![]() ![]() If you're cheating the game, the scenes will run out eventually. Q: Is there a cutoff for the scenes where you thought, surely no one will go this long without blinking? You see a scene before that counter comes up, but then once it does the player knows, “Oh, the next time I blink, I'm going to be jumping forward.” It created this pace that we didn't have before and we were able to kind of design and write in a completely new way. There was so much that we weren't exploring, and it was this perfect way to divide our scenes up. Before that metronome comes up, we started using blinks in all these other cool ways that we weren't doing before, where it's not just blinking to jump forward in time, it's blinking to reveal the environment or engage in a mini-game. So we came up with this thing that we call the blink counter, which is this little metronome at the bottom of the screen. But when you thought about actually trying to tell a two-hour-plus story and build something that felt cinematic and full-bodied as a narrative, very quickly it was clear that that wasn't going to work. ![]() It was an amazing thing to do in a 10-15 minute show. It's been a big journey technically and design-wise, but we're finally at a place that we feel really good about. Through Rich's work as an engineer, he figured out how to build this system in a way that would work for everybody, for lots of different gamers and lots of different computers. Before Richard came on, it was not something that we could have released as a commercial product. Parkes: Rich has been completely essential for making the blink detection work as advertised. Over time as feedback came in, I would make adjustments to accommodate various insights and try to understand the root cause of problems people were having, et cetera, et cetera. The actual core mechanics of the game, the look and feel of the game, and the quality of the blink detection were what I spent quite a bit of time on in the early days. Over the years, the game changed drastically. As Graham said, it was a proof of concept level, a very basic implementation. When I, when I tested the game out, there was definitely room for improvement. I thought, this is really cool and I think we can make this better. They were kind of surprised by their own blinks. It really struck me, just seeing their emotions on their faces. I was just really thrilled by the concept and the idea and having watched some of those videos from GDC, seeing people react to the experience was really strong. Through mutual contacts, Will reached out to me and said he was looking for someone to help out, particularly with the blink detection algorithm and then beyond as a technical guy, as an implementer. At that time they had the Kickstarter campaign and they had people backing it, and there were funds coming in to pay for a developer. Rich got involved pretty soon, I think.īeare: Yeah, exactly. We wanted to continue to work on it and build a fuller version of it. After that, we kind of all looked at each other and I'm like, there's clearly something special here. There’s just something about it that really cuts into people and resonates. You try to stay in these moments, but inevitably you have to blink.Įven with a somewhat unsophisticated story and unsophisticated production, we were getting this real emotional reaction that we were kind of disarmed, by. I think there was something about the central hook and the way that players reacted to having this story unfold, where every time you blinked would be tracked and you would jump forward in time. Then we did more work on it, it went to GDC, and won the Student award there.īy that time felt like, oh man, this is just a little fraction of what we’d actually like to do with this thing. It was a very unsophisticated little game, but we submitted it to IndieCade and ended up winning the Developer's Choice award there. ![]() We built a version of it that is one 10th of what it is now. It's such a potent idea that got me so excited and I immediately jumped at the opportunity to work with them. He had the idea of using that to make a narrative game about life, literally flashing before your eyes. So early on he had this kind of “out there” idea and realized that all commercial computers normally come with a webcam that can do eye-tracking. Will and I spent our high school years taking the bus together, just talking about games and, you know, pontificating about the future of interactive media and always had that shared passion. ![]() I was at NYU at the time studying playwriting. As soon as he had the idea, he knew that it was going to be a very story-centric game. Will, who's not on this call, who's the creator and one of the directors on the project it started as his thesis project at USC. Parkes: This game actually started as a senior project. Q: How did you get started on Before Your Eyes and what has the experience been like for you? ![]()
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