An Appreciation of Spiders

The earliest evidence I have of Developer Appreciation week is 2010, but it might have been taking place prior to that. Unfortunately the original site of its creator Scarybooster no longer exists, nor does even the social media evidence as his twitter account was hacked some years back. Whatever the case it has been going on for awhile and with Scary’s falling off the blogging wagon, we tried to start integrating the practice of taking a moment out to appreciate the folks that are behind the scenes creating the games we love into the Blaugust proceedings. This has morphed a bit to include content creators since I feel they also need some appreciation as well, but for this very first post of the week I thought I would bring things back to its roots and talk about a game studio that might not be that well known.

Prolific Release Schedule

Spiders is a French Game studio most recently known for the huge sweeping RPG adventure Greedfall that I have written about at length on this blog. However if you have not been reading the blog it is probably likely that you may not know about this studio or many of its games. I originally became aware of them when Technomancer released, because I thought it looked extremely interesting and it happened to be one of the games that Steam suggested to me through its discovery algorithm. However they have been cranking out ambitious games for awhile now, and it is highly likely that you have at least heard of several of them.

• Sherlock Holmes Versus Jack the Ripper – 2009
• Faery: Legends of Avalon – 2010
• Gray Matter – 2011
• Of Orcs and Men – 2012
• Mars: War Logs – 2013
• Bound by Flame – 2014
• The Technomancer – 2016
• Greedfall – 2019

The games utilize a custom in case variant of Sony’s PhyreEngine that they call the Silk Engine, and it seems to have allowed them to crank out a pretty prolific release schedule. Until Technomancer they were seemingly releasing a new title