10 for the Writers: Episode 05

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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   [Music] Hello and welcome to another 10 for the writers. I'm Will Weissbomb, senior writer, and with me is I'm Adam Weezer, associate writer here at Cloud Imperium Games Los Angeles. And to start off, first of all, we'd like to thank all of you subscribers out there for making this show and many other things possible with your excellent help financially and emotionally, as well as all backers out there for making this awesome game possible. So, thanks. Yeah, appreciate it, guys. Thank you. So, let's get into it. First up, we have a question from Sandrex. Will any of the alien races in

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   Star Citizen have extremely advanced technology? And if so, what would their general backstory be? Also, will it be possible to find ancient, highly advanced technology? And if so, will we get to know where it came from and what created it? Our general kind of feeling with the alien races is that we want there to be a good level of challenge for humanity to be able to kind of engage with them on their own level. So whereas we're trying to make it so that each of the alien races has maybe technological focuses that they have, maybe their species has over the centuries focused on this part of technology more so than humanity has, but we're all still pretty much equal.

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   So that we're going to have good fights against them. Yeah, it's going to be fun to engage those those other species if you get into such a situation. Um, and also, you know, we we have some ideas for for things when it comes to their technology, but there's also a lot about these races that we want you guys to to find out for yourself. So, um, that's why we're trying to paint with a broad brush right now. So, part of the fun uh and the exploration of the game is being able to kind of get that experience yourself. Yeah. Like you'll you'll learn a lot more once you start engaging with these different characters, we hope. And you know it'll be a give and take kind of thing like you maybe Shian will you know we've talked about miss going to the Shiion for their sweet thruster tech so that's a little bit different or more

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   advanced so we're borrowing that from them but it's not something where they can move at twice the speed of us or anything like that. It's just a little bit of edge and they'll have other tech that's a little bit worse that they come to humanity for. So trying to keep it balanced. As far as ancient tech, we have a few bits and pieces here and there. You might have started noticing ancient artifacts turn up in your hangers. And so there'll be things that we're sprinkling around. Whether they'll be super advanced or not, I think we'll stay a little bit mum about right now. Probably better. But you know, if you go look in Hades, there is a split planet. Um, so who knows? Who knows? Yeah. to explain a little bit more. Go tell. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's uh there are definitely traces in the Hades

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   system that there was a ancient uh ancient civilization there. So, we've kind of started to seed in some of the things about that. So, but again, that's something we're going to want you guys to explore as as we go live and as we expand. Uh so, you can kind of unravel that mystery yourself. At least that's what UEIE archaeologists believe. Yes. So, who knows if they're right. Yeah. Guess we'll find out. Second question from Proclas. Uh Chris Roberts has mentioned boarding large derelic ships before. Will there be any mystery suspense story arc surrounding this aspect of exploration? Absolutely. Yeah. No, that that's definitely going to be a very fun kind of like gameplay option. Um I mean we already showed off at Gamescom a little bit where there was that boarding of that ship that was floating out there in space. So, I think

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   it's going to be one of the kind of encounters that'll be readily available in the PU when you go flying out there and you'll find a sweet ship and part of it will be well, if you're a salvager, maybe you'll just rip it apart, but you know, people will be welcome to board, explore, try to find like the recordings, hints of, you know, what happened to the crew and yeah, find the the hidden smugglers compartments. They may have different trinkets or or keys to where they were going or what they were doing. And uh yeah, there's lots of fun little things that we'll be able to to seed into to that being like an adventure for you guys, man. And the the funny thing is I love those missions, but they're really hard to make cool as far as like action is kind of like you can straight out the emotional arcs, but like mystery and suspense and maintaining that and knowing how much

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   information to like seed, like putting just the little nuggets and it's like a really fine tipping point between ruining it all too early so everyone's like, "Well, of course it was the guy with the gun in the corner. I see him right there." or making it too obtuse that no one has any idea what's going on. So yeah, it's kind of we've been playing around a little bit with that kind of storyline with kind of like the secretive OES stuff that's been going on in the news updates. So hopefully that's been a fun mystery to follow along. Next up we have from Steve 2001. Compared to normal writing of fiction, how does writing for a developing game change how you go about making your fiction? So the development process kind of in some regards gives us freedom because we have get to help

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   develop along with the game. Like as we come up with cool things, it inspires the designers and the artists to create those cool things in game and vice versa. But it also means that sometimes we're a little more cautious about putting really specific details into stuff. And I know we often get questions about like, you know, how big is this thing or, you know, how does this work? And until design gets firmed up, it kind of behooves us to leave it a little more broad, to really focus in on the emotions of characters less than the more technical aspects or the more design aspects of the game. Yeah, it's um it's it's definitely a challenge, but it's it's something that's uh fun to

