Dragon Age: Inquisition

The Sunday Discussion - TheModernStoryteller - creator of "The Forgotten City"

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It seems as though games are never taken as seriously as other media forms such as movies, television series, music or even books. To many people we simply play a game, a game created without any thought towards a story, the lore or even the characters. We, as gamers, know that not to be true. 

However, last year something incredible happened and a mod called "The Forgotten City" won the national Writers Guild award for its script. Proving, at last, that what we create is something that can hold its own against other mainstream media.

Today I'm pleased to give you the Sunday discussion with the author and creator of "The Forgotten City", please give a warm Nexus Mods welcome to Nick Pearce.

Hi TheModernStoryteller, thank you for talking to me today. To begin with please may you let us know a little bit about you?

My name’s Nick Pearce, and I live in Melbourne, Australia. Up until recently, I was working as a legal and strategy advisor for a multi-billion dollar tech company, and modding in my spare time. I released my first mod, The Forgotten City, in late 2015, and it changed my life. I discovered my passion for game development, and the reception was beyond anything I ever imagined: it’s been downloaded over 900,000 times, repeatedly covered by the likes of PC Gamer, Kotaku, GamesRadar, IGN, and won a bunch of awards including an Australian Writers’ Guild Award.

As a result, I decided to take a break from my legal career, and right now I’m making a beautiful, gripping and intelligent story-driven game with Unreal Engine 4, which should appeal to anyone who enjoyed The Forgotten City. I’m hoping to announce it in the first half of 2017, so if you’d like news and updates, please connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube or subscribe to my mailing list.

It’s great to see mod authors and creators going the route of their own games, are there any out there that have inspired you to go down this route?

Thanks! Making the leap from modder to game developer was a huge decision, and I considered a lot of factors, including the precedent set by the developers of Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable, who blazed the trail. I’m going down a slightly different path, in that I’m not re-creating The Forgotten City; I think that might have been disappointing for those who’ve already played it. My new game is a leap forward; it’s grander in scope and much prettier, and free from the constraints of third-party IP. But I’m incorporating all the lessons I learnt from making The Forgotten City, and watching hundreds of people play it via Youtube!



You mentioned that you are going to use the Unreal Engine 4, do you have any previous experience with this engine or are you going to be learning from scratch?

I’ve been quietly teaching myself Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) for about a year now. My modding experience really helped; I taught myself the Creation Kit pretty quickly (The Forgotten City was my first attempt at a mod) and that experience equipped me with an understanding of how game engines work generally, and confidence that I could easily skill up in a new engine. I also have some very talented local UE4 developers on my team.

Going back a bit, do you mind me asking at what age you began gaming and what system it was on?

I played my first PC game - Snake - at about 6. I was hooked.

Did you have a favourite game back then? What game stirs up some of your best memories?

The first game I bought was The Secret of Monkey Island (1990). I’ve since replayed the Special Edition and after 27 years or so, and it’s a masterpiece, albeit a flawed one. It’s a delightfully funny, wacky adventure full of memorable characters and puzzles.

How about any of the other Tim Schafer point 'n' click adventures such as ‘Day of the Tentacle’ or ‘Full Throttle’, did you get to play them as well?

I loved Full Throttle too, particularly Ben’s (the protagonist’s) unique take on problem-solving; coming across a locked door and being able to just kick it down was very satisfying!

Apart from gaming, do you have any other hobbies that you enjoy?

Spending time with my wife, playing with my dog, collecting liquor, writing.

Your mod ‘The Forgotten City’ has over 125,000 unique downloads and has seen critical acclaim, winning the Australian Writers Guild award for its script (the first for a game) - did you ever dream it was going to be as big, or well received as it was?

I had very modest expectations. My target was 283 downloads; I figured I’d put 1700 hours into it, so if 283 people played it for 6 hours each, that would be a work to entertainment ratio of 1:1, and I could call that a win. Since then it’s had over 900,000 downloads altogether, counting the Nexus (both original and Special Edition versions), Steam Workshop, Bethesda.net and ModDB. It’s hard to comprehend numbers like that.



