ON THE FUTURE OF PROJECT WHRLD

If you're reading this, you've either stumbled upon it while searching my website, or you've been checking this page every day in the hopes that Project WHRLD will resume operation. Let me address the former of you first.

For over a year I hosted a game on my website called Project WHRLD. It was structured a bit like a text adventure, only players submitted me prompts and I supplied the outcome. It was a bit like a "forum game" if you remember those. A call-and-response text adventure where I built a story collaboratively with players. There was an inventory system, hunger and wounds, party members gained and party members lost. Together we had a grand adventure across the Lands of Shadow, working to untangle a mess of criss-crossed laylines that were throwing the balance of magic dangerously out-of-whack. It was some of the best writing of my life and an incredible creative experience. In early March I paused the game with the promise it would restart again once my other game, New Meat, had fully launched. This launch was back in October, and New Meat's hiatus...did not end.

And, with the newcomers caught up, I must now address the rest of you.

Project WHRLD, as it existed, will not be starting up again. You likely suspected this was the case, but I'll make it official. Crafting this adventure with you has been one of the most fun creative experiences of my life, but at the same time, it's become increasingly clear that the game's central premise was flawed. Project WHRLD succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, but also failed in the most crucial way it could have.

I'll need to pull back the curtain a little to explain.

I started Project WHRLD following a number of failed creative projects. You can look through them on this very website. Year after year, I'd produced works like You Will Be Remembered, Match Maiden Heaven, and the initial release of New Meat to...zero reception. Not a negative reception, simply null reception. No response. No interest. No excitement. No matter what I did to show off or promote my games, no one was interested. I couldn't even get my friends to commit to playing my games, much less strangers. And every time, my only response was to make something bigger, something wilder, something that took even longer than the last project. But, the result was always the same.

New Meat was the biggest game I'd ever made. I put everything I had into that game, and it still barely reached anyone. Week after week I'd push the game online. I released updates added content, but nothing changed. No one cared, and no one would even tell me why they didn't care. I just had nothing. Everything I'd done, I felt at the time, had been for nothing.

This is normally the part of the story where a person says "I thought of giving up." If we're being honest, though, giving up was never a possibility for me. Making games is my life. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do. There's no "giving up" on it for me any more than I could give up on eating or breathing. Giving up never truly crossed my mind, but I was left in a bit of an existential quandary. If I can't give up, what can I do?

I realized that I needed to flip the script. What happened with New Meat couldn't happen again. I was sick of pouring months and years of my life into these projects only to realize at the very end that I'd wasted my time. I needed to make something that I knew had an audience. I needed to make something that wouldn't take months for me to know if it was even worth it. I needed something simple, and fast. Artists can draw a sketch in an afternoon. Musicians can improv with a guitar in the middle of a party. Game designers, though? Game design takes weeks or months at a minimum, even for something with no original assets. Could I make a game with the turnaround time, and appeal, of a sketchbook sketch?

And with this, a new kind of game formed in my mind.

The idea with Project WHRLD was that I wanted to make a game that wouldn't "go" unless people were into it. The interactive, live-text-adventure nature of the project meant that I only had to work on it when people expressed to me that they wanted me to. The more prompts I get, the more I work on the game. If I get no prompts, I don't work at all. I'd been a big fan of "forum games" in years past that had used a similar premise, and I was aware that projects like Homestuck had done something very similar to what I was about to attempt (and proved it could work) so I...made the page and sat back to see what would happen.

What resulted was a year-plus journey with a cast of my favorite characters I've ever written, and some of the best writing of my entire gamewriting career. Collaboratively with players, an incredible story unfolded that was at once silly, intense, mysterious and full of wild surprises. I never would have imagined moments like the Trill's dislodgement from reality, the breaking of the Quill or even Boone's musical number when I started this project. Zani, Ressa, Trill, Xolta, Boone, and even Lord Fatalis...they're my favorite cast of characters I've ever written, all inspired by the game's community. I'd come home from work each day so excited to continue the story and see where the prompts would take it next. Over time, I learned what kind of adventures worked (the Lich's Lair) and what kind didn't (the Burning University). I learned how to make a satisfying combat encounter even in a game with no codified combat rules. I filled the world with mystery and got to see players slowly puzzle out what was going on under the surface. It was incredible, and it was all thanks to you.

But...there was a problem, and if you've read this far and played the game yourself, you probably know what the problem was. Project WHRLD was great, but it wasn't growing. It wasn't catching on. At most, there were only ever a handful of players submitting prompts, and no amount of my usual constant, futile promotion was changing that. Being locked to my website, there was very little way to promote the game beyond links and occasional screenshots of the few moments that worked out of context. Even the players themselves reported having little luck getting their friends interested, despite their own love of the game.

And it was only getting worse. As the game progressed and its backlog of updates grew, it became increasingly prohibitive for new players to get into the game. I tried to fix this in various ways with explainers and summaries, but the fact remained that after its first year Project WHRLD was a dauntingly huge work of fiction to get in on, and it was only going to get worse. As much fun as I was having, I was acutely aware that I was only making the game for a small handful of people that could only ever dwindle in size. Despite my clever angle and best efforts to the contrary, this game was proving to have all the same problems as my previous projects.

When the time came to buckle down for the release of the New Meat remaster, I put Project WHRLD on hold. In truth, I wasn't 100% certain I was going to come back to it. I figured maybe during that pause more people might stumble on it and use the pause to catch up, but my website analytics made clear that wasn't happening and never would. Around the time of New Meat's re-release, I'd made peace with the fact that Project WHRLD was dead.

Except...I didn't.

As much as the game as I'd been running it was untenable, I'd proven the system worked. I'd proven that this kind of open, call-and-response text RPG format was something I not only COULD pull off, but was surprisingly good at! Like everything else I'd done, it was just a matter of reach. I'd made the game too isolated and hard to promote, but the game itself was great. If I wanted Project WHRLD to work, I just needed a different angle. I needed it to exist in a form where it could be easily shared, easily read in archives, and easily engaged with by anyone.

And I've found it. Project WHRLD is not ending. But it is changing.

The game is going to be reset, back to the very beginning. Back to before Trill, and Ressa, and Zani and even the Lands of Shadow even existed.

But don't worry. Everything that's happened will still serve a purpose. All those old adventures are going to be remain right here.

It will take a little more time to set up, but if you enjoyed Project WHRLD, watch this space for its return.

There’s still much that needs to be done.