“I think games are a natural extension of that.” “Netflix is a platform that’s known for stories, and things like Bandersnatch showed that it has already made some plays into the interactive space,” Parkes says. GoodbyeWorld almost immediately agreed to the partnership when Skybound Games brought Netflix’s interest up during a Skype call as the team believed Before Your Eyes would be a good fit for Netflix’s audience and ethos. Parkes credits Before Your Eyes publisher Skybound Games with getting the deal to happen. That’s where being on Netflix came into play. Parkes admits that short, story-driven, linear games don’t have great chances of becoming popular on the App Store or Google Play Store. GoodbyeWorld knew the mobile version of Before Your Eyes needed to be part of the right gaming service or collection. While the port’s development had unique challenges, Before Your Eyes‘ most significant obstacle to success on mobile is visibility. It’s the same narrative adventure players had on PC but adapted to work best on a gaming device almost everyone has. “Netflix is a platform that’s known for stories.”īefore Your Eyes is a game that takes advantage of the technology at its disposal, and that ethos also clearly applies to the mobile port. We had to find ways to pull the camera back a little bit when you swap to vertical, so it retains that cinematic, lifelike quality in the look.” The PC version has a traditional landscape ratio, and while we liked the comfort of playing it vertically in your hand, it felt too zoomed in and claustrophobic. “Another challenge was camera framing and getting it to flow cinematically. “The way text appears on screen actually requires a ton of programming and design work, and to be able to just completely change it from vertical to horizontal means we need a pretty robust solution for how that text is going to swap smoothly, so it doesn’t look jumbled,” Lewin said. This feature presents challenges with localization and camera framing, though. Still, GoodbyeWorld and the port developers at BKOM Studios did have to account for things like arm positioning and phone rotation.īefore Your Eyes on mobile can seamlessly switch between a horizontal and vertical perspective if someone turns their phone so that people can play in the most comfortable position for themselves. Modern phones all have high-quality cameras, so that wasn’t as much of an issue. Of course, bringing the game to phones presented a unique set of challenges. We feel like mobile is a perfect home because you can get those casual gamers who might check something out on their phone but don’t have a Steam account or console.” “Everyone has eyes and everyone blinks, so we always wanted to design the game to be played by gamers and non-gamers alike. “We always knew that mobile was a great fit and wanted the game to come to mobile because we’re using a mode of control that everybody is inherently familiar with,” Parkes explained. Mobile was the most logical place to go next from Parkes’ point of view. As a result, there are only specific platforms to which it can expand. The PS5, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch don’t have built-in webcams, so GoodbyeWorld couldn’t put Before Your Eyes on those platforms with their desired controls. Parkes admitted that they didn’t really think about if the game needed to have broad appeal and compatibility with every gaming platform. Seen on mobileīefore Your Eyes started as a capstone project at USC. Ahead of Before Your Eyes‘ Netflix Games release, Digital Trends spoke to creative director and writer Graham Parkes and game director and composer Oliver Lewin to learn how they brought Before Your Eyes to life and how its bold rejection of gaming norms is the key to this atypical experience’s success. That’s why its arrival on iOS and Android via the Netflix app on July 26 is a logical evolution for GoodbyeWorld’s underrated gem.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |