The Shadow War: Getting Boys to Read
How do you get boys to read? One way is to write entertaining and dramatic books, preferably including some violence. This is what Charlie Higson did for his Young Bond series of books, and judging by the fact that they have sold close to a million copies, it's a pretty good strategy.
Of course, in this new era of digital TV, YouTube and videogames, it can be difficult to attract boys to books, but that's exactly what we're attempting with Young Bond: The Shadow War, a web-based point-and-click adventure that's fused with a book.
Working with book publishers
Being an ARG designer has put me in contact with a variety of semi-famous film, TV and game producers, but I've particularly enjoyed working with book publishers.
The publishers I've met have all had a very healthy regard for authors. Given that it's authors who write the books that they sell, this may seem perfectly normal, but in other industries, these people are not called authors - they are 'creatives'. 'Creatives', who include everyone from designers to writers to artists - in fact, everyone who actually makes stuff - are treated as a black box, into which any number of woolly and contradictory notes can be placed, with predictably unhappy results.
(NB: I recently interviewed an actor for an upcoming project, and unwittingly used the word 'creative'. The fact that she failed to stifle a giggle confirms to me that I have fallen so very far from grace...)
Six to Start's first project with a publisher was We Tell Stories, in which we created six online-only stories for Penguin Books. We worked with six different authors, and Penguin placed a refreshing amount of trust in us and our work, which allowed us to get on with the matter at hand - making some really fantastic stories. 1700 blog posts later, along with features in Newsweek, Wired, the Guardian and BBC News, this trust was borne out.
This experience meant that we jumped at the chance to work on a game to promote the final book in the Young Bond series, By Royal Command. Sure, it wasn't for the movies, but it was still James Bond. And the books were very good.
Designing the Game
When we sat down to work out the shape of the game, a few issues were apparent. Firstly, the Young Bond books are set within the proper chronology of the James Bond world. In other words, unlike the modern films such as Casino Royale, which take place during the present day, Young Bond is set in 1933. This means that we were not able to include mobile phones, websites, or any kind of technology.
Secondly, we wanted the story of The Shadow War to thread its way through all five of the Young Bond books (including By Royal Command) but avoiding spoilers wherever possible. Thirdly, the game - obviously - had to promote the book.
Here's how we addressed it. In the first mission, you travel to a village called Keithly, where you have to steal someone's identity by creating a fake ID based on the details from letters in the post office.
In classic ARGs, the player's browser is used as a window into the fictional world's websites. Therefore, if The Shadow War was an ARG, you would have visited Keithly's town website, clicked a link to the town post office, and then doubtless 'hacked in' to the see someone's letters. Of course, this would have been complete nonsense since the internet didn't exist in 1933.
We had to find another way of representing Keithly. Any sort of traditional 2D or 3D representation was out of the question, due to time and budget constraints. Besides, a platform game had already been made for Young Bond, and we wanted to do something different. We settled on a point-and-click adventure representation, akin to a very simple version of Myst, where your browser window shows your character's viewpoint. This suited us well, since it reduced the amount of design required, while still providing a level of immersiveness. We worked with Denise Wilton and Steve McCluskey for these design, and they both did a sterling job.
So, when you visit Keithly, you see an archetypical village noticeboard. Clicking on some of the items on the board, such as the village newsletter or a notice about the Post Office, take you to new pages with more information. Likewise, the Post Office is represented by a table with twelve envelopes sitting on top; clicking on a envelope opens it up and reveals the letter inside. In this way, we've been able to more or less eliminate instructions from the game - something of a company philosophy for all of our games.
Another core philosophy is making games that are easy to play. One danger that all game designers face is creating games for the most vocal players. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, providing that you are still able to make a living; but given that the number of people who are familiar with ARG-style games and puzzles is very limited, it's essential that we design our games to appeal to the 99% of people who have never played an ARG, or indeed the 99% of people who are not looking for a serious challenge.
This doesn't mean making puzzles trivially easy or boring, but it does mean a fine attention to the user experience, in providing appropriate hints, error messages and nudges. Much of this comes through good interface design.
Why The Shadow War Works
None of this is revolutionary; there are dozens of Flash games that do similar things. However, the difference with The Shadow War is that it is made in HTML and Javascript. This has a number of advantages over Flash, including speed, accessibility, search engine optimisation, and deep-linking.
We are great believers in the power of deep-linking. Many of the projects we work on have little to no marketing or advertising spend, and so we have to generate our own publicity. By allowing visitors to follow deep links directly to individual missions and pages in The Shadow War, we can increase the chance that we'll become a hit on Digg or StumbleUpon or other weblogs; we also allow visitors to skip missions in this way.
There's no doubt that opting for Flash would have made our lives easier; designing animations and interactive elements is much easier with Flash, and you don't have to worry about how things will look in different browsers. However, Andrew Hayward, our frontend developer, did a brilliant job at making an attractive game with just HTML and JS.
Another difference from traditional ARGs is that The Shadow War is mostly single-player, and completely replayable. If someone joins the game halfway through, that's no problem - they can just start from the first mission and have the same experience that everyone else had. In fact, there's a benefit to joining later, since we chain together all previous missions, meaning that once the game is over, you could play the entire game in a single two hour sitting. We also continually fix bugs and make improvements to missions, long after they've launched.
A big reason why The Shadow War has been received so positively, both by the media (coverage from the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, BBC 1, Radio 2, Radio 4 and Radio 6) and by fans, is because Charlie Higson has been extremely supportive. Initially, I think Charlie was a little wary, partly because he was already very busy promoting the book, and because the whole concept of the game seemed a little strange. However, he quickly got on board and wrote a detailed plot outline for the game that had some brilliant ideas; his outline forms the backbone on the game and ensures that it's faithful to the books.
This was a serious concern for us. You just don't mess around with the James Bond universe; there are legions of fans out there who have a right to expect that games follow the canon where possible. Our intern, Marc McGinley, spent a lot of time researching the books and the world of James Bond, making sure that all the details were correct; Ian Fleming Publications were also very helpful in this regard, pointing out any mistakes or contradictions in our story.
Reading, Writing and Playing
The Shadow War has some modest-sounding goals - promoting By Royal Command, and getting more children to read. However, we're so used to thinking of games as involving no text - and frankly, very little story - that it can be a challenge developing a game that has both. Based on the reception so far, I think we did a good job.
It won't go down in the annals as a game that changed the world; the resources available for the project didn't permit that. But there's a quote from the engineering firm Arup that goes well here:
"Only a job done well, as well as we can do it – and as well as it can be done – is that. We must therefore strive for quality in what we do, and never be satisfied with second-rate."
That's what we did with The Shadow War, and that's what we aim to do with all of our games.