by Stephanie H., Staff Writer, Inside AX- Anime Expo
The world of indie games is steadily growing with the strong support of releasing programs such as Ren’Py and RPG Maker to aid in the creation of freeware and commercial games. Developer Bishop Myers is currently one of the leading game designers in the RPG Maker world with his studio, Project BC, being responsible for producing Misao award winner Vacant Sky. Inside AX-Anime Expo recently got the exciting chance to sit down and chat with the creative brain behind the hit RPG Maker game series.
Tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your studio for those who may not know who you are or what you do.
My name is Bishop Myers. I’m a writer and programmer by trade, although being an indie developer means that I inevitably dabble in every aspect of game development from time to time. I founded Project BC out of a love for storytelling and RPGs, although RPGs aren’t all that we produce. I wouldn’t call us a game development circle so much as a storytelling circle; all of our works prioritize telling a compelling narrative.
Is there a particular reason why you got interested in game development? Why did you create Project BC?
I’ve been a gamer for a long time and I’ve always been kind of a creative person. Sometimes, back even in middle school, I would doodle platformer level layouts or brainstorm ideas for a board game. Around that time, I started to get involved in play-by-post role-playing games on the internet and became interested in anime and manga. I became addicted to setting up stories and worlds for players to explore in those role plays and it was only a matter of time before I realized that there was a way for me to combine all of my passions: by creating games.
I very quickly realized that making a game (especially as ambitious of a game as an RPG) by yourself is a very daunting task and I started asking around to find people interested in helping out. We weren’t originally called Project BC. We didn’t have a name for ourselves at all, in fact. “Project BC” was the development title for our first big project. Even though we eventually settled on the official title, Vacant Sky, a lot of folks who had been following the game’s development still called us “the Project BC team” out of habit so it kind of stuck.
Could you tell me a bit about what Vacant Sky is? What inspired you to create this series?
Vacant Sky is classified as a traditional RPG in the sense that it’s a game in which you manage a team of adventurers and guide them through an adventure with turn-based combat. It is not traditional in the sense that it features a very nonlinear story in which the player’s choices have a significant impact upon the story.
Normally, when you hear “RPG with nonlinear story”, games like Oblivion and Mass Effect come to mind, with a fully customizable protagonist, a blank slate whose only personality is in the dialog options you choose. What I wanted to create was something between that and the linear path that most RPGs force you to take. I wanted to give the player the ability to make decisions while still creating an interesting protagonist.
Interesting stories have to be about an interesting conflict. What’s the excitement in a cut and dry conflict about good versus evil? Those stories have been told before a million times. Interesting conflicts are brought about by people trying to fulfill their goals and the interactions they have with other people along the way. This is something I wanted to model in the design of Vacant Sky’s story: everyone—not just the villain, not just the protagonist—wants something and sometimes, obtaining your happiness has to come at the cost of someone else’s.
Vacant Sky has been in production for 6 years. What approach did you take to organize the development of such a massive project?
Man, has it really been that long? I remember thinking that it would be done and over with in a year. It didn’t seem like a very complicated idea in my head, but as anyone who’s ever actually sat down to work on a game before can tell you, it never turns out to be as simple as it sounds.
I decided early on to break up the game into smaller episodes (called Act I, Act II, and Act III) and release them sequentially. The biggest advantage to this approach was that it was a lot easier to manage. Instead of making 300 maps, we had to make 100. Instead of animating 8 battle sprites, we only needed 4. It made developing the game a lot less of a daunting task with the work broken up like that.After Act I was released, we received a tremendous amount of feedback from the players regarding gameplay balance and the flow of the story. This enabled us to address the suggestions and complaints that players had about Act I with the next episode. Now, I can’t imagine having not done that; imagine spending six years on a game and then releasing it to find out that it was completely unbalanced and boring to play!
Why did you decide to use RPG Maker XP as your main engine? What difficulties have come with using the program?
I decided to use it because it was the engine I was most familiar with when I started. Something I get asked a lot is “why RPG Maker? Why not just build your own engine?” and that’s definitely a valid question. A lot of hobbyist developers build games for the learning experience and in that case, it’s totally valid to build everything from scratch – you learn a whole lot. But that wasn’t my goal with Vacant Sky; I wanted to make a good game and I wanted to tell a compelling story. The reality was that building my own engine would’ve set me back a long, long time and led to a buggier product. RPG Maker XP handles low-level aspects of game development like graphics and audio for you and allows you to freely edit the game logic. I didn’t particularly care how the graphics and audio worked under the hood as long as they just worked.
