We answer our community: On Open Ended Gameplay - and are hiring a Press Officer news - Dilogus: The Winds of War

A few weeks of silence... Why?

We usually don't go silent for more than week, or maybe two. What happened is that we ran into some nasty hardware issues which caused a loss of data. Lots of it. In addition to that, we also had work to do, and posting news is not just a random writing by a random person. We aim to bring you quality news over quantity, as we're pretty sure you're more interested in things that happen actively, or about questions you give us - than for us releasing an update every second day with just a paragraph stating that the old lady's cat went gone.

The Digital Arrow website is up and running since recently. It will be a place for all our fans to gather and get the latest news on all things Digital Arrow. Interested? Jump over and take a look.

That said, we are also looking to expand our team with a press officer. While we do have a community manager who's taking a lot of efforts and work to cover all of our fans, his main focus is - and will probably will be fore a while our other game near release (InMomentum).

So are you up for it?

• Your responsibility will be one, single goal - to keep all of the Dilogus - The Winds of War fans up to date with the latest news, well written, well organized.
• It's mandatory that you are perfect in English and that you are a creative writer that enjoys writing articles.

So what does it take you to join?

• Matching the above requirements is a must.
• While we are indeed an Indie project, we still aim to be proper and straight when it comes to communicating with our community. We're not joking around but we're not dead serious either. We're here to make a great game - we expect you to be mature enough to handle the tasks.
• Due to multiple reasons (including law and various papers we need to issue out), you need to be at least 18 years of age to join.
• Provide a sample article (1-2 page should be enough) about Dilogus - The Winds of War using all the information you can find on the internet in e-mail to jobs@digital-arrow.com with the subject "Press Officer". The article can be about anything you pick about Dilogus.

What will I get?

• We're currently non funded. If you do join, keep in mind this is entirely voluntarily and currently not compensated.
• You will (obviously) have in depth insight into the development and will be provided with exclusive information to be able to write the necessary articles.
• You will receive compensation in the event of secured investment for the project.
• You will be provided a statement for game alpha, beta and free copy of the game upon release.
• You will receive our thanks for helping us out! And we're pretty sure the community will be happy as well to know that they will be supported by a kind press officer.

That's all. If you are interested and would like to submit an application, feel free to do it on the above noted address. We don't bite, and we'll read through every single application.

And now on Open Ended Gameplay!

We've put up polls and questions on out Facebook page allowing our fans to ask questions or vote. This will not be the first and only time we've done this, so if you would like to ask a question yourself, head over there, join the community on Facebook or Twitter and ask away! Our community means a lot to us, and if we can answer your question, we definitively will.

On our last poll, the most votes landed upon "Open Ended Gameplay". It was not the first time someone asked this from us, so we'll try to provide a glimpse into this subject.

Open ended gameplay is a very wide subject. While we consider this to be one of the main aspects of our game - we're still investing a lot of work and time into creating a good and stable story that works in any kind of (linear and non linear) environment. Some people enjoy games that are more closed in as otherwise they feel lost. Others, the explorer spirits always want to venture further away from the beaten track - to check what's behind that corner or behind the bushes.

It's a hard nut to crack as it comes with a lot of balancing and a lot of work to make something open, yet still engaging. It's easy to just make a blank world and throw the player in there - but that won't last long. A good example of this is probably Morrowind. While the world is open, a lot of people reported that they felt kinda lost in there, like if they would be playing an MMO offline. What we're trying to do, is to create a game world that is dynamic. It's not easy, but it's not hard either. It's just a fair chunk of work that we need to sit down and beat out. But! We're not making a huge world.

Let's start from the game world. If someone has playped Oblivion, we're pretty sure that you've noticed that after a short time you've seen everything. You've seen a cave, a dungeon, a woods and the wastes of oblivion. The problem is (at least we think), that every of these elements are always the same across all cases. All of the caves look the same, all of the woods are same, the terrain is just a humpy flat plane with trees and rocks ontop of it, etc - and there are very little things happening. Now let's take Gothic 2. Gothic 2 has about half of the Oblivion's world size, if not smaller but on every single step, you see new things. It's so polished and fleshed out that you simply wish to explore. This is what we want to do. A world that You as a player will enjoy exploring. Every bit of it. Even that small corner behind your average bush.

While we would love to say a lot more on this, we currently cannot. The whole system is in an experimental phase but one thing if for sure: We'll let the player venture to practically any place he/she wants. The only restriction will be the character level. We will not level the world to the player's level, but create a world that is there and is alive and have the player learn into the world, and won't fine tune the world to the player as then there is no point in making yourself more capable to explore.

You have a question on this subject? Feel free to ask. We're all ears (well, we're all eyes actually).