283 downloads was your target, well safe to say you smashed that figure. How long did it take you to write?

The entire project took over 1700 hours, over a period of 3 years.

Wow, that is some huge undertaking, would you mind giving our community a breakdown of the process from initial idea through to first release?

I was inspired by Vault 13 in Fallout: New Vegas (among other things), a ruined vault in which the player slowly uncovers the haunting story of the people who lived there and some dark truths about human nature. The story left me with chills. It inspired me to tell my own story about the human condition.

I started with a one-page design document, then built the setting: an underground Dwarven city in a state of ruin. Then I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could go back in time?”. So next I built the time travel gameplay mechanic, and re-created the city in alternative timelines, decorating it with lighting, flora, and characters.

Over the next 3 years I worked on it whenever I had spare time, learning as I went, and my design document grew to 100 pages.

When it was almost done, I put out a teaser trailer I hacked together, which got picked up by Kotaku and PC Gamer, and prompted the brilliant orchestral composer Trent Moriarty to contact me out of the blue, offering to compose an original score. Easiest decision I ever made.

The crunch before release was brutal - I worked extremely long hours for about 3 months - and I released it on 3 October 2015.

How many voice actors did you involve in sound recording?

I had help from 18 wonderful voice actors (chosen from over 100 auditions). They’re all really talented and lovely people, and I keep in touch with them via a Facebook group. I strongly encourage anyone making a big, high-quality mod to get in contact with them via contact details on the Nexus mod page, or here.

Your username now seems incredibly apt, have you always been interested in storytelling?

Thanks, and yes I’ve been into writing for a while. I’m half way through a novel, which I know is a bit of a cliche, but my excuse is that I’ve been busy with game projects! Also, several years ago I founded a writer’s group, where a bunch of local novelists would get together regularly and workshop their writing, and facilitated it for about 7 years.



Sounds like you have your hands busy, are you able to tell us anything about the novel or is it under wraps at the moment?

I’m not talking about my novel just yet... :-)

Speaking of novels and literature, do you have any favourite genres or authors?

I really enjoy science fiction (eg. Philip K. Dick) and fantasy (eg. George R Martin), as well as dark and heady classic lit (eg. Fyodor Dostoyevsky). My own style is heavily influenced by those genres: I like to use fantastical “what if” premises to explore serious and dark questions about human nature.

Do you currently write for anyone?

I sure do! I’m currently employed as a writer by the Australian Government to write a new RPG for young adults. I’m also working on my own game project.

Going back to ‘The Forgotten City’, seeing as how popular it is, do you have any plans for either future expansions or a different mod entirely?

Making mods is an incredibly time-consuming pursuit, and time has a monetary value. Making The Forgotten City took me over 1,700 hours, which is worth over $100,000 of my time - not to mention the contributions of the 18 skilled voice actors and the talented composer who were involved. That’s an awful lot of time/money to give away for free (again), particularly when there’s a potentially lucrative market for comparable games. If “paid mods” had worked out differently, I might have been able to make a living by developing high-quality DLC-style mods like The Forgotten City. But things didn’t work out that way, and with no hard feelings, I need to move on - that’s one of the many reasons why I’m making a new game with Unreal Engine 4.

Do you get a lot of feedback from the community? The positive must be great, but how do you deal with the negative?

Yes, the positive feedback is great, and there are a lot of appreciative, thoughtful people on the Nexus. Aside from those people, I’ve found the reaction to be pretty amusing. To illustrate, I’ll use a simple analogy: Imagine modding is like driving around in an ice cream van in the summer, handing out free ice creams to people. In my experience:
  • 0.001% of people toss you a few bucks for your trouble
  • 4% of people thank you for the ice cream
  • 95% of people take the ice cream without a word
  • 0.999% of people take the ice cream, drop it on the ground, blame you, then spray-paint “kiddie fiddler” on the side of your van.

I deal with the negative (non-constructive) posts by simply deleting them without responding. It’s the only sensible thing to do. As the venerable George Carlin once said “Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”



Did you get outside help from other mod authors for ‘The Forgotten City’?

