Production Update (Nathan):
This week we put out 3 (THREE) videos, announcing our second season, our Patreon (which we are in the final stages of getting set up,) and our penultimate episode of Shattered Sleep! We are so thrilled by the amazing response it has gotten, and are even more excited for Infinite Silence and Dissonant Echoes! Not only have my first few interactions with those casts been incredibly encouraging, but the writing process is rolling out nicely. Additionally, in the madness of all of those releases, we’ve been holding design meetings for Horizons RPG and our simulator facility. We’re working from a strong shared foundation in simulator operations while looping in experience and principles of game design, immersive theater, and ARG structure. My research this week has involved ARG design, historiography, business strategy, and YouTube algorithms. As heard in my meetings: “Manually dis-impacting somebody is a chore.”
Community Update (Christine):
Wow what a crazy week! This week was full of coordinating the releases of the three videos Nathan talked about as well as answering any questions that came up about Season 2 and our Patreon release. We are so excited to get Infinite Silence and Dissonant Echoes rolling. It’s going to be really cool. We also met this week to discuss simulator designs. One challenge that we have always encountered in our past experience with running simulators is volume control. Between music, sound effects, and everyone yelling instructions at each other, it quickly becomes a little chaotic. In the past we’ve aimed these designs for a younger audience so it didn’t matter as much that is was chaotic, but as we start aiming toward a more adult audience and as we focus more on the importance of crew communication we have been discussing ideas on how we can calm the chaos a smidge. We also spent a good amount of time this week solidifying what jobs will be available on our first simulator. Creating these positions is such a balancing act. You don’t want one person on the ship to be completely overwhelmed with things to do while another crew member is bored. We want everyone to know their job is important and we want each position to really rely on good communication with other positions for optimal success. We want each position to have things that you as a crew member will get better and better at using the more you do that position. Like leveling up in a video game, or even just continuing to play a particular race/class in DnD. There is a lot that goes into simulator design and I’m super excited to share more specifics of what this simulator will look and feel like soon!
Most importantly, as we wrap up Shattered Sleep, we are going to be releasing a video where I will be interviewing some of our actors, writers, and other key members of our team. If you have any questions you’d like to see featured in this video, contact Nathan or I! These can be questions about any part of Shattered Sleep. Do you want to know fun behind-the-scenes stories? Have a question for our actors about what it was like to not know what would be happening next? Want to know just how much the conversation on Discord really impacted the story? Send us a question and we will feature it in this video!