It’s been a very pleasant engine to work with. There are a lot of developers who act condescendingly toward people who use RPG Maker, but I don’t think the engine really matters. It’s the end result, the game that people play, that really matters. Players don’t care how a game was made. They don’t care that you spent two years writing a really sophisticated engine in C++. All they care about is the end result, so spending time on aspects of the game that they don’t care about is really a waste of time (unless, again, you’re doing it for the learning experience).
There have definitely been some problems with it, though. The biggest limitation is that the editor assumes that you never change any of the fundamental aspects of the game. For example, RPG Maker XP supports character classes (like mages, priests, and warriors) out of the box, which is a feature that I chose to eliminate from my game. Although classes no longer existed in my game, all of the options for it still appeared in the editor, which I couldn’t remove. Furthermore, I couldn’t add anything to the editor, meaning that I had to make my own tools for managing aspects of the game that I added myself (such as AI and skill trees).
There is the stigma that “All RPG Maker games are just badly made fan games that look, feel, and sound the same.” What are your thoughts on this? Is there really potential for RPG Maker to make an impact in the indie or even commercial scene?
Sturgeon’s Law applies to RPG Maker games just like every other medium. The more easily-accessible a tool is, the wider your audience, so it’s to be expected that an easy-to-use game engine would attract people who don’t have the drive or talent to learn how to use a more sophisticated engine. As a result, a lot of beginner RPG Maker developers put little effort into their games and these are the games that most people think of when they hear “RPG Maker.”
I would say that RPG Maker games definitely have the potential to make an impact on the scene. After all, if you’re not familiar with RPG Maker, could you really tell by playing whether or not a game was made with it? In the real world, people don’t care how you made your game; they’re only concerned with the game itself. There are a lot of jaded (and dare I say it, elitist) people in the hobbyist game development scene who lash out at RPG Maker developers for being lazy or talentless, but I think that’s unfairly categorizing a wide spectrum of developers with a generalization. What really matters is your drive and creativity, not your tools.
What RPGs have you played and what influences or helpful design aspects did you take from them? Are there any particular studios or people that you look up to?
I’ve played a lot of RPGs, but there are a few I could mention as being particularly helpful to me as a designer. Persona 3 was an eye-opener for me. It was the game that first got me thinking about the unification of visual novels and RPGs. It definitely had a huge impact upon the way I looked at narrative structure and combat design. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in RPG design.
I’m not normally a fan of western RPGs (although I had an affair with Neverwinter Nights a few years ago), but I fell in love with Dragon Age: Origins almost immediately. With Dragon Age, they finally escapes the black and white morality systems that had been plaguing western RPGs. The character interactions and the ability to make interesting decisions made it an enthralling game, to say nothing about the immersive world they constructed.
Although they don’t deal in RPGs, I would say that the studio I look up to the most is Type-Moon, producers of Tsukihime and Fate/stay Night. Aside from my appreciation for their works’ captivating stories, their success story is a huge inspiration to me. I can only dream of finding success like they did doing what I love to do.
I heard that you had the chance to participate in an exciting event for indie game developers in Massachusetts prior to Penny Arcade Expo. Could you possibly tell us about your experience, as well as any advice that you may have procured from the event?
The day before PAX East opened, an event was held in Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge called Made in Massachusetts. I was there to exhibit Vacant Sky and meet other people involved in the Massachusetts game development scene. It was a lot of fun! Game developers are really cool people to hang out with and always have interesting things to say about the art.
I would say the most important thing I learned from the event is to not be afraid to let your work speak for itself. I was very nervous about the event, since I knew that professionals would be there to show off their commercial titles. I felt like I would be completely out of place among them with my freeware, budgetless game. On the contrary, people were very interested in the game and reactions to it were very positive.
The takeaway lesson is to not shy away from opportunities to introduce people to your work and to network with other people in the field. They can offer perspectives you never considered and open up new avenues for you to explore in your own work.
What are your plans for the rest of 2011 and for future projects?
First of all, I want to finish up Vacant Sky Complete Edition so I can lay the project to rest and move on to new and exciting things. In the fall, I’ll be starting on a new project which is designed to incorporate new innovations in artificial intelligence in games, but it’s still too early to say anything concrete about it. Although Vacant Sky will be done, I’m planning to expand upon the world we’ve built for it by collaborating with a good friend on a prequel novel called Vacant Sky Origins, so look forward to that!
Lastly, is there anything that you would like to say to supporters of RPG Maker games, Project BC, and/or Inside AX’s readers?
It’s really rewarding to receive support and enthusiasm for something that you’re passionate about. Don’t be afraid to let your creativity shine; you never know who might be inspired by it! Thanks to everyone who’s supported Project BC over the course of these past few years. I hope you all enjoy our work as much as we enjoy making it.
For more information on Project BC and their projects visit their website.
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Tags: Bishop Myers, Inside Insider, Project BC, Vacant Sky