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   tackle every single day, too, is is to figure out how we can kind of express our vision for for what we want to bring you guys without uh without necessarily exactly stepping on the toes of the art team and the design team and and everything like that. So, it's uh yeah, as Will said, focusing on the emotion. Um, and we, you know, figuring out the the stories that we can tell in this certain context is is is challenging but also very cool to do. From J Mojo, uh, when will we get more backstory on the Van Duel leaders, motives for attack? What kind of people are they? Do they just move through space decimating all in the way, taking what they want, or are they just mindless slaves held by a bigger and greater power we do not know about yet? We we do we we we do know more about the VanDuel, but again,

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    that's something that we need to um we're not going to quite be able to tell you at this point. Um it's definitely something we're going to be slowly trickling out, revealing to you guys throughout the throughout the launch of the game. One thing we're really kind of careful about is meta knowledge. So, we don't want you necessarily going into the game with more information than your character or reasonable character in the universe could have. So knowing all this deep history about the Vandal isn't something that the UEI itself has learned yet. So hopefully when you're going in and discovering and interacting with them, you're learning about who they are because it's kind of one of the points of tension is that when we first encountered the Vandal, there was no, you know, diplomatic ties at all. Like

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    we could not make any kind of headway into dealing with them. And so that's been kind of one of the Yeah. In the context of the of the game, the UEE has never talked to the VanDuel, has never been able to address grievances with them or kind of even figure out what's going on or or why why they're they're motivated to do what they're doing. So, um, even if we may have an inkling or we may know, it's not something that makes sense for us to pass on to you guys because when you do start in the in the world and you're in the Pistant universe, we want you guys to be able to be coming from the perspective of somebody that's that's uh, in that era that we built up. But, uh, hopefully as we develop more cool uh, Vandal ships and stuff, we'll have more reports from the UEE government and stuff that'll leak out like we've been doing so far.

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    And those are always fun. Thanoos 1973. Are the short stories at the end of the jump point issues actual events that have happened in the universe or just for fun? So, this is uh something we've been kind of talking internally about and how to balance these really cool stories. And the general feeling right now is that they are fictional stories in the universe. Like these are stories people in the verse would read about and sometimes they're inspired by true events or real people, but it's always told kind of like how dimetor novels would be in the Old West that these people would go out and report on real characters out there, but it was always sensationalized or heightened the drama and it wasn't really based on hard

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    facts. So that's kind of how we're viewing this. It's more about the emotion of the stories really than setting a firm timeline. Yeah. So it's it's almost uh like speculative fiction fiction of the day to to a certain degree where yeah there there is definitely a lot of mythmaking around certain events but uh some of the people you have read about uh adventures in those stories they we we like to think that they're actually alive in our universe and maybe at some point you guys could have encounters with them when you're when you're out there in space. Yeah. But don't take it for like a fact that the Banu are building an android army or anything like that. Uh but on the other hand, whereas these we see more as fictional stories, the news updates we try very hard to be factual and representative of the things that

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    are currently going on in the verse or the hitting those story lines. So those are a little bit more like timelined and fact-based. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Next question is from Escatos. Uh lately we've seen some interaction between the fiction and the community in the form of the citizen opinion poll. Personally, I felt that really helped bring the lore of the PU alive and made it feel like a real current events that we are actually being involved in and maybe even impacting in some way. What are some other ways that the lore we're reading now will be integrated into the gameplay and be relevant to players in the persistent universe? Yeah, it's that was a a fun little thing that uh that we had a had a good time doing, writing the poll and then being able to tie in some of the responses that people wrote in

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    character in the poll to the latest uh showdown uh dispatch that went out this past Tuesday. Um, it it's really important to to kind of like let you guys know that we are we are responding and we are we are looking at uh what you're feeling and and how how you're thinking about the the stuff we're doing. And uh yeah, the the stuff we are writing the the lore posts are intended to, as Will said, they're they are in universe. They are supposed to be taken as this is what is exactly happening right now and these are kind of the things that are that are that are going on. So hopefully by you guys reading those, you are getting hints to either functionality of things in gameplay or potential storylines in gameplay. So we try very hard to to make sure those are going to going to be seated into the to the universe you guys are going to be experiencing. Yeah. Cuz it's always been

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    kind of a a goal of the the game when it when it goes live is that you playing will be able to influence the world and make differences whether as an individual or as a collective whole. So, we try to start thinking about that now either through the lore builder posts or these kind of we read your comments when you go on there and seeing what you guys are feeling and we love it when you roleplay in the comments. It's so much fun for us and letting that influence it as kind of a precursor to how it's going to be in the game where you know one of you is going to be the Murray Cup champion or one of you will be the notorious pirate who assassinated the Imperator. Don't do that. That's bad. Um, but that kind of stuff and starting to build it now. And like Adam was saying, like these stories, we try to

