ALL
Artix Krieger
| Friday, June 11, 2021
How have you been? It has been a while. Too long! Thought it might be nice for us to have an "Artix Entertainment catch up" post. There is a lot going on across the video games. This post is going to be a bit more personal though. You know, like we did in the "Good old days."
In case you joined our community semi-recently, my name is Artix. Nice to meet you! I run the team of 45-ish game devs that make up Artix Entertainment. For nearly 20 years we have been creating, releasing, and doing weekly updates for games like AdventureQuest, DragonFable, EpicDuel, AQWorlds, and AdventureQuest 3D. The team and I love what we do.
But a lot of players ask me, "Artix, what exactly do you do!?". Depending on who you ask, you will get a very different answer, LOL! My specialty is in the creation of new games and "putting out fires". Sometimes I write stories, do promo art, and do game design stuffs. But the best use of my time is helping to grow and improve our team and games. Ever since coding, drawing, animating, and doing the database and server-side work for the original AdventureQuest -- I have been surrounding myself with like-minded, talented, and passionate game devs. A lot of our team was recruited from our community. It is crazy to think that Oishii, Dage, Darkon, and so many of our other stars started as extremely dedicated players.
Each of our major games has a dedicated team. We call the person in charge of the game the "Game Lead". Hindsight being 20/20 wish we would have gone with Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM).
An easy way of thinking about it is each game is run like its own studio. Each game pays for its team and costs. The game's artists, animators, and coders create the new content that is released each week.
But we have shared things that help all of the games... like Player Support. Player Support is a dedicated team of 4 people with Nythera at its lead. Other shared things include the physical office (The Secret Underground Lab), our online shop HeroMart, accounting, legal, marketing, the server farm, and our unbelievably awesome server administrator Captain Rhubarb.
When I started this post I did not intend to make it a "the inner workings of an indie game dev studio post" but.... too late XD. I am sure there are a few people reading this with the intent of finding something terribly wrong or "dramatizable"-- but I am sharing with you just as if you were sitting with me in person and asked, "So... how does this actually work?" It is good to know. So lets keep going!
Creating a new game is one of the funnest, hardest, and most fulfilling things a game dev can do. Right now, we are hard at work on AdventureQuest Worlds: Mobile. That is not its real name. Because it would be really weird to play a game with the word "mobile" in its title on Steam and other platforms O_O.
The trickiest part of making new games is figuring out how to keep all of the existing stuff going while you do it! The best solution is to hire new people that can free up other people to work on the new stuff. However, the budget does not always allow that.
The only thing harder than creating a brand new game... is converting an existing one X_X
I saw a tweet someone made that said something like "They already have the code base, it should be easy to release it" or "it has been 5 years, why have they not released this on mobile yet." It never occurred to me that most people do not know. They do not know the truth. Converting AdventureQuest Worlds out of Flash and into something that will run on your phone is about as easy as converting Chinese Checkers to Chess. (If you have never seen a Chinese Checkers board, please google the image XD). There is no easy way to 1:1 convert even a single item. Let alone 10 years of code, cutscenes, animation, and surprisingly complicated art. This is largely due to the amazing things Flash's Actionscript 3.0 allowed us to do. It made the game truly unique. The AQWorlds:Mobile team's focus has been on creating tools to convert the existing armors, items, and functionality as closely as possible. I would love to write you a dedicated post on this. And soon, we should start a design notes about this to rapid track our progress.
The team consists of Warlic (front end coding and conversion), Yorumi (back end server logic and database), TuNik (UI/Interface), and a ton of shared people including myself. Even though it will be a new game, we will have to re-create every single map, monster, pet, armor, item, story, quest... everything. The big goal of the game is to allow you to simply log in and have all your gear. It should be super fun. Until the armor conversion process is finalized, we are often stuck in a holding pattern. I have been very weary of making any big posts until this is finalized. The crazy color customization we do in AQWorlds has been absolutely killing us. X_X But we are getting closer every day. (As I write this post, I am sitting in the meeting with TuNik working on the login screen.)
