Alexis Kennedy (2017)

I have secured the blessings of seven of their number. Let's hope the remaining five are corruptible or distractible.

I would recommend leaving the blood inside you, which is a handy vessel adapted to storing it effectively at a suitable temperature. If you're managing someone else's blood, it's best off inside them, too, until such time as you actually need to do something untidy with it.

This list would change if someone asked me tomorrow, but:

• The King Must Die
• The Anubis Gates, or alternatively The Last Coin (different authors, but look up William Ashbless)
• Desolation Road
• Vance, probably Emphyrio
• A Night in the Lonesome October, or another Zelazny to seasonal taste
• Tanith Lee, Flat Earth especially
• I'm not even naming specific books any more let alone limiting it to 5, shut up this is my AMA
• That Hideous Strength, which despite its many flaws and its weird gender politics stays in my mind ineradicably (War in Heaven too)
• and the usual greats, Tolkien and Moorcock and whatnot, honestly belong in here too, but you've read those folk right

>How much does the current Fallen London universe differ from your original ideas for it?

I don't really know! I haven't really asked the guys about it, and they haven't told me, because obviously that conversation would feel a bit awkward on both sides. One of the current writers did corner me and say 'so what the hell is the deal with Salt'? I paraphrase, he's a courteous Southern type and doesn't say 'hell'

Sunless Skies, in my (extremely minimal, like a page) original pitch, didn't involve London leaving the earth, involved a lot more non-human politics and a war in heaven with the Liberation of Night operating rather like an infectious cancer. It looks like they've gone a different direction.

The hiatus was before Sunless Sea. After Sea, the geography changed, and you reached the North by sea. Before that, it was going to be an expedition to the North, to where Eaten was buried, where you'd raise him and... I don't remember, honestly, it's been years and I changed my mind plenty. But the trip North, I had in mind something like Scott's doomed expedition if he'd died in dust, not snow.

>browse entries on the SCP wiki?

Not for many years, but yes, and I stopped precisely because it's such a rabbit hole. And thank you very much!

Yes: death, and its approach or absence. There's an interview here where I talk a bit more about it

https://www.pcgamesn.com/dragon-age-4/dragon-age-4-story-alexis-kennedy

but the short version is that I have some dramatic family history that, I eventually realised, had quite a predictable effect on my interests.

The other thing is loss, longing, yearning, things like saudade and mono no aware and Sehnsucht. Those are all fancy imported terms for various kinds of unslakeable yearning. And that sounds extremely literary, but of course those things generally get translated through, eg, rubbery squid people longing for a lost purple world. And that's the third theme of my work: I just like making up ridiculous fun horrible things. The New Weird was a big influence I guess.

Oh and the other thing: funny, but nasty, but funny, but nasty.

I was a bit of a troublesome kid, and my mother sent me away to a Christian camp without telling me it was a Christian camp. They did their thing and for about twelve hours I felt that I was filled up with the love of Jesus like a little lightbulb. Then it wore off and I never felt inclined that way again. That's all.

My real interest is in making a game about the perilous longing for secrets under the skin of the world: the thing that drives a lot of antiheroes or tragic heroes or outright antagonists in horror and weird fiction. 'Cultist' tends to be common shorthand for Lovecraftian and post-Lovecraftian seekers of the unknown. 'Occultist Simulator' would probably be more accurate, but it doesn't snap, so.

When an egg cracks, sometimes the fissure extends across space into a self-sustaining caesura or fistula, which can move as it heals, rather like a Game of Life glider.

The walls are wrong.

edit: I thought this was a joke question. I don't know why my thread is showing as removed - a rogue bot? I've contacted the mods, they say it looks good at their end, I'm chasing politely. Any ideas, anyone?

edit 2: and we're back. IDK BUT ALL SHALL BE WELL AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE WELL

thank you!

'able to surpass' - I'll do my best! What it can't have is the effect of pouring, sometimes, years of Fallen London levelling and grinding and accumulating into one crazy quest, because in CS the sessions are short and, you know, you could always hack your save file. But the whole intention of this was basically 'Seeking, the game', so I hope so.

