On July 13th, 2008, two mysterious emails were sent to select players from an individual by the name of the “The Guide”. That led to a mysterious sign up page for some curious project named Rachel’s Walk, a project nobody knew anything about were nonetheless intrigued.

Over a thousand unique signups later, how things have changed.

Ever since that mail was sent I’ve been asked the same question numerous times: why send out an email for something that was hardly even planned? Didn’t it seem premature, especially considering the publicity circus that took place leading up to the last project?

Well, time for a glimpse at Rachel’s Walk history…

I thought of the concept for this project in mid-June, actually during a week of vacation when both my wife and son celebrate birthdays. At the time it was nowhere near the scope it is now, but it got me excited enough that I simply couldn’t contain myself.

But along with that I had an idea for an experiment: my last project, the one I personally called Shadow Watch (or BoL/SiD to the players), had a decent amount of signups because people knew I was the one running it. What kind of response would we get if people didn’t know I was running it? Would it be worth it to do? In order to find that out, the signup page has always asked for only the email address (since people knew it was me for Shadow Watch, they were more willing to provide full contact information. Such is not the case here; that level of trust did not exist). And, as expected, the signup page did not do as well as Shadow Watch did, at least not until the day we announced that we were doing it (for the record, that day we go 116 signups).

But what was Rachel’s Walk at the time the page went up? One could argue that it wasn’t anything: not much more than a passing thought, scribbles on a notebook I carry around. Besides the signup page, there wasn’t a line of code written, a single creative element designed. But as time progressed, especially after the involvement of Lauren and the others, we realized that this project could be so much more. And so it began to grow, and grow, and grow…

To give you a comparative reference, here is how the project currently stands compared to the past:

• Shadow Watch was a single database with a grand total of eleven tables in it (everything else was driven by XML). Rachel’s Walk is currently over 70 tables (does not include databases created by third party applications and services) that span at least five separate Microsoft SQL and mySQL servers.
• Every project we have run up to now was on the same physical server hosted at GoDaddy. For Rachel’s Walk we currently have six hosted servers at two separate locations, and a third location coming soon. One of our websites is load balanced for the first time.
• We have acquired six times more stock imagery for Rachel’s Walk than for all our past projects combined.
• I have a drive partition for all game content that has had to be increased in size at least three times (for those that are wondering: I have three separate backups I run – to DVD, off-site and to a separate USB thumb drive – that are run throughout the week).
  
• The Rachel’s Walk Visual Studio solution is at least ten times larger than Shadow Watch. It spans four separate assemblies, an undisclosed number of websites, and at last count contains over 50,000 lines of code (in C#) written entirely in house and specifically for this project.
• We have had at least three (maybe four) different project management solutions. To put the amount of content in perspective, the current project management site we are using has almost as many informational pages in it than the entire Wiki for The Lost Ring.
• In my original concept, I had planned no more than three “in game” characters. At last count, Rachel’s Walk has over twenty and climbing.
• Looking Glass Laboratories cost a little under $100 to execute. Shadow Watch had a total cost of $350. Rachel’s Walk has a running cost of over $4,000 so far in terms of hosting (websites, domains, bandwidth, etc…), content acquisition (stock images, software, third party licenses, etc…) and materials.
• I was doing this alone at first. We now have four active team members: graphic designers, content generators, professional writers, etc…

…and all the above is not counting the things we can’t really tell you. Suffice to say, it’s become something more than just a random thought in my head, and not something I was able to predict when the signup page went up.

From an implementation perspective, the workload involved in the design and development of this project is no different than other major productions out there. There is one big difference though: we don’t do this for a living. Unfortunately, we do have real world commitments, things that prevent us from giving exclusive attention to this project. For example, during this project’s existance I have lived in two different homes, had owned three different computers and have had no less than four different full-time jobs.

Had we the resources to work on this all day, this project would have launched and probably finished by now. But, alas, such is not the case. We try to set our own personal milestones, but everything from real life situations to changes in scope have pushed the dates further and further ahead, much to our personal dismay.

So, by today’s standards, we realize the signup page did go up too soon. But that was never the intention, and the page was never meant to linger for so long before game launch. The project simply matured, outgrowing the registration page and the short timeline that was originally planned. Would we do this sort of thing again, put up a page without any idea when the game will actually start? Admittedly, it’s hard to keep quiet about future projects anyway, but we will take these lessons in to consideration for future endeavors.

What does this mean for this game though? Rachel’s Walk continues being developed, inching closer and closer to the day when it is unleashed upon the world. Will it launch in 2009? Sadly, no… Right now my more realistic prediction is around mid-April 2010.

