Category: PR

New Pirate on The Ship

7/6/2017

By Mads Hagemann Nielsen - QA & Community Manager

Hello Miners,

Let me introduce myself. I am Mads Hagemann Nielsen, and just to be clear, you do not pronounce the ‘d’ in my first name :).
I am newest pirate on the ship, and the youngest, and helping out Søren with various tasks from Marketing to Social Media. My title is QA & Community Manager, so i am the pirate that will keep on you!

This is me! :)

I have hold a MSc in Media Technology with specialization in Games, where I have focused on User Experience (UX) Design, User Research (UR) and Game Design.
So what does that have to do with QA & Community Management?

I love to work with people and understand how they think. To learn the behavior of others is a great passion of mine.
I have also been co-organizer for one of the biggest game jams in the world - Nordic Game Jam, and currently I am a substitute on the board of IGDA Denmark.

Then to be QA & Community Manager in a company started by old veteran pirates, is an awesome start of my career in the games industry. The founders have more than 100 years of game development experience combined. That does not only suit me well in my position in the company, but it will also in the game that we are making together!

How is it to work at Ghost Ship game?

It is amazing! I have had a lot to do in my first month in the small veteran based company. Making plans for social media, setting up new websites, which you may see soon (hopefully :) ), going to Nordic Game Conference in Malmø and more seems to happen.
The office is in an office community name Univate, which is a part of The University of Copenhagen, so the feeling of University is still near, even when you are with veteran ghosts :-P.

Equipment at Work

So I really think that I have cool setup at work, considering what I working with :)
I have an Asus Gaming Laptop 15” at 120 Hz and with Gsync.

CPU: Core i7-7700HQ @ 2.8 GHz
RAM: 16GB DDR4
SSD: 256 GB
HDD: 1 TB

An external 25” Monitor, Gaming Headset, Keyboard and Mouse. A coffee mug with the Deep Rock Galactic logo on.
What more to ask for? :D

Sorry for that it looks like a mesh :)

Upcoming Things?

I’ll try to work on making some lets play session, and play with the dev session, so you also can see how it is from our studio. It all depends on how much time we have, as we are all working our asses off! :) But please be patient it will happen sooner or later.

That's All Folks

I am on Discord as “Mads - QA & Community”, please write to me if you have any questions, but I can not give you any secrets, like: “where are the treasures hidden in the world?”. As a pirate, you only keep those coordinates for yourself ;)

6 Comments

Tale of Two Trailers

31/3/2017

0 Comments

by Mikkel Martin Pedersen - Game Director

Hello Fellow Dwarves!

It is time for a trip down memory lane and to take a look at the trailer for Deep Rock Galactic. (I know! ...memory lane is only 10 month long, but so much has happened that it feels much further away!).

Today I'm gonna show you a comparison between the first version of our trailer and the updated version of it. And why is this interesting, you may ask? Well first of all it shows how crazy fast this project has developed. Secondly it shows the game before and after we nailed - or I should maybe say, sort of haphazardly discovered - the high level art direction of the game. And last but not least, I’m doing this because I simply wanted to see the trailers running side by side :-) …. But first I will give you a little background about why we made the trailers.

The first trailer was created around one month after we got together and founded Ghost Ship Games. From the start we knew that we needed to get some funding in place, so we were heavily focusing on making a playable prototype and at the same time preparing a lot of material for the fundraising. The gameplay trailer was the single most important piece of promotional asset we could make. The purpose of it was to give potential investors confidence that we had a strong game concept and that we had the skills and experience to go through with the production of the game.

Our first prototype of the game used a fairly simple voxel based system to generate the caves - it looked a bit like Minecraft. We didn’t like it and we knew we wanted to get away from this look and create an artstyle that was stylish and unique without being too simplistic. Henrik, CTO at Ghost Ship, further developed the terrain tech and made it look more smooth. This system (or the 1st iteration of it) is what you see in the old trailer in the video.

The gameplay trailer worked and we secured funding from Capnova and received a government grant from DFI. We were happy and in business :-)

The updated trailer was made when we started attending our first couple of game conferences. The first conference was Steam Dev Days 2016 in Seattle. Here, we were attending to connect with Valve, so we could get our store page live on Steam and start the closed alpha. The second conference was Games Connection in Paris a couple of weeks later, where we went to meet with potential business partners.

Before these events, we had had an amazing breakthrough in the art direction. Henrik had made a system, that enabled us to generate debris and smaller objects like stalactites and crystals and turn them into a diggable and destructible material. When it got in the hands of Robert (our art director) magic happened and he created some amazing looking caves. Now we could see that the combination of a mesh based terrain combined with extended use of debris sets enabled us to create seemingly endless variations in the caves.

Since we felt that the game now looked so much better we decide to update the trailer. We didn’t really have any time to do a new trailer, so instead we just did a remake of the old one. And almost shot by shot, we recreated the trailer.

The updated trailer looked much better and helped us get a lot of attention from publishers and gamers - signing up for the Closed Alpha (and yes, we will release more keys soon!). It also played a big part in Coffee Stain noticing us and in the end, closing a deal with us. (Read about it here).

So if there is a lesson to be learned it is that a cool trailer can work wonders for your game and your company, so you better invest time in making a cool one!
Below is the video showing the two trailers running side by side. It is marvelous to see the giant leap we made in the art style between the two trailers and in so short time. To me, It is a testament of the magic and wonder of game development. Enjoy!

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New Pirate on The Ship

Hello Miners,

How is it to work at Ghost Ship game?

Equipment at Work

Upcoming Things?

That's All Folks

Tale of Two Trailers

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New Pirate on The Ship

Hello Miners,

How is it to work at Ghost Ship game?

Equipment at Work

Upcoming Things?​

That's All Folks

Tale of Two Trailers

Archives

Categories

Home

About

Privacy Policy

Upcoming Things?