'Happy Birthday', and It's a sort of shaven weeping shivering cat-ape thing that presses its muzzle frantically into my eyes so it can drink my tears and be young again, and it keeps mewling 'please'

It is moderately surprising. I did think someone would probably post a screenie, and I'm very pleased they didn't (although IRONICALLY Failbetter have locked me out of the CMS, and I neglected to make copies of the text, so I can't remember exactly what I wrote, and so I'm the only one who doesn't know).

I guess if someone is devoted enough to finish a project as bonkers as Seeking, they probably take the thing seriously.

I think when I mentioned them I was just waving a glass of gin happily and saying 'oh yes! I remember the Lensmen'. I loved them when I was a kid, but I was about to say I would be hard put to mention specific ways in which it's influenced me. But that's not quite true.

So first, the thing about Smith is that every book one-ups the last. There's a superweapon, there's a defence to the superweapon, there's another weapon that makes the first look like a rubber broom, there's another weapon that uses a whole different kinds of physics, and so on and so on. So you've got this constant pornography of escalation. Or a race of telepathic puppeteers with a race of puppeteers behind them and a race of secret puppeteer gods behind them. It taught me a few things about how to manage escalation of power in games, first TRPGs, then fiction and computer games.

Second, it taught me that when you keep on escalating, it just looks daft, and sometimes it's better to plan in advance and keep your escalations low-key or hinted.

I think thirdly, it taught me that there is a special charm to genuine enthusiasm untainted by irony. It sounds like I'm being sarcastic there, but I'm really not. Irony is like antimony. It builds up over time and kills you.

Favourite character: I mean honestly I would be hard put to tell most Smith characters apart. I liked the grumpy copilot in the Skylark books.

(a) yes
(b) is the Mansus truly knowable by a mortal?

It's the Great Game, because the Devils told me to say that.

Depends on the History. But to be less coy, events at that level are of direct interest to the Hours.

thank you, that's a lovely thing to say!

I don't know Cisco; I've read Ligotti and he's good, but he's a bit self-consciously unremittingly bleak for my preferences. I like a bit of light in the shade, sometimes if only so you can get rabbit-punched again on the downswing.

Unreliable narration is a problem for me in narrative games. It can and does work, but I like resource narratives where the player is managing the game state, and lying to players about that is something you can usually only do in one-off art games. But I do like providing a minimal framework that the player can bring their own interpretation to - I often talk about 'fires in the desert', eg here: http://www.pcgamer.com/failbetter-founder-alexis-kennedy-on-indie-storytelling-and-guest-writing-for-bioware/

one day someone of my age will answer this question and not say Planescape Torment. Today is not that day. I read bits of that (the flashback with Ignus, eg) with my mouth literally hanging open. I was on a panel with Avellone in Dubrovnik earlier this year, and Jesus you could have wrung me out and mopped up raw fanboy.

The Witcher games. Those guys know what they're doing.

Bastion. It's one choice, it's a cutscene effect, but they frame it so beautifully that it stays in your bloodstream.

Tyranny. It didn't really land for me emotionally, but I admire the artistry of the C&C construction very enthusiastically.

Papers Please. Great work, top to toe.

Deus Ex. Still probably my single favourite game.

Hand of Fate. Very low-key minimal C&C, but nicely managed.

--

Someone else will quote something I loved in the comments next and I'll go 'oh yeah that!' - this is just me scanning my Steam library now. I think I particularly admire choice done well, more than consequence. Consequence is brute force, choice is where the chisel is applied.

And also, thank you!

Is it safe? I don't know, let's find out.

It's Nirrigu -

I've been happiest working alone or in small teams on technical/creative crossover work. At Failbetter, I was spending a lot of my time managing managers and worrying about keeping everyone paid. I didn't want to do any more Fallen London, and I did want to do experimental pieces like CS without worrying about whether they were good bets for the company.

I could literally have fired nearly everyone and shut down FL, but I spent seven years building what I told my team was a secure place that put its employees interests first, so that would have been kind of a dick move. So I fired myself with a generous settlement, or to put it another way, I fired everyone else but gave them the company as a settlement.