In the meantime, we would like to thank all of you and we continue to ask for patience and understanding for what we are trying to accomplish. We think it’s worth it: everyone that has come in and seen “behind the curtain” has seen how this project is doing everything possible to be revolutionary and shape the image of ARGs for years to come. We’re not going anywhere, and will continue putting our hearts and souls in this project to make it the best it possibly can be.

We hope you will not be disappointed, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

“Ever forward…”

Welcome to the “Rachel’s Walk” production blog!

Over a year ago I had the idea for Rachel’s Walk, and needless to say a lot has changed since then. My project was rather simple back then (I was a “one man shop”).  When I took on Lauren Soffer as Creative Director, we we started to realize that this project could be so much more. It could be more than “just another ARG”. It could be something groundbreaking, something wonderful.

As the scope grew, our style of development changed. We began to treat this more like a video game than an “alternate reality game”. To be frank, I sometimes hesitate using the moniker “ARG” to describe this project; I prefer to call it “interactive fiction”, a term coined by the great game developers of old  – Infocom, LucasArts, Sierra – which have influenced us and this project dramatically.

So we became a game design and development “shop” of sorts. We were no longer a huddled mass of “puppetmasters”; we had our roles: we were a programmer, a creative designer, a writer, a sound engineer, a video producer… We began to use management software, high end graphics utilities, and professional sound and video editing software. We downloaded several hundred stock images for use in the project. We got an absurd amount of hosting. We even had a budget.  All of this to help us reach the high production value we want to bring to you.

These production values, of course, delayed the project even longer, but we feel it’s worth it. Every time someone asks “when will this launch already?”, I find myself wanting to say the traditional video game developer’s response of “when it’s done”, but there have been so many failures in the video game world as a result of those three words. We do not want to be the ARG equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever.

But recently we decided that, if we are going to continue this style of development internally, we have to be a little more open to our fans. We decided to not stay completely in the dark, and instead be somewhat vocal about what we’re doing and how, all the time censoring ourselves from revealing anything that could be considered “in game” content.

So now it’s time for the world to start seeing what Rachel’s Walk will become.

Over the coming weeks this blog will allow us to talk about what we’re doing, strictly as developers and designers. We will talk about general game mechanics and some creative design, but we will NOT talk about game content, game plot or anything else that could be considered “in game”. That information you’ll just have to dig out of the rabbit hole yourselves.

There are three of us that will be posting on this forum: myself (Project Lead and Lead Developer), Lauren “Ineffabelle” Soffer (Developer and Creative Director) and our latest addition to the team, Owen “Twiler” Parish (Writer and Assistant Developer).

We also have a presence on Twitter and on Facebook, so we welcome all to you to follow us there. If you haven’t yet, we welcome you to sign up on the main website.

On behalf of all of us at Darklight Interactive, we hope you enjoy the ride.

In March 2009, Darklight Interactive (“DLI”, for short) officially announced their upcoming game Rachel’s Walk. The team behind Looking Glass Labs now aims even higher to bring an unprecedented cross genre alternative reality game. Rachel’s Walk will combine elements of traditional ARGs as well as “old school” role playing, adventure games and interactive fiction to engage players in an unparalleled immersive world. The players will have the ability to control and interact with almost everything around them – people, places, and objects – through a specialized interface. The players will have the opportunity to explore the vast lands, interact with the diverse population, and discover a domain that exists only in dreams.

Though much of the story is still shrouded in secrecy, DLI revealed that the players will follow a young girl named Rachel into an unfamiliar fantasy world, and embark on an epic journey that blurs the line between fantasy and reality, a journey filled with mystery and fantasy, heartache and joy.

Darklight Interactive was founded in early 2008 and has been developing Rachel’s Walk for over a year under the guidance of David Flor (Project Lead and President of DLI) and Lauren Soffer (Vice President and Creative Director of DLI). “This project has been an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of traditional ARGs in a way that we hope will make the story more immersive and engaging than ever before,” said Soffer. “As a storyteller first and foremost, I feel privelged to work on a project like this that puts the story as the center piece and lets all the puzzles evolve from the story.”

“Rachel’s Walk is set to be our crowning achievement, blending traditional alternate reality gaming and real world elements with a fully interactive ‘dream world’ that allows the players to have control over everything that happens,” said David Flor, President of Darklight Interactive. “It is truly a technological marvel, and for that reason we have put as much time and effort in to it as possible in order to make it perfect. When it is revealed to the world, we know that die hard alternate reality game players and traditional adventure gamers alike will not be disappointed.”

Rachel’s Walk is set to launch sometime in late 2009. Players can sign up at http://www.rachelswalk.com/.

Press please contact Darklight Interactive at info@dlimedia.com

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“Omne ignotum pro magnifico”