Alex-Ayars
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The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Zigfrak
Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Alex Ayars discusses (a few of) the potential downsides of an alien invasion with his space-based RPG, Zigfrak. What's your game called and what's it about? Zigfrak is a game of deep-space conflict and discovery. Players begin in the midst of a human civil war, complicated by the invasion of technologically superior aliens. Is the Zigfrak story inspired by any real-life events? How pivotal is the story to the gameplay? The underlying story draws inspiration from historical and modern day events. Ronald Reagan gave an address to the UN in the '80s, at one point positing that the conflicts between human nations might dissolve if we were to be confronted by a truly alien threat. A big angle of Zigfrak's story is that his statement probably wasn't true -- that humans would continue on with their petty squabbles, even when faced with annihilation by a superior alien adversary. The backstory is also inspired by the American Revolution and the contemporary debate surrounding the security theater. I try to present this nonpolitically, leaving the door open for players to interpret events however they are most comfortable with. Zigfrak's story helps to prop things up, but is auxiliary to the many approaches one might take when playing. Each hub of content is a platform for telling a self-contained and lighthearted short story, with the player taking on a pivotal role.