Also I really wanted to do some freelance work, to see the inside of other studios. You always learn stuff from changing roles, and I'd been in the same role seven years.

I think the mods and/or bots remove things that don't look sufficiently questiony, and I think they prefer one-question posts, so maybe don't bullet-point in case the HAMMER DESCENDS

but

1. no, and when I dropped by the thread on the Failbetter boards I was interested to see the comparisons drawn. But I have read other Williams; I have read a lot of Lewis, who as you probably know was a reciprocated fan of Williams and a fellow traveller; I have read a certain amount of Arthurian poetry and commentary (Ritual to Romance, Green Knight, and so forth); I'm sure there are influences crossing back and forth. but mostly I think if you're writing on certain themes, you end up drinking from some of the same wells.

2. That is a reasonable suspicion to suspect.

> . What are your thoughts

...this is a potentially essay-length answer. :) Some bullet points.

• wrangling the Opportunity Deck in FL, and particularly the smaller op pools in things like Heists and Expeditions, gave me a good feel for some techniques, though I could do with better maths.

• in the alpha, Essays are what you get as the default option if no other books show up, and once other books are exhausted, so that's a particular problem

• I'm dividing rewards into a variety of decks/pools (there's only one reward pool in the alpha).

I love cards as a metaphor for events and for resources, so cards were always likely to be a part of it. It was much more about moving cards from one tray to another initially, though, until Martin, my UI freelancer, had the idea of the more freeform, table approach (he may be along to talk about it too).

I didn't initially think of people reading it as solitaire, per se, but of course that makes sense. Hand of Fate was also an influence, in that it has a sort of semi-diegetic context that doesn't commit to exactly where the player is and how they interact.

But above all, it allows me to focus on the text, and you say, as the simple art, without making it look cheap, and with it feeling tactile.

The hardest part so far has been figuring out the UI. I had a clear idea of the underlying system and model, but making that work in an interface meant a lot of back-and-forth, in which my freelance UI chap, Martin Nerurkar, has been invaluable. (And the UI has in turn informed the model, and so on.) But we're mostly there. We're doing a bit more tidy-up this week, using the feedback we've garnered so far.

The biggest challenge I'm worried about in the future is getting the balance, pacing and economy right. This is very much something I'm, like, journeyman-level at. I learnt a lot from FL and SS, and I'm applying those lessons here, but when it's a non-linear progression system, it's tricksy.

I knew how the game mechanics worked: I had like forty hours in Stellaris when they offered me the gig, and if I hadn't, I think it'd basically have been impossible to write the story. I worked out a sort of pidgin markup with Maximilian the content designer, this sort of thing:

##Building effect suggestions

##I'm looking to make these flavoursome and slightly advantageous; you know the numbers better.

Spiral-Feed Power Hub: 
requires tech_akx_worm_1
planet unique cannot be built with other Power Hubs
provides energy 6, tile_resource_energy_mult 0.2, pop_happiness -0.05, w Physics research

...so I suggested numbers based on the Clausewitz text files, but I knew they'd need tweaking, and often I had no idea of suitable numbers.

He knows she's no good, but he can't let it go. Possibly the other way around.

or: Mark Haddon once said that literary fiction is usually concerned with mortality, and that genre fiction is usually concerned with denying it. I used to agree, but now I think there are too many exceptions for that to be useful.

Okay, I think art comes from a pressure to resolve something that the creator can't deal with - if I were being melodramatic, I'd say a wound in the soul - and I think death often does that.

A symbolical transfiguration. Their Names are mostly not present, but sometimes the boundaries blur.

Flesh is not glory.

Blackwood, Williams, Yeats in that order.

oof, hard question!

I think probably the point at which the prototype is first actually playable. There's an IT LIVES! feel at that point, and all the most trivial fix-it tasks are invisible behind the vast mass of unimplemented wilderness.

I wanted to make a story-driven web game (originally it wasn't even going to be story-driven, just some flavour text on power-up cards, but that's a whole different story). I started writing around an underground city with a Victorian feel and a sort of Rossetti Goblin Market sensibility, but it didn't really make sense to people. I was chatting to Paul Arendt, who was rightly voluble about how confusing it was, and I said 'well maybe if we translate London underground and say it's an alternate history thing'. That at least gave people a way into the rest of the daftness, and it just grew from there.

The Traveller is always returning.

A price was paid; it was built for that purpose by one beneath the sea, etc.

cool! I should also recommend the Church in the Darkness, an upcoming game which is much more about the other kind of cult, to anyone reading this comment who's interested in the other kind.

There are seven so far; also Poseidon is not the only God in the sea; also, things are different since the Intercalate.

I have some freelance work scheduled for Q3/Q4 next year. I didn't plan to go back to freelancing, but this is a really cool opportunity with a designer and team I admire. More about that when I can.

I like the idea of extending the CS universe - this is the project I've called Noon - to allow asynchronous multiplayer play as a particular kind of entity.

I like the idea of a noir story using the Cultist Simulator engine.

I would love to do Dandelion, the cancelled Failbetter narrative piece about a man dying in a submarine (which I retain rights to) and Thieves' Gate, which is a satirical inside-game-dev piece.

I am probably going to bring on another full-term Weather Factory person as a co-founder, and they have ideas of their own.

There were two fundamental problems with StoryNexus (as well as a bunch of minor ones).

1. I thought that Fallen London was a success because it used an F2P model for content, and so that other games would be a similar success. I didn't understand for too long that people liked the content, largely because for the longest time I had a pathological inability to believe we were making good stuff. That's fixed now, my ego is well-fed. But the product fit was just way off. There was no particular desire to make or read talented-amateur work monetised with F2P mechanics.

2. I wanted to provide a solution for people who didn't want to code but could get their heads round system-based interactive behaviour. I think now that the number of people who don't want to code AND do get on with a system like SN AND are good designers AND are good writers is just absurdly small. Slap F2P and a proprietary system and a really specific idiom and an online-only requirement on it and it just wasn't a product really wanted.

Lots; specifically but not exclusively gnosticism especially of the pre-mediaeval variety, neo-Platonism and Rosicrucianism. But I'm not a scholar, I just pillage and rework.

I like that conclusion. Although to be fair, I've learnt since that there's also a red (and a black) grail in the Warhammer setting, too.

thank you!

Most places in FL/SS are actually pretty horrible, and best viewed from a distance. The Chelonate, I mean, Christ. Real-life London, where I live, I have complicated feelings about, and I'm not sure I'd want to go to a subterranean version.

Irem, almost certainly. Irem, I tied myself in so many knots trying to provide a sense of something rich and enticing that I am duly enticed. I like the dark lapping water-on-iron of Khan's Glory, too, in large part because of Paul's art.

thank you!

The reason that the default activity in the AAA is manshooting is that the default activity is manshooting. The CoD franchise generates upwards of a billion dollars for each title. When a big studio is looking to invest a lot of money, that's where it'll look. So it's a cycle. But it's not an inevitable or an unbreakable one.

I don't think ludonarrative dissonance is a problem - I mean not in the way that opioid abuse or global warming or those fucking KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON posters are a problem. I do think it's sign of a missed opportunity to do make something more thematically coherent and exciting: and yes, my particular enthusiasms include (a) thematic coherence and (b) games where you do the kind of things you don't often get to do in other games. So I get very excited about aligning narrative with mechanics.

And I'm glad I'm approachable! As an introvert it can be hard work, honestly (I went through a couple of days mid-Kickstarter where I literally couldn't bear to look at my phone any more) but people are the source of basically everything interesting.

I guess the traveller is always returning.

Very much the latter.

Literature: Renault, Zelazny, Machen, (everyone knows HPL).

Games: Dark Corners of the Earth, if there's an updated version that doesn't look ugly as bum in 2017, or if someone's done an HD remake. Clive Barker's Undying, if ditto. Stories Untold, that's very good. Maybe Icepick Lodge's stuff. Did they finish the remake of Pathologic yet? I backed it and I don't even know. The first one was great, but too broken for me to finish. The Void was great, too, despite the eyerollfulness of the boobies.