The goal is still to release AdventureQuest Worlds: Mobile this year.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the original AdventureQuest. Should we apply for a Guinness Book of World Records for 20 years of non-stop weekly releases?
The processes and techniques we are building for AQWorlds are important to all of our original games. Because AQworlds is by far the hardest, mastering this will allow us to recreate our other games too. Of course, you probably were already thinking this.
Our Battle Concerts with Korn, Breaking Benjamin, Alice in Chains, and the Dreamers were a hit. I have been looking for some interesting things for us to do next. Our truly live events are one of the fun and unique things we can do. I would like to double down on that experience and take it to the next level.
A bunch of our stranger side projects are also getting close to the finish line. The Gravelyn comic book, the retro NES game "Dungeons & DoomKnights", the real-life Dage and Sepulchure Helmets, and some new stuff coming to HeroMart.com.
It has been over a year since we have had any tours at the lab. And for good reason. Everyone has been working from home since the start of the pandemic. We are getting ready to open things back up though. Right now, at the Lab, the carpets are being ripped up to be replaced and the walls are getting a fresh coat of paint. (Which means we finally get to replace that ugly yellow color on the wall in my office!) I am eager to work side by side with the team again. We have a ton of new team members whom I have never even met in real life yet! This includes Blaze, Aveleon, TuNik, Baleerio, Aveleon, Baht, and others. One thing is for sure, the telecommuting will be a regular part of our "new normal". I think a lot of companies are finding this to be true.
"Work harder, not smarter." (TM)
For the past 2 years I have been burning the candle on both ends, and also in the middle. 100% my own fault. I am grateful for it. You probably do not know this, but two-and-a-half years ago I hit a super rough patch and lost my fire. Hey, work on anything for nearly 20 years and it is bound to happen. To rekindle my love of video games and creativity I got a stick and went on a walk in the woods. Spent a lot of time thinking back to when I was little. Remembered what it was like going to my friend's house and sitting on his couch, watching him play video games on his Nintendo. Because he would not let me play. >_> Thought of all the games, movies, and experiences that shaped who I am. Skipping a longer version of this story.... I got my old NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) out of storage to "train my kids classically!". This of course, lead directly to creating the 8-Bit NES project. It was a personal project that I would build in my spare time to reignite my inner flame. You can see it in my eyes when I talk about it. But it was supposed to be a 2 month project... NOT TWO YEARS! O_O I feel safe talking about this because of how close it is to being finished. But wow has this been a weird personal journey that changed me.
"I have been burning the candle at both ends.... and the middle too."
I wake up earlier in the morning than I would like. The kids wake up first and jump on me. Three high speed 50-pound alarms that show no mercy. I start work around 9:30 AM and work on the major AE games until 6:30-ish PM. Glisel is my handler, and is typically in voice chat with me for those 8 to 9 hours. Then, I have about 3 hours of quality family time training my little ninjas. I put them to bed at 9:30 PM and return to my computer to work on my night project. From 9:30 PM to about 1:00 AM I work on Dungeons & DoomKnights with Clarion. Then repeat. Been doing this 11 hour-ish schedule nearly every day... weekdays and weekends for the past 2 years. For faaaaaaar too long I have had 0 free time. I have a hard time going to sleep after I wrap up, so I normally put some series on Netflix and fall asleep after ~15 minutes. (No idea why, but Star Trek:TNG is often my go to.)
Hindsight being 20/21.... it should have been possible to have done this without sacrificing so much.
But there is no greater feeling than actually finishing something you have worked that hard on. That is true for anything you put your heart and soul into... and it will definitely be true for all of the game projects we talked about today.
Wow and thank you! This was a bit of a novel XD I used to write near daily design notes posts, but I do not think these article-style updates are the best way to communicate daily anymore. I am going to experiment with video to rapid fire our progress updates. Super looking forward to being back in the lab to do it.
Was nice talking to you again! Lets keep it going.
Battle on!
Artix
If you enjoyed this post, or have any ideas on how I can stay in better touch with you.... let me know on Twitter! Tweet me at @ArtixKrieger
AQWorlds 
DragonFable 
EpicDuel 