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    capture the feel of what we hope the missions will be like. Whether you know the the Civil War on Karen 3 will still be raging when the game comes out, that has remains to be seen. But stuff like that and seeing how which side you guys are going to take is is very interesting from a lore perspective. Rufus Ultra asks, "Hey, Will, how are you?" What are you, Dave and Adam, working on lately? I'm good, thanks. Uh, so lately it's been coming off of the big shoot at Imaginarium, which was awesome. Uh, we've been kind of spreading out and focusing on some of the other stuff and a lot of the more persistent universe stuff that's coming

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    up. So, we've been doing a lot on the work on the Exoverse, Baby Pew, Miniverse, whatever you call it, the uh 1.3 that's coming out. So, we've been trying to work on some of that. We've been trying to build in more narrative stuff for Arc Corp, trying to tie in, you know, more kind of dialogue going on in the background and starting to think about how the narrative systems are going to work into there with the gradual releases that Tony and his team is working on. So there's been a lot of little stuff and kind of, you know, we've also been doing a lot of work in helping the star map come along, which has been very exciting. Yeah, that that's been one of my main focuses recently. And uh yeah, besides the obviously the the weekly dispatches, the

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    the jump points, uh preparing content for that, um I know Dave is working on so much stuff right now, it makes my head spin. He's currently in London. He's he's back over there taking care of some stuff. and he's going to be at the at the at Citizen Con. So, um yeah, we're all working working very hard and there's lots of lots of balls in the air, which uh is is actually exciting and is really fun to to to do as a writer because it means you can sit there and focus on something for a few hours, shift gears, and move on to something else. Um and it's a good way to stay kind of like fresh creatively. Yeah. When we were focusing on Squadron 42, it was like this one big massive fire that we had to put out. But now that everyone across all of our studios is coming online kind of full strength, things are really happening quickly. So now these days it's a bunch more about

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    like addressing all these little small fires that are bursting out and running around. So that's really exciting in its own kind of way. Okay. Uh Randy Love uh asks, "Has there ever been any thought of having live NPCs?" I know that's a contradiction in terms, but what I mean is a live actor who plays an NPC and does something special in game, like a gangster boss that comes into a bar and causes trouble or gives out a few special missions. Or perhaps a politician who comes to a town square and gives a little speech and talks to people in town, but the gangster and politician are SIG agents/ employees roleplaying the parts. It was kind of a a cool fun idea of us playing NPCs. It's not something we've talked about before, but it kind of caught our imaginations why we thought we'd talk about it today.

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    There there's some limitations to that because of the way instancing works is that we would either have to have like a bunch of different actors or some people would experiencing it. And I think there would be kind of some some technical issues, but a lot of the stuff that was addressed in here about this gangland boss coming into a bar and starting out trouble and giving, you know, people jobs to do is something I think we actually want you all to be able to do as players, to be able to take on these roles, to be mission generators yourselves, and to really roleplay these cool characters and interact act with each other. So, um, whereas we might seed the tools for you to be able to do that, I think it'll be fun to see how

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    you as players take on these roles and cause troubles and start off your own plot points that we can pick up on. Yeah. And then to have on the on the other side of that too, those players that are seeing the trouble starting to roll down the hill and kind of coming together collectively be collectively to be like, "Wait a minute, I saw that guy over there." and kind of being able to to maybe try to counteract what that person might be trying to do, too. So, but now, yeah, we'll have to think more about like possibly mindjacking NPCs. Like all of a sudden, you'll see the bartender like slowly look at you and then you'll know. Mind jacking. I love that. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. But probably not. Maybe. I don't know. Um, yeah, great question though. Very interesting. Doc Andy asks, "Will the initial launch of the Galacttopedia contain only infos we have received so far and you add new stuff when you release a new Spectrum Dispatch, or will

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    it already contain most of the historical and social infos we need for the start of Squadron 42? How difficult is it to get enough information outside to keep the crowd busy, but also to keep enough secrets for future surprises? Do you have a release plan to tackle this problem?" It is a big uh challenge that's looming up that we've already started to work on. We're already trying to gather and organize all the information we have out there already. And there is a lot of information that's been something that Adam's been awesome about tackling. Yeah, I've been building a a a kind of like lore cannon document um at at the moment to kind of just like track every single character that's been mentioned, every single event that's been mentioned, uh where they're mentioned. It's uh it's quite the task and it's something that try to do one or two a day and just keep keep chipping