Seven is a number with a loooong history in Fallen London lore, my work generally. In particular, it was significant in Seeking Mr Eaten's Name, a notorious FL/SS plotline/concept/quest to which CS is sort of the spiritual successor.

the stream is worth watching if you have ramble tolerance! also here are recommends from a link upthread:

This list would change if someone asked me tomorrow, but:
The King Must Die
The Anubis Gates, or alternatively The Last Coin (different authors, but look up William Ashbless)
Desolation Road
Vance, probably Emphyrio
A Night in the Lonesome October, or another Zelazny to seasonal taste
Tanith Lee, Flat Earth especially
I'm not even naming specific books any more let alone limiting it to 5, shut up this is my AMA
That Hideous Strength, which despite its many flaws and its weird gender politics stays in my mind ineradicably (War in Heaven too)
and the usual greats, Tolkien and Moorcock and whatnot, honestly belong in here too, but you've read those folk right

My first advice is always 'finish something, even if it's a small thing, and be clear about your goals'.

If your goal is to finish something and get feedback and maybe create a portfolio piece to get hired, then just get it done, put it on itch.io for free or for very little (or the App Store if you swing that way) and keep your expectations at 'good experience'.

If you want to make money from your first game, then you're probably, I'm afraid, SOL in the current market as a solo dev. But if you do, then you want a biz plan, a marketing plan, probably investment, and some sort of advantage - publicity, exceptional art or writing, a really unique idea - as well as luck.

Someone (Jeff Vogel?) said that starting an indie company is like starting a band, and I think that's a great analogy for the kind of low payoffs and long shot at medium-range success that it has; plus the sense that if you're just doing it explicitly for fun, that's cool.

I dislike the idea of the player being irredeemable. Partly this is a technical, craft objection: it's hard to maintain interest in a choice-driven story if there's no way out. Partly it's because I can't imagine anyone being incorruptible under all circumstances, so I think the reverse should apply.

I think remorse is important and so is restitution, even if it's only symbolic; I don't see redemption without those two things.

there are two goldfish in a bowl, and one of them says, do you know how to drive this thi

no wait

The things he sends against the Colonel, IIRC. To at least some extent, at least some of them are lions.

my pleasure!

I think it was leaving Failbetter that provoked that introspection. If you've ever started a business, you'll know how devouring an experience it can be, especially a creative business. You're terrified of failing if you stop to look around, and you're always wondering which five tasks of a hundred possible tasks you'll do. When I stepped away, I had time to think, including thoughts like 'why the hell am I even doing this' 'do I want to stay in game dev' 'what do I want to have done with my life in twenty years'.

To a lesser extent: I had both a creative and a legal majority stake in Failbetter, and I was always wary of it becoming too obviously the Alexis Kennedy Show. So I often pulled back from getting too personal in interviews. I mean not too far back because I like hearing myself talk, but I always wanted other people to have time in the limelight for both selfish and unselfish reasons.

The Enigma approach: maybe? I might do some sort of Easter egg or commentary, but I hadn't thought about it until you suggested it.

Post mortem and blog commentary, definitely! I find it incredibly useful to go through that sort of stuff, and I'm glad you like it.

I asked what the requirements and limitations on Stellaris were, and they said: "the universe is vast and full of wonders. That's it." So that wasn't so bad.

Dragon Age meant working within a lot of limitations, but honestly, as long as I understand what the rules are - and I had a pretty good idea - I don't mind. I don't get the same blast that I get from writing my own lore, but then (so far) I've always gone back and written my own lore later.

I think a good creative director or lead writer is one who gets to the core of what the game is about, and can convey that economically to the people they're working with. Bringing other writers on to Fallen London taught me a lot about how to do that (and I didn't always get it right). The worst thing you can do is say to someone 'no, it doesn't quite fit, I can't tell you why'. Often that comes from a place of jealousy.

Right? I don't know how I could live anywhere else now, but also I often wish I did.

Varchas is properly intriguing! But it wasn't me who wrote that - it was one of Meg Jayanth's two guest ports (the other was the Isle of Cats).

It's increasingly possible!

I could, but I think that's very much a Prophet-pledge-level sort of question.

The thing that I'm most excited to implement in CS: probably the Figures of the Hours, and their associated appetites.

someone else asked this too, c/ping!

