Más allá de los píxeles: Francisco González habla sobre el agua de rosas y el desarrollo, el diseño y el futuro de los juegos de aventura
Si eres un ávido jugador de juegos de aventuras, es probable que ya sepas quién es Francisco González. Si no has oído hablar de él, es un desarrollador independiente que se enfoca en crear aventuras de apuntar y hacer clic; algunos de los más interesantes de los últimos tiempos, de hecho .
“Es posible que me conozcas por mi serie gratuita Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator , o mis lanzamientos comerciales A Golden Wake , Shardlight y Lamplight City ”, nos dice González. Aunque nació y creció en Miami, Florida, nos habla desde su hogar actual en Brooklyn, Nueva York.
francisco gonzalez
Donde todo comenzo
Pero, ¿dónde comenzó su afinidad por los videojuegos? Después de todo, no te conviertes en un destacado desarrollador de juegos de la noche a la mañana. E irónicamente, sus primeras experiencias de juego ni siquiera fueron con juegos de aventuras.
“Algunos de los primeros videojuegos que recuerdo haber jugado son Omega Race y Pitfall en
el Atari 2600. Me encantaba jugar a Marble Madness y Rampage en las salas de juegos de los centros comerciales, y luego obtuve un Sega Master System y NES. Los jugué principalmente hasta que obtuve mi primera PC alrededor de 1992, momento en el que descubrí los juegos de aventuras a través de Hugo’s House of Horrors .
“Algo sobre las historias y los acertijos en los juegos de aventuras me llamó la atención más que otros géneros, y fue cuando jugué King’s Quest V en NES, ¡ ay !, cuando comencé a pensar en lo genial que sería diseñar un juego de aventuras de mi. propio. No tenía absolutamente ninguna experiencia en programación, así que me llevó un tiempo lograr que eso sucediera”.
Sobre los orígenes de las especies de juegos de aventuras
Así comenzó el viaje de desarrollo de juegos de González, comenzando con una pasión por los juegos y evolucionando junto con su creciente curiosidad sobre cómo se hacen realmente.
“Cuando estaba en la escuela secundaria, un amigo me dio su copia de Klik and Play . No era un motor hecho para juegos de aventuras, pero pude crear un facsímil con controles de teclado para el movimiento y funciones muy rudimentarias de apuntar y hacer clic”, dice González. Incluso fue tan lejos como para hacer un juego corto para fanáticos llamado Monkey Island 2.5 , que fue, según él mismo admitió, terrible.
Poco después, se conectó a Internet y se entusiasmó al saber que algunas personas estaban trabajando en un motor similar al SCUMM de LucasArts llamado SCRAMM. Si bien ese proyecto nunca vio la luz del día, se unió a la comunidad en línea y conoció a algunas personas allí. Después de mojarse los pies inicialmente al incursionar en diferentes motores de creación de juegos, las cosas realmente comenzaron a tomar forma para González alrededor del año 2000.
“Era un estudiante de primer año en la universidad y decidí buscar ‘creador de juegos de aventuras’, lo que me llevó a encontrar Adventure Game Studio. A diferencia de SCRAMM, este motor podía crear juegos de aventuras al estilo LucasArts y Sierra y, lo que es más importante, estaba disponible para descargar”.
Eran los primeros días incluso para el desarrollo de juegos de aventuras, y solo se habían completado un puñado de juegos con Adventure Game Studio en ese momento, varios de los cuales fueron creados por Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw de The Escapist’s Zero Punctuation, según González . “Fue muy inspirador saber que realmente era posible hacer un juego completamente funcional en este motor. Así que descargué AGS, jugué con él, hice algunos juegos y nunca miré hacia atrás”.
Shardlight
González siguió adelante y ha creado muchos títulos de aventuras bien recibidos a lo largo de los años. Sus juegos tienden más a basarse en el realismo y no rehuye abordar temas espinosos en ellos, por lo que le preguntamos cuáles fueron algunas de sus influencias.
“I’ve had many,” he says, “but game-wise, I think I’ve probably been most heavily influenced by both the Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword series. Specifically, the way these games blend history and fiction. Most of my games have some elements of the real world in them; whether they’re set in a real place and feature actual historical events (A Golden Wake) or are pastiches of historical elements like the French Revolution (Shardlight) or the Industrial Revolution (Lamplight City).”