Nope. It was a solo project.

So you create every aspect of the mod yourself, you must have had to learn an awful lot of new skills. Where did you find was the best place to get help or look for answers to questions that arose?

Yes, I had to teach myself how to design levels, write scripts, re-texture models, troubleshoot, create NPCs and assign behaviour, write non-linear dialogue, cast and direct voice actors, master audio, and record and edit trailers, among other things. When I started, I had none of those skills, and just resolved to pick them up along the way. I got stuck plenty of times, and sometimes googling my question led me to a helpful forum, but mostly I just had to work it out for myself through trial and error and countless hours of determined troubleshooting.

Are there any mod authors to whom you look up to and respect?

I found the work of Someguy2000, particularly New Vegas Bounties for Fallout: New Vegas, to be very inspiring. It was a revelation to me that mods could be on par with an original game.

If you could give any advice to aspiring mod authors what would it be?

The best thing about modding is that you’re able to take creative risks that commercial game developers simply cannot. Make whatever you want - not what you think a mass audience will like. I took an action RPG about killing dragons and zombies and modded it into a thoughtful murder mystery with virtually no combat. In other words, I made the game I wanted to play, and it turns out a lot of people wanted to play that too.

Thank you very much for talking to me today, we wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

30 comments

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  1. sirjesto
    sirjesto
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    Wanted to talk to you about you banning me from your mod.
    First of all, I'm not sure why. I imagine it was because I brought up an error in your script.
    I've been a member of this community for 10 years and I have to say that is a first for me. Banning someone for just pointing out a bug.
    I'm a member of the development team for Legacy of the Dragonborn and all of us over there are aware of the issue I pointed out.
    I thought I would be the one to bring it to your attention.
    I've fixed it on my end anyways, but I would have thought you would at least respond to me about it.
    We at Legacy like your mod and are happy with having it as a supported mod.
    I just hope that as a community we can all work together to make the best mods possible and without feelings getting hurt.
  2. ween24
    ween24
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    Neat story..................
  3. macrocosm144
    macrocosm144
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    Great interview, I was curious about this having just discovered Forgotten City is on SSE, cant wait to install and try it out, it looks awesome. Oh & love the icecream analogy and the George Carlin quote XD

    I was also disappointed to see the paid mods thing go down, honestly I couldn't figure what the big hullabaloo was about, over on Steam, hordes of zombies flooded ALL discussion forums and a whole lot of other BS, communist uprising? lol, I dunno... AFAIC if you don't want to buy something, then don't... simple.

    Not many people have unlimited time to spare, paid mods may have helped with that.It seems you still got a lot of value out of offering your free mod though, so its not a total loss by any means, albeit unsustainable in the long haul. Anyhow, you'll feel great as sales for your new game fill your creative coffers & nurture your next ventures. Best of luck to you!

    One thing ive told a few of my modder friends in other games, if they really want to do an uber epic mod, attempt to work directly with the game developer (if possible) and release as a paid DLC, that sidesteps the biggest problem inherent in communities of all types, the "tyranny of the majority"... strait up democracy is broken, the Greeks showed us that ages ago. lol
    1. TheModernStoryteller
      TheModernStoryteller
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      Thanks for the support and advice, Macrocosm!
    2. macrocosm144
      macrocosm144
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      you're quite welcome man, thanks for adding your awesome mod to the nexus, and for making the SSE version too, SSE is so nice and smooth it should be better than ever.
    3. Gefri
      Gefri
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      Paid mods? Money destroys art. Creating for monetary gain is necessary for some, but it is also enslaving. When you start paying the bills with money made from your art, the Bean Counters start to own you. Then the ad panderers move in, making you part of the machine, and turning the beauty you've created into a whore. Artists who create solely for the love of creation enrich the world with beauty in its the purest form! Nothing is more valuable than that. I toast and cheer all Nexus hobbyists and enthusiasts!
    4. thejynxed
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      Part of the stink was that more than a few of the mods that tried/wanted to go "pay for", would have been violating the open source licenses they were using for some of the software that was used to create (and within the mods themselves) that don't allow for commercial use under any circumstance.

