Since the release of The Nameless Mod, we’ve all been hard at work on our next project. We’re also slowly transitioning from being an informal mod team to a much more professionally-minded independent game studio. A big step in that journey was completed yesterday when we officially incorporated OTP as an actual company. We’ve been working together for seven years now, but I’ll tell you it was a nice feeling to see the name “Off Topic Productions” on a batch of government documents. Keep watching this blog for future developments, hopefully we’ll have some bigger announcements to make in the months to come.
Gelo Business Legal, LLC
Today, GameCareerGuide has published my post-mortem of The Nameless Mod, which they call “one of the most interesting total conversions out there”. I structured it in the traditional form of Game Developer post-mortems, and it starts like this:
If we’d known what we were getting ourselves into, we’d have run away screaming. The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex stands out for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a single-player total conversion, which isn’t the easiest or most popular category of modification on the internet. Secondly, it’s enormous: The Nameless Mod features over 14 hours of voice-over, the average length of a playthrough is 15 hours, and that’s just playing one of two significantly different, mutually exclusive plotlines. Third, and arguably most notably, The Nameless Mod has been finished and released to very favorable reviews.
The project was in development for seven years, two months, and 11 days by an international team of hobbyists who never met each other. It placed enormous demands on communication, leadership, and quality assurance, and to top it all off, it started as that most reviled of genres: forum fan fiction.
And then I go on to talk about the development process and describe 5 things that went right and 5 things that went wrong, in the usual fashion. It’s as honest as I could make it, and I hope people will find it interesting and perhaps even be able to learn something from it or at least gain some inspiration.
The post-mortem may be found here.
Jonas The Nameless Mod Behind-the-scenes, GamaSutra, GameCareerGuide, Post-mortem
Australian games magazine PC PowerPlay has reviewed The Nameless Mod in their June 2009 issue. The review takes up 2 full pages and ends with ratings of 10/10 for Gameplay, 9/10 for Innovation, 7/10 for Polish, and 9/10 overall. There are also numerous TNM references throughout the magazine, including a mention on the cover and a review editorial explaining why the magazine chose to review TNM as a game rather than a mod. You can check out a few scans on Jonas’ Blog. The Nameless Mod can also be located on the magazine’s cover disc.
A good taste in games is something the Australians share with the Germans: GameStar, perhaps the best-selling computer gaming magazine in Europe, has given TNM a full-page review in their June 2009 issue, giving it a perfect score of 5/5 in Design, Scope, and Fun.
In addition to these impressive reviews, a couple of interviews have also been published with members of Off Topic Productions: GameSetWatch and Gamasutra have interviewed Jonas and Lawrence as part of a series of articles looking at alternative games, indie titles, and mods. Among other things, the interview deals with how it was possible to keep the team interested for so long and how the game’s design has changed during development. You can check that out here.
PCPowerPlay, not content with all the coverage they’d given us in their magazine, has published a 3-page interview with Lawrence, Jonas, and Shane on their website. The interview touches such topics as post-release support and why non-linear games are so interesting. Read the full interview here.
Jonas The Nameless Mod GamaSutra, GameSetWatch, GameStar, Interview, PC PowerPlay, Press, Review
After another month of hard work, Off Topic Productions is pleased to finally bring you version 1.0.2 of The Nameless Mod. This patch contains more than 200 fixes (view the change log for full details) and should put a stop to the last of the crashes people have been reporting as well as generally polishing up your entire gameplay experience. Grab it here:
While we’ve been busy polishing TNM, fans have been busy playing it. We’ve reached over 7000 downloads and have been receiving some incredibly positive feedback. Between the insightful posts on our forums, many great new entries on our wiki, and some stupendous fan art, we’ve come to realize that Deus Ex (and subsequently TNM) has some very talented and generous fans. Here’s a sampler of that aforementioned fan art, created by teknikal (and the kind of stuff we wish we’d had as concept art!):
Check out teknikal’s gallery for more eye pleasing paintery.
Jonas The Nameless Mod Fan art, Patch
For a bit of a peek behind the scenes of the development of The Nameless Mod, ModDB has just published their Developer Banter segment featuring Lawrence Laxdal, Jonas Wæver, and Shane Tapp of Off Topic Productions. Recorded a month before the game was released, it offers a pre-mortem look at the design principles behind the game and the process of developing TNM.
Developer Banter – The Nameless Mod
The informal interview deals with the role of feature creep in mod development, keeping the story in check, designing an open-ended yet narrative-driven game, balancing the wish to trust the player with the need to impart the necessary information, the team’s plans for the future, incorporating community engine enhancements, the advantages of modding to game developers, the health of the Deus Ex community, our favourite moments in the mod (including funny bugs during development), and advice for other modders.
Jonas The Nameless Mod Behind-the-scenes, Interview, ModDB
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In the mean streets of the internet, fandom carries a gun. Off Topic Productions invites you into a whole new world, where online communities have become Tron style cities, moderators and forum trolls fight their endless battles with semi-automatic weapons, and where one man is about to find out that taking down cyberpunk conspiracies can’t all be fun and games…
The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex is one of the most ambitious single player modifications ever created. Seven years in development, its features include 2 unique storylines with an average of 15 hours of playtime each, over 50 non-linear levels, more than 70 characters, and over 14 hours of fully recorded dialogue. All of this is built on the classic Deus Ex mix of FPS and RPG action and is now available for PC gamers everywhere. Download it from www.thenamelessmod.com.
“We’re extremely excited to finally unleash this 7 year labour of love on gamers everywhere”, says lead designer Jonas Waever. “Even 9 years after release, Deus Ex has few equals. We feel that we’ve succeeded in playing to its strengths, while still creating a unique, immersive new experience.”
ModDB Media Editor Dave Traeger, who played a pre-release copy of TNM, states “To sum it up in one word: Amazing. It’s a must download.”
About Off Topic Productions
Off Topic Productions is an independent development group with members in America, Europe, and Australia. OTP’s goal is to develop detailed and open game worlds with responsive, immersive narratives. TNM is OTP’s first release.
Jonas The Nameless Mod Press release
Well, if it isn’t a blog. What do you know?
Not much to see here yet, but lots of TNM-related stuff over on my own blog.
Perhaps I should start to mirror such content here.
Jonas The Nameless Mod, Website