Autumn is coming fast and more and more of you are discovering AOsphere and our site. As the proverb says, “Everything comes to he who waits.” It’s coming, for sure!
…but you’ll have to wait until January. We’re forced to postpone the date fixed for 15 October because we want to make sure we achieve our ambitious target: offering a new form of entertainment and changing the image of videogames.
Don’t worry, you’ll get the games you deserve. Mature, adult games that won’t take you for mindless teenies. So that’s why we have to rethink things over and over everyday, the games system, the narration of the episodes, and continuously improve the technology.
You’ll read about the delay in the press, but the least we could do was to tell you about it beforehand. I’ve been to see Olivier Masclef, project manager, and Dominique Biehler, the senior producer so they could explain to me in detail why we’re running behind schedule. This is what I recorded:
Olivier: There’s no need to panic, everything’s progressing well. We’re finishing the first half-season of Aosphere. Those who have registered for the beta test can test part of the game this autumn.
I’m still confident about the quality of what we’re going to offer. It’s for this very reason that we’ve decided to postpone the release for several months. Identifiction is more than ever a huge challenge, which is what sparks, stimulates, dynamises and obsesses us at the studio!
Dominique: Let’s says that it’s always difficult to be the first. We’re opening up a new path in the world of Internet entertainment, not just because of our content but also because of the technology we’ve developed.
The delay in bringing out AOsphere is due to the problems we’ve come up against when building, I mean assembling, the episodes. We’re using a home-grown technology that doesn’t look like anything thing else developed for the 3D market on Flash. Like any innovative technology, we’ve run into teething problems this summer that prevented us from advancing at the pace we planned. Now we feel it’s more prudent to fully control the technology before delivering it to you and ensure that the quality will meet your expectations in every way.
There’s nothing really serious, we’re working to hone our assembly tool in order to succeed with getting the production line rolling. It’s a long and iterative process that takes a lot of time in the beginning but saves more in the end. Deciding to announce the delay was as difficult as it was necessary to guarantee the quality of the game.
Olivier: It’s true! Keeping to the schedule of 15 October would have prevented us from diffusing enough episodes before Christmas. I just couldn’t foresee offering you 4 episodes and then making you wait 3 months before diffusing 4 more. We would have given up one of the basic principles of Identifiction, that of offering weekly interactive episodes.
I admit that building our own production tools wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined.
But we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, which is a good thing for you since we are now sure of succeeding in assembling the episodes, and for us since it’s the most enjoyable and creative part of production. It’s now that we’re going to have fun in putting the characters on stage and producing each episode.
It’s going to be a hot autumn in the studio. A real Indian summer!
Well, thanks for the news, Olivier and Dominique. But I won’t think twice about coming back to bother you if I get any feedback on it.
One thing brings about another, so the beta test has been delayed as well. As it’s delayed I can’t let you test the first episode. What’s more I‘m obliged to reorganise it. Initially, it was a closed and limited beta test. However, finally we’re going open our platform to a maximum number of testers. So we’re going to record the registrations for the beta test. A registration form will soon be onlined on our site and we’re scouting the world’s showrooms to collect the names of testers. The message stays the same: tell all your friends
As soon as the platform is ready for testing, I’ll tell you by email. All you’ll have to do is to access www.identifiction.com and create your test account.
For those subscribed to the newsletter, you’ll be receiving news about the game as soon as possible. For the others, don’t forget to logon to the blog regularly.
Today, we need your support more than ever.
What’s more, I’m making an appeal: If you know of any shows near you that you’d like us to come to and meet you, send me an email to pilou[at]identifiction.com
It’ll give the opportunity to test our playable demo.
Keep the faith
Pilou
