Behind the Scenes: the flavor aspect of Spies 6

[Judge Sam]

Alright so I really wanted to talk about the flavor of Spies 6 because for this game I did things a bit differently. I took things to the max with the flavor which I hadn't really done before. I added a whole new category of flavor posts which brought in more background information.


I'm not really sure how they were received haha which is why questions are in the survey it will help me out a lot. =) I would like your opinions on the flavor aspect of Spies 6 which took place mostly through additional posts I made. You can read them all in the Public Grounds. Let's see what did I do:

- All of the base Spies series flavor that goes into each game. Spies VS. Cits, a collection of unique characters, several imprisonment stories, roles, colors and several images.
- Wrote dialogue stories for each voting twist
- A main storyline through Imprisonments, 5 central posts with a cohesive story from start to end
- the blueprint
- Additional anecdotal posts about unions during the 1900s
- Summary posts about unions today, and international worker's day
- Future week graphics, changed my username details, everything with future week
- Forum Mafia rules, pictures, original setup post, hosting
- Lots of other graphics
- newspaper articles

For this game I really wanted to max flavor and the overarching story. I had extra time to add things during the year+ while making the game. Flavor had always been something that had kind of taken a back seat to just keeping the game running smoothly. Obviously if during the game I have an hour to spend on fixing an unanticipated error in a challenge and writing up a flavor post I'm going to choose the challenge.


I'm not an expert at flavor or storytelling but I think this worked out better than usual. The last time I really did a cohesive Spies story was with Spies 3 (also a game that started after a year break, coincidence!) which was pretty good. Spies 4 and 5 had stories too.


But this was to the max with so much more stuff. I was really a fan of the theme but I know it wasn't for everyone haha. In future games, I would like to keep the flavor parts that worked well but cut back on some of it.


I know flavor is such a powerful tool for game designers and it makes the game that much better if incorporated fully so I want to continue with it. But that aspect is definitely my weakness I'm not much of a flavor person myself. Again, if anybody would like to be the flavor host of Spies 7 that would be definitely something I would be so eager to work with you on. The flavor would include the overarcing storyline, an imprisonment or two, occasional flavor posts, and ways to incorporate it with the gameplay.


For Spies 6 when I started out working on the flavor (looking at my notes now) I wanted to incorporate real life stuff into each part of it. And tons of stuff, whether from the imprisonment stories, or role names, came directly from this amazing wikipedia page. SO much insanely interesting info there haha. On so much stuff, from the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, to the huge war-battles of coal miners vs. owners of the 1900's, to Wal-Mart today, union busting tactics, etc. Personally, I liked it when I took anecdotes from that page to present as flavor lol cause it was relatively simple and interesting.


You can see the extra story bits here.





And I can't believe there is actually someone named August Spies who was very important with union history! lmao


The overall story of Spies 6 was pretty simple, Union VS. Bosses, but I thought it had some twists along the way as well as covering the normal events of unionization, the authorization election, a strike, etc.

The video also had tons of flavor, especially the starting part where Boss McNeal sits you down and shows you that propaganda video. I actually have 2 more of those. A plan was to create another shorter video with these. They are equally as hilarious actually...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwO_1kHqsQ Scary Union Thugs are knocking on your door!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu4oj_2E1jE&NR=1 What if children's class elections were run by unions?? AHHH!!!

The video was really really good but it took forever and a half to make and it was probably too long lol. Must of gone through like five sessions of changes over three weeks. At one point Mike wanted to have the cast pictures come down a conveyor belt. But we couldn't find a good image and after trying a bit on that gave it up.


For the story I actually wrote down a short description of each imprisonment installment on this one page that was really helpful and I mostly went by that. 1) first union meeting, safety guy dies 2) cronies + union busters do evil plots w/ real life examples 3) old times remembering nice old man peabody and how he cared for the workers 4) union authorization elections, more propaganda + fear 5) strike!

Yep so that's most of the flavor you can find it all in the Public Grounds forum up top. Doubt it will be this extensive again haha but I'm trying to bring in more flavor while still keeping it interesting.