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…”

First of all, we apologize for the delay between updates. Things have been hectic, to say the least.

We want to take this opportunity to respond to some questions or curiosities we have seen on public forums, as well as attempt to describe just what Rachel’s Walk is.

*NOTE*: This post borders on the edge of giving out more information than we want to at this time. So if we seem like we’re being vague or not explaining ourselves well, that’s on purpose.

Anyway, here are some of the questions we’ve seen.

“So this is an 80’s video game?”

If you look solely at what we are calling the “Dream Engine”, then yes, it is very similar to an “old school” LucasArts video game. But there is a lot more to Rachel’s Walk than that.

The “Dream Engine” is not the only interface this game will have. If you don’t want to deal with the interactive, game-like interface, there will be plenty of other ways for you to participate.

The reason we wanted such an interface is because it allows for a more robust interaction with an ever changing world, without the need for us to be sitting on the other side of the screen all the time. Using this standalone engine, you can explore and interact with the world at your own pace, in any way you like, without having to wait for feedback from us; the feedback is immediate.

Maybe we haven’t made this exactly clear: the “Dream Engine” is your interface in to an imaginary world, a world that exists only in the mind.  But, for every person that visits the dream world there exists a presence in the real world, and there are those that exist solely in the real world and have a story to tell themselves. In order to get the maximum enjoyment from Rachel’s Walk, you must be ready to explore both sides to fully understand the story being told.

“Screenshots? For an ARG?”

To be honest, this is the reason why we prefer to use the term “interactive fiction” instead of “alternate reality game”… People envision an “alternate reality game” to be a certain way, and we are trying to do something different and contrary to the norm.

What is an “alternate reality” after all? Rachel’s Walk is primarily a dream world where you will be interacting with a variety of characters, from rabbits to faeries, from dragons to centaurs. They are obviously not “real”, but you are visiting their world; to them, everything that occurs within the dream world is within their reality and you are but mere visitors.

Put another way, many people have described an ARG in the past as a “roleplaying game in which you play yourself”. Well, this is just that… except that you’re asleep.

Everyone expects an “alternate reality game” to follow the same style as every other ARG: some social networks, a few websites, a lot of emails bouncing back and forth, the occasional prerequisite cypher… There will still be some of that in Rachel’s Walk (but do keep in mind that we are not fans of “puzzles for the sake of puzzles”), but we are trying to do something different with the “Dream Engine”.

“Will there be other websites other than the main one?”

We do have a propensity to create elaborate websites, some of which are merely cosmetic (and serve only to relay contact information) while others are comparatively complex (with actual development and special functions). And, as has been the case in our past games, you can expect an “in game” form of communication; email at this level is too hard to manage, and we have found that a custom interface to manage all communications makes management and historical tracking of events much easier to manage.

Rachel’s Walk really is no different. Besides the main site that drives the “Dream Engine”, there are several other traditional websites to be explored and interacted with. There will be people in the real world to talk to. There will be multiple forms of communication, and there will be a presence on multiple social networks. The main site reflects your presence in our dream world, but there is most definitely a real world presence. After all, most people don’t sleep all day…

One of the concerns we’re seeing is that some players may not be too keen on the “video game” aspect of this. Quite honestly, although it would be really cool if it would happen, we’re not expecting every player to be traversing the world through the “Dream Engine”. But don’t fear… If the dream world scares you, there will be plenty to do in the real world. You will not be left out, and you will still be able to participate in the story and contribute.

So there you have it. If you’re looking for traditional ARG elements, we’ll have that. If you’re looking to satisfy your craving for 80’s interactive fiction, we’ll have that. We seek to appeal to a large audience, and players will be able to involve themselves in individual parts if they so desire.