“I felt that setting it in an alternate 19th century didn’t mean I got a free pass to gloss over the ugly parts of history.”
Lamplight City is González’s most recent release and is set in a Victorian-era United States where the Revolutionary War never happened, but instead of using that to avoid dealing with prevalent contemporary social issues, he embraced the opportunity to explore them.
“I felt that setting it in an alternate 19th century didn’t mean I got a free pass to gloss over the ugly parts of history. Even though the timeline is different and, for instance, slavery was abolished much earlier in this world, it still existed. Classism and racism are still very prevalent, as they were in real life. People are still afraid of losing their jobs to technology, even if it’s steampunk machines in this world instead of the mechanized looms of ours. It would have been a disservice to ignore these facts and romanticize the time period even more than it already has been.”
The Daily
Turning away from his games, González tells us what the day-to-day is like for him. “I’m lucky enough to be able to do this as my full-time job, and I mostly work solo, so it’s not necessarily a typical situation,” he makes clear.
A Golden Wake
“My workday more or less consists of me coming down to my basement office, sitting at the computer, and working on something for most of the day. Sometimes it’s drawing a background, doing an animation, writing dialogue, or coding a section of the game. I have the luxury of being able to switch disciplines, so if I get tired of one thing, I can work on something else. Generally, I try to focus on getting the game built and coded first because I don’t think it makes sense to do art first for a section that might end up getting cut or majorly changed.”
The idea of being an indie dev only ever gains traction as the years go on and the tools to create video games become more accessible to those with smaller budgets, but is creating video games as an indie developer for a living really the dream life?
“There isn’t really anything glamorous about it. Honestly, it can be a pretty lonely experience, and the end result certainly isn’t fame or fortune. There’s a lot more frustration involved than most people probably realize. That being said, I still love it and wouldn’t trade this career for anything else,” González exclaims.
“I absolutely think there is a future for adventure games”
Traditional point-and-click adventures have a long lineage, being on the gaming scene long before many other genres we have today, so what is it that makes them so alluring still?
“The main thing I enjoy about designing point-and-clicks, and I say this because I rarely play them anymore, is being able to explore a world,” González says. “The sense of discovery, through exploring locations and interacting with characters, is one of the best parts of the genre, and I think that’s what has lasting appeal. The narrative aspect of adventure games is what I think keeps them relevant. So many other genres from FPSs to action platformers have adopted these elements, adding compelling stories and characters. The presentation may have changed slightly, but they still have appeal. Just look at Detroit: Become Human or Until Dawn. They may not fit into the category of ‘traditional’ adventure games, but they’re as close as we’ve seen from AAA developers.”
The Point-and-Click Outlook
Wondering if they are propped up by fans’ sentimentality for the classics of yesteryear, we ask González whether he thinks there is a future for these types of games.
“There is definitely a subset of fans who lean into the nostalgia and think that if you don’t feel frustrated because you can’t figure out how to bang two items together to make something to get you through a locked door, then it’s not a real adventure game and is too easy. I would respectfully disagree, as I think sticking to that same design is why the genre became stagnant.”
González continues, clarifying his stance. “This isn’t to say that the traditional design of inventory puzzles should be completely discarded, but given the reputation that the genre has gotten as being full of frustration and moon logic, moving into more modern design theories focusing on character and story is, in my opinion, the way to go.
“And yes, I absolutely think there is a future for adventure games, just like every other genre,” he adds. “It just needs to evolve.”
Lamplight City
González streams the development of his games on Twitch, so we broached the topic, curious to find out more.
“Streaming, while not without its issues, is a win-win scenario for me. It helps connect with the audience and shows the behind the scenes of the development process, and also keeps me focused on what I’m doing. If I know I have an audience, I won’t get distracted by social media. My streams don’t get a wildly high number of viewers, and it’s mostly the same core group, but we get a few new people every now and then.”
Rosewater
Due to be released in 2021, Rosewater is what González is hard at work on at the moment. He tells us all about it.
“Rosewater is a point-and-click Western adventure set in an alternate 19th century. It’s the same setting as Lamplight City — a world where the United States of America, here known as the Commonwealth of Vespuccia, never declared independence, and has made great steam-powered technological advancements, along with the discovery of a mysterious force known as ‘aethericity.’”