Yes: death, and its approach or absence. There's an interview here where I talk a bit more about it
https://www.pcgamesn.com/dragon-age-4/dragon-age-4-story-alexis-kennedy
but the short version is that I have some dramatic family history that, I eventually realised, had quite a predictable effect on my interests.
The other thing is loss, longing, yearning, things like saudade and mono no aware and Sehnsucht. Those are all fancy imported terms for various kinds of unslakeable yearning. And that sounds extremely literary, but of course those things generally get translated through, eg, rubbery squid people longing for a lost purple world. And that's the third theme of my work: I just like making up ridiculous fun horrible things. The New Weird was a big influence I guess.
Oh and the other thing: funny, but nasty, but funny, but nasty.

looking at my recently played Steam list, I see:

Mount&Blade: Warband
Stellaris
Heat Signature
Access (a mate built it, not normally my thing, but it's fun)
Darkwood (I met those guys in Poland, I've been meaning to play it)
Death of the Outsider
XCOM 2
Northgard
FTL

That's a pretty good cross-section of my genre interests.

The enumeration of action. The House of the Sun. Unheard music. A feast untouched.

That's tricky to do, because there are games which provided mechanical inspiration, but the mood of their fiction is very different.

Hand of Fate, Hadean Lands, Doodle God and King of Dragon Pass all dropped seeds.

I'm a very unmusical person: I'm focused on words and symbols so much that music is just like sorcery to me. I did discover with horror that the kind of music I like a lot of, the 4AD sort of thing, is apparently called 'dream pop'. I think I don't really like anyone more than I like the National.

I hadn't! I'll take a look, thank you.

thank you! :)

an absolute pleasure, thanks for being so enthusiastic!

this:

"Sunless is in a good place. The hay is in the barn. Essential content is nearly done, essential art is done, essential tech is done. We have more than a week to go [before we lock the code], and the risk of f*cking up because we're tired outweighs the benefit of making the game 2% better. Overtime is for emergencies. We'll be around on Friday night and Saturday in launch week. Work your 7 hours with a proper lunch, go home, sleep 7 hours. If you have more work than you can do in the time, talk to me and we will agree what to cut."

but if you mean fictional content, I think it's the Decommissioned Steamer text for Fallen London; the seventeen sex scenes in Sunless Sea; or the flashbacks to family life in Dandelion [which isn't currently available anywhere, sorry]!

Very much the same wells; I'd never heard of them, I'm afraid.

The Lionsmith's opponent.

A profound and considerable pleasure. Thank you.

The day this question was asked, it was leftover chilli from board games night. My chilli enhancement tips are dark chocolate (thanks /u/tituscarbuncle), Worcester sauce, and umami. Don't think just do.

Find what's distinctive and what's relevant to the player's experience. Don't generate history for the sake of it. Read Tolkien's letters and essays on the topic. Read things that other people aren't reading, if you want to be distinctive. I am sceptical of the term 'worldbuilding', actually: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2017-02-02-against-worldbuilding

Also, thanks!

I have! I never finished it, and I suspect I may never finish an IPL game, but I loved the effect. I recommend your comment to anyone curious about why they should play it.

Coleridge was one of my A-level set writers. I can't stand most of his stuff - whingeingly self-conscious Romantic flaffle - but KK, Ancient Mariner, half of Christabel, Frost at Midnight, his droll four-liner about Donne, all great. KK particularly stayed with me, but also it's influenced a bunch of other authors who I subsequently read (including Lewis in the Silver Chair). And I've always had a thing about dark water. When I put together the pitch for the game that became Sunless Sea, the name just seemed inevitable.

I honestly can't remember! I've had this username for a decade. Let's say it's a general call for economy and elegance

Thank you! I wrote a novel, which I couldn't get published because it wasn't very good. I've done a handful of short stories, but only one ever made it to print.

I might do more, but I'm just not as good at linear fiction; there are only so many hours in the day; and there are lots of things I want to do. So writing a novel would take months of time that I'd rather spend on other projects.

I do, however, enjoy board games, and I like the idea of designing or collaborating on one some day.