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    away at it. And obviously Sherry's here to to help us kind of like uh push that ball up the hill too. But um yeah, it's we're we're starting to collect all the information to be able to get out to you guys. I think we're going to try to be comprehensive, but we're not going to have everything in there at the Blush and it's very much going to be an ongoing project and a lot of it's going to be need-based. So if there's really a demand to have this question answered or know more about this or a lot of times like with Squadron 42 when you come across this specific company or this object that's what's going to inspire us to write a post or to inform more on it versus just trying to sit down and fill in everything we can. I don't think yeah it'll be possible to be that complete. And I I I do think there's more than enough information out there to keep

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    keep you guys entertained and keep you guys busy for for a while. There's there's so much stuff that that's already been generated that maybe not everyone has caught up on. So be to be able to put it in a in a format that'll make you guys, you know, easier to access it, I think could keep you guys busy for ages. It's definitely going to keep keep us busy for a while just even trying to get it in a form that uh that'll be presentable. So it's uh it's going to be a fun task to to help kind of like pull it all together. So we're all looking forward to it. I know Sherry is super excited. It's like her her dream. It's her dream project. Yeah. Yeah. And then also what's really exciting uh as well is kind of this consolidation and streamlining of information because I know right now we have little bits and pieces all over the place. So it'll be great to kind of pull it all together as well as to kind of have the definitive source. One of the interesting problems that has risen from

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    us being in live development as we release this information out is that things have subtly shifted over the course of the 2 three years that we've been working on this. So some stuff from the very beginning whereas the spirit of it is still guiding us and very much true we've had to adjust some of the details and it's a little hard to go keep all that up to date. So the Galactipedia hopefully when it launches will be our go-to source if anything disagrees. the Galacttopedia is right kind of thing. So, that'll be helpful. Uh, and finally, Admiral Keane asks, "Whatever happened to the multi-art stories of old, such as King Kid Crimson? Any chance of bringing those back? I thought they did a great job of telling the story of how we would live dayto-day from the perspective of someone inside the universe/lor. I miss those. The news

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    posts and feeds are great. Um, but they talk to us as if we were already in the verse. Would be nice to get some more stories. The plan right now is like we're at the the point of the game where it is slowly starting to be rolled out to you guys. You are able to run around our corp to experience, you know, Cassaba outlet and and and places there. So, we are at a point where you guys are starting to be able to build your own narratives, too, and kind of like see your own story starting to take shape, which is very evident if you look at some of the the role playing that goes on and the in the message boards and along the dispatches and stuff and stuff like that. So, um I think with the the excess of uh other projects going on too, there's less of a focus on doing those types of stories at the moment. Um the Yeah, go ahead. Oh, of course, we're still, you know, releasing the jump

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    point serial stories every month to subscribers. So, we haven't gotten it rid of it completely. It's still something that we really enjoy reading ourselves and engaging in and, you know, providing as a benefit to the subscribers. Uh and but now yeah the focus is we're trying to take the stories that we're maybe delivering in those serialized fictions and seeing now to be able to put it into the game directly instead and focusing on that. But there is uh I mean there is a want among us to be able to bring those back. It's just kind of a matter of time and priority. Yeah. And and to be honest, like some of the the dispatches do treat you like you're already in the verse, but we we do have extensive discussions about about the progression of these dispatches. And

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    when when they're written, we we kind of most of the time have an end goal in mind with them. So they've taken that over in a slightly different way other than instead of it telling like maybe one single personal story, it's a larger story that's being kind of like glanced on from many perspectives. So, it's it's something we we do we do it's fantastic to do and it's it's it's it's it's fun to fun to be a part of, but there's just so much going on too that it's tough to to do that in particular at the moment. And if you are craving more stories, I have to do a shout out to all the people who are writing such great fanfiction out there. There's a ton of it. And whenever we get a chance, we like to poke around and read some of it and get inspired by it. So, amazing job to all of you who are out there writing that stuff. It's really fun. Yeah. Keep up the good work. So that's it for this

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    edition of 10 for the writers. Again, a big shout out and thanks to subscribers. Adam wants to thank you personally. The support we get from you guys, the love, the everything is just great. So, um yeah, uh thank you so much for for watching all the way to the end. I can't believe you guys made it. Congratulations. Um and uh I'm sure we'll see you around the verse sometime in the future. Yep. Keep backing, keep talking, keep supporting. Bye guys. Hey guys, thanks for watching um Temp for the Chairman. Uh if you guys would like to uh see more episodes, go here. If you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content, go here. And uh if you

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    guys would like to watch episodes of Round the Verse, go here, please. And I will see you in the verse. This video made possible by the ICC stellar surveyors and subscribers like you.