This is one of those moments where I’m challenged by how much to share I share now because some some things aren’t 100% nailed down but swirling around…
  
• We’re going to make this update a big update. We will close the game loop(s) and make the game a game. Adding in player progression is important.
  
• We’re actively working on how we handle the player’s lifetime.
  
• We’re adding in a major world altering problem which significantly affects play and provides a win condition. We’re working through how we can add the first one, now. It’s going to be a dragon like Smaug, who shows up and pursues his own goals over time
  
• We’re looking into our map generation and how we can support “regions”, clusters of towns which all know each other and interact with each other
  
• We’ve started the programming work for our first dynamic quest in the game. Once we get it working we can build from there
  

[h2]Other News[/h2]



I’m happy to report we are hiring an illustrator artist May 6! Lucas and I have been conversing since August of last year and finally we are able to pull the trigger. Above is his art test to sketch up some frost orc ideas. Lucas’ first task? Sketching dragons!