      This on top of the the parts where as soon as Valve attempted it, people were ripping off mods from other sites and submitting them as their own.

      To further add insult to injury, you then had certain "master mods" such as SkyUI (and some for the Fallout titles) that attempted to go pay-only, and that would have basically broken the entire modding scene for Skyrim and New Vegas at the very least due to dependency mods all becoming disabled at once since they no longer had access to their master mods and that functionality being removed. This, combined with their idea of charging you for every update of the main mod had people out with the torches and pitchforks.

      I honestly don't mind the idea of modders being paid, but the way they attempted to implement the entire thing was foolish and ill-planned.
  4. Varana
    Varana
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    Nice interview!

    The Australian government is into RPG writing? What?

    Best of luck with your projects.
  5. TheDarkHorseDan
    TheDarkHorseDan
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    Hi, this is definitely not the place to request this information but here goes.

    I have a scripting question as I'm doing a new world mod.

    All I want to do is make an actor die when a quest stage is set to 30 for example.

    Any tips?
  6. Kitexx
    Kitexx
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    Ah! A lovely interview. I loved the Forgotten City but...I don't remember if I endorsed it after I downloaded it...


    I should probably do that now.
  7. snowblowme
    snowblowme
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    How... self-important.
    1. bigdeano89
      bigdeano89
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      Says the user with 10 posts and zero endorsements given. Im willing to bet you are part of the 0.999% then?
    2. TheModernStoryteller
      TheModernStoryteller
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      Kudos to you, Big Deano. :-)
  8. gamer2736
    gamer2736
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    Awesome !!! To be able learn all those skills from scratch, sticking to the schedule for 3yrs .... Hats off to you ! I sincerely hope your game is a grand success !
  9. baldingduck
    baldingduck
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    This may upset some Star Wars fans and if you haven't seen Rogue One...[SPOILER ALERT] I was amazed that the Actor (Peter Cushing) portraying the Admiral in the Death Star who has been dead for 20 years was completely CGI, yet when Princess Leah makes a brief appearance, it is as if C3PO's projection was used to create the image.


    My first thought was, "There are GAMER hobbyists who produce mediocre Mods that are of better graphic quality than this." It kind of begs the question, "Do the communities play well together?"..."Do they play at all?"
  10. soulgamers
    soulgamers
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    Hi
    I would rather play a game than watch a movie.
    In-game you are there with action. controlling it, and being the actor.
    something that the couch potatoes who just watch films can't seem to grasp.

    I'll have a look into The Forgotten City.

    Ok then, I'm just downloading it now.
    I've been playing Skyrim for years, one of my favorite games of all time.
    It's the modders who make the game the best.

    1. soulgamers
      soulgamers
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      Hi again
      Well I have just played The Forgotten City throughout the night. from when I downloaded it till now.
      and quite enjoyed it. though I did get everyone killed by letting the woman out the room.
      but I made a save just before I did.
      So, I'm going back to that save, to try and stop the law from happening. if it's at all posable.
    2. R0NlN
      R0NlN
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      Nice spoiler there, soulgamers!
    3. soulgamers
      soulgamers
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      Hi R0NlN

      I'm glad you likes it. . . Notice I didn't give her name, or what law.
      that you will have to findout for yourself.
    4. blueraga
      blueraga
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      There is a way to get the law to stop happening...but it requires you to break the law a couple of times first.

      Doing so leads to the BEST ending where

      Spoiler:  
      Show
      the entire city is saved and you have a new place full of merchants, etc. I'll give you a hint: it has to do with possessions of the Vigilants of Stendarr who visited the city...
    5. soulgamers
      soulgamers
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      Hi blueraga
      Well OK then, Thanks.
      I was thinking that I'm going to start the quest allover again. and do it a different way.
      so I uncheck it, and I'll now turn it back on to start it again.
      ---------------------
      At the moment I'm playing ( Qaxe's Questorium by Qaxe Qaixaci.)