{"id":3453,"date":"2015-12-01T07:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.d20radio.com\/main\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2015-11-24T17:32:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T23:32:03","slug":"desktop-tuesday-tuebor-interview-a-brief-look-at-a-dystopian-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.d20radio.com\/main\/desktop-tuesday-tuebor-interview-a-brief-look-at-a-dystopian-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Desktop Tuesday- Tuebor Interview – A brief look at a dystopian future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with Scott Reschke, CEO of Strength In Numbers and Lead Designer for Tuebor \u2013 a multi-genre PvP\/PvE video game set in a dystopian future.<\/em><\/p>\n

First, for any of our readers who might not be familiar with Tuebor (<\/strong>pronounced <\/strong>t<\/strong>u\u0307<\/strong>–<\/strong>\u02c8<\/strong>\u0101-<\/strong>\u02cc<\/strong>b<\/strong>o\u0307<\/strong>r<\/strong>) or Strength in Numbers Studios,\u00a0could you please tell us a bit about the company, and what you do for them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m the CEO of the company and I\u2019m also the lead creative designer – so I came up with the characters, maps, levels, and the core game play design.\u00a0 I owned a cybercaf\u00e9 prior to owning this business for about nine years in East Lansing called the Frag Center. Over that time, I learned a lot about the general customer habits; their play styles, what they liked, what they didn\u2019t like, what would keep them playing a game, what would get them to go play a new game, why they\u2019d abandon something they\u2019d played for a long time, that kind of thing.\u00a0 So, the core concept, the 30,000 foot overview of what this product is, is kind of taking those ideas from a lot of different games and asking: what really worked, and how can we implement that into ours without having a $100 million budget?<\/p>\n

Why did you choose the name \u201cTuebor\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tuebor, is Latin and it means \u201cI will defend.\u201d. I was with my daughter at the Capitol building (State of Michigan) a couple years back and we were just walking around, and on the seal of the State of Michigan, right in the middle, is the word \u201cTuebor.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where I\u2019ve seen that!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everybody\u2019s seen it, but no one remembers it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve even talked to some people in political office that said \u201coh that name sounds really familiar\u201d and here I\u2019m going\u2026\u201dwell, it\u2019s on your door.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason I picked Tuebor was because it\u2019s not just about the product; it\u2019s also about the company and what we\u2019re trying to do in the State of Michigan right now.\u00a0 There are only a handful of video game studios in Michigan \u2013 of which we\u2019re now getting to be one of the larger ones.\u00a0 The thought was: we will defend here.\u00a0 When I took a look around, everyone I talked to said \u201cyou\u2019ve got to go to Chicago, New York, LA or Seattle.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I thought, everybody does that, everybody just leaves to go where it\u2019s easier.\u00a0 I want to help create an infrastructure where all these people coming out of all the different schools and all the different people that don\u2019t want to leave their families and their friends and their state behind can stay so we can grow this company and actually become that infrastructure.\u00a0 As far as the game, it worked very well because it\u2019s a very modular game, it\u2019s intended to be very scalable but all the modes have a theme behind it to where if you work cooperatively, you\u2019re defending a facility against waves and waves of harder and harder bad guys.\u00a0 Across all of the different modes that we\u2019ve got there is a defense element to where it isn\u2019t just attacking for the mindless sake of running around and shooting people, it\u2019s objectives, it\u2019s defense.\u00a0 So it worked for company philosophy and vision as well as the product.<\/p>\n

Tuebor is your big, flagship game and you\u2019ve described it on your Facebook page as a \u201cmulti-genre PvE\/PvP video game [that is] rich in story, deep in group participation and fast paced.\u201d\u00a0 What does this mean for the kind of game play we can expect and how will it be different from other games already out there?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of stuff we\u2019re doing internally.\u00a0 There\u2019s some lovely secret sauce that we\u2019re going to be announcing in the next couple of weeks \u2013 if you get back to me in a couple of weeks I can tell you about that too.\u00a0 As far as the game\u2026going back and taking a look at what everyone said at the Frag Center, the common themes were very evident \u2013 it is something I feel kind of gets missed in both AAA studios as well as Indie, because they get very focused on a single genre: i.e. I want to make a 2D platform, or I want to make a top down dungeon crawler, or I want to make a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), or I want to make an RPG on rails etc.<\/p>\n

The thought process was, we can go modular with this.\u00a0 We can have multiple genres \u2013 we\u2019ve got a raid mode, where you will fight with a group of 10 to 15 of your friends against a raid boss like World of Warcraft or Everquest or any of the big MMOs.\u00a0\u00a0 But instead of having to level from level one to one hundred, and figure out what any of your 900 skills are and go from worthless gear to next worthless gear until you get to end game content two and a half\/three months later, the thought was: lets drop them in and let them fight raid bosses right off the get go.\u00a0 That puts the onus on us as a company to make more interesting\/challenging bosses, to have a good set up that\u2019s not just: \u201chere\u2019s a giant 300 foot tall monster, just go whack at it for an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the modes tie together.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got a raid boss and you\u2019ve got a last stand.\u00a0 In the last stand it\u2019s defending a facility against waves and waves of harder and harder NPCs.\u00a0 That one was very intriguing to me because I watched a lot of gamers at the cyber caf\u00e9 who didn\u2019t play the main versions of the games, but did play the afterthought, last stand mode that was shoveled in.\u00a0 Dawn of War 2 had a wonderful last stand, Call of Duty-Black Ops had the Zombie last stand, Transformers War for Cybertron had an amazing last stand.\u00a0 So the thought was we can take this 3rd<\/sup> person view and this control scheme that works for MMOs, but also works for a lot simpler to get into games like MOBAs.\u00a0 MOBAs don\u2019t have all of those abilities that you have in an MMO.\u00a0 In a MOBA it\u2019s a lot easier access and a lot quicker to jump in and start playing it.\u00a0\u00a0 So how can we combine these two, but not make it feel like we\u2019ve just kind of stuck two crappy things together?\u00a0 Instead, we were like \u2013 how can these controls really work? And we spent some time refining that\u2026and at the end of the day, what we found is that if you combine that MMO with the MOBAs, you do have four unique abilities for every character, plus you have melee and ranged abilities that are not auto-attacks.\u00a0 The overall game play is going to be fast like a MOBA for the modes that mimic that.<\/p>\n

We also have a battleground mode which we call Core Breach where both teams are defending their reactor cores against the other team.\u00a0 Now, on top down if you take look at it you go \u2013 oh this is kind of like League – \u00a0but it\u2019s not \u2013 because there are no lane pushing creeps, there\u2019s no I have to hit a tower and then another tower and another tower.\u00a0 We\u2019ve turned it on its side.\u00a0 You will be able to control squads of NPCs instead of just lane pushing creeps.\u00a0 You\u2019ll say \u201cpush on this point,\u201d \u201cfollow me,\u201d \u201cdefend me,\u201d \u201chold this position\u201d so that way it\u2019s not just that endless stream of nonsense.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of things going on, but they\u2019re all simple things.\u00a0 If you understand how to do a PvP battleground, you\u2019ll get it right away.\u00a0 If you understand how to do a cooperative raid boss, you\u2019ll get it right away.\u00a0 If you understand how to do a cooperative last stand, you\u2019ll get it right away.<\/p>\n

What kind of payment model will Tuebor use?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The game is free to play.\u00a0 You can jump in and earn in-game currency or accrue it through playing unlocked characters and gear.\u00a0 You can purchase vanity items, character unlocks or boosts so you can accrue the currency faster.\u00a0 This is not a pay-to-win product.\u00a0 You cannot buy weapons; you cannot buy anything to make you better than anybody else.<\/p>\n

Many of our readers are generally focused on board games and RPGs especially.\u00a0 Can you tell us a little bit about what we can expect to see in the game from a RP and story perspective?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m big into storytelling.\u00a0 I love novels of all kinds including graphic novels and comic books.\u00a0 Telling a story in a video game can only be done in a couple of ways.\u00a0 You can either tell it through your character progression, and nowadays people don\u2019t want to start at level one doing missions where you have to collect 5 flowers and bring them back.\u00a0 You can also do it on rails \u2013 where it\u2019s all cut scenes and you have no effect on it.\u00a0 Both of these methods are very expensive to make.\u00a0 For example the Dawn of War 2 trailer \u2013 I\u2019ve been told it was somewhere around $400,000 just to make.\u00a0 $400,000 is half of our development budget, so we can\u2019t just blow that on a 3 and a half minute cut scene.\u00a0\u00a0 So we thought: \u201chow can I tell a cool story that can get people really into the characters and really involved in the story of this product, but not have to spend millions of dollars?\u201d\u00a0 The answer was comics.<\/p>\n

Why choose a comic as your background story medium?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I noticed at the Frag Center that almost every single one of our customers would frequent both of the nearby comic stores as well.\u00a0 I thought \u201cwait a second, our customer base is really the same” \u2013 I bet you\u2019d be hard pressed to find a comic book fan that isn\u2019t also a video game fan.\u00a0 So I thought, why don\u2019t we tell the story through graphic novel, comic book style art?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Are you using the same artist for all of the comics?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 I love different styles of art.\u00a0 Ideally, what I\u2019d like to do is have each different bit of the story have different artists.\u00a0 I even have an idea for a piece done in the Chibi style just to break up the doom-and-gloom graphic style.<\/p>\n

Many of our readers revel in the idea of creating and sharing stories and worlds.\u00a0 What advice would you give to aspiring game designers? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Work very hard at the specific thing you want to do, because there are millions of people wanting to be game developers and most of them are super mediocre.\u00a0 So for example, if you want to be a concept artist, do more than just anime faces (no same-face syndrome).\u00a0 Draw as many and varied and different things as possible that don\u2019t look anything like the last thing you drew.\u00a0 In the same way, with 3D modeling \u2013 figure out the software, use more than just ZBrush to sculpt stuff.\u00a0 ZBrush may look pretty, but if it is not a game-ready model, it\u2019s useless.\u00a0 Use lots of different software.\u00a0\u00a0 For coders, learn more than just Unity.\u00a0 And finally, if you want to be a game designer, you have be able to communicate clearly and effectively for absolutely everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Do you have any parting thoughts for our readers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s name is Strength in Numbers Studios, and I picked it for two reasons: the first is because it has a neat acronym.\u00a0 The second is the concept that our company is much stronger as we add people to it.\u00a0 The vision is to make it last as long as possible and to make really fun products that tell a cool story in a cool way.\u00a0 So we need as many people as possible to even just take a look at us.\u00a0 Jump on the website, fan us on Facebook, Instagram or whatever social media you\u2019re using so we can keep having conversations on what type of games you really like.<\/p>\n

We are also looking for people to sign up for Alpha and Beta tests on our website.\u00a0 So please come check us out and sign up!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can learn more about Strength in Numbers and Tuebor at the following sites:<\/strong><\/p>\n