According to González, you control a former bare-knuckle brawler called Harley Leger as she arrives in a town called Rosewater. She’s out to make a name for herself as a writer, and an everyday assignment at a local newspaper soon turns into an expedition to find a missing fortune. “The bulk of the game involves the journey with your five travel companions, and your relationship with them will affect the trajectory of the story.”
You might be wondering if you need to play Lamplight City to understand what’s going on in Rosewater, considering they’re set in the same universe.
“Playing Lamplight City is not a strict requirement, although many of the references to the world will be richer if you’ve already experienced some of it. Rosewater is not a direct sequel, so all the relevant world information will be presented in the game.” Great news for newcomers, then.
There’s no doubt that González conceived a fascinating world with Lamplight City, so it bodes well that the Commonwealth of Vespuccia is making another appearance in Rosewater. Interestingly, González actually came up with the idea for Rosewater while he was still developing its predecessor.
“I spent so much time creating the world and the alternate history that I began thinking about other areas of the country I wanted to explore,” he says. “Lamplight City was very much an urban claustrophobic industrial setting, suitable to the 19th-century detective story. The complete opposite of that was rural wide-open spaces, and naturally, the most period-appropriate setting that applies to is the Old West. So I got it into my head that I wanted to make a Western in this world, bolstered by the realization that there are very few point-and-click Westerns, and even fewer that are not comedic parodies, which is a very handy unique selling point.”
Rosewater
Even though González creates almost every facet of his games himself, his girlfriend Jess Haskins is his Rosewater writing partner. “She was the script editor on Lamplight City, and on Rosewater she’s doing the same, but also taking a more active role in helping me write the encounters and vignettes in the game’s second act.”
He’s also pushing the musical boat out on this project. “I’m also working with composer Mark Benis again. This time around, we’re going slightly bigger, using some live instruments, which I think is going to make the soundtrack sound even more amazing than the phenomenal job he did on Lamplight City.”
Things take a relatably existential turn when we ask González who he is off the clock. “An excellent question,” he says. “Sometimes I think it’s gotten to the point where I’ve become a very one-dimensional person.
“At any rate, during normal times, I enjoy traveling and seeing different parts of the world. I also like playing games that are not adventures, like Assassin’s Creed, XCOM 2, and several others, although I have been playing more narrative-centric games like Until Dawn and Sam and Max Save the World with my girlfriend. I like watching movies with friends, going out and socializing.” He pauses. “Pretty much everything I haven’t been able to do in the past year!”
“I get frustrated when people think I’m making adventure games solely to try and copy the games of the past.”
González goes on to discuss what the future holds for him after Rosewater is out in the wild.
“I always like to have at least one idea for my next game in my head,” he tells us. “I think it comes from my time making the Ben Jordan series, where I knew there was always another game in the pipeline. Now that I do this for a living, having an idea for my next project is even more important, because while none of my commercial games have been massive hits, they’ve done well enough to allow me to continue making games. Eventually, sales start slowing down, so if a game does okay and I’m well into production of the next one, there’s enough room to not freak out about income and having to get another job. All that said, I have two projects I’m interested in tackling. Which one I decide to do first depends entirely on how successful Rosewater is.”
Lasting Impressions
Before our time with him comes to an end, González talks to us about something that peeves him: the fact that just because his games have a traditional pixel art aesthetic, people tend to think he’s trying to simply remake the classics when he’s actually trying to create his own original works; evolution rather than imitation.
“I get frustrated when people think I’m making adventure games solely to try and copy the games of the past. I’m not trying to make a love letter to the genre or make people think they’re playing an old game they remember fondly. I want people to play my game and enjoy it on its own merits. I admit it’s somewhat hypocritical, considering I shamelessly lifted the aesthetic of the first Gabriel Knight game for Lamplight City, but in general the reason I stick to low resolution and pixel art is because that’s as good as I can manage with my available resources.
“I realize this is something that’s not going away,” González continues. “And people will always say ‘Hey, that reminds me of Monkey Island!’ but it still irks me. It’s one of the toughest things to let go.”
*****
You can follow González on Twitter, as well as his Discord channel. He can be found on Twitch every Wednesday at 6PM GMT / 1 PM Eastern Time.
His upcoming game Rosewater is on Steam, along with his previous games Lamplight City, A Golden Wake, and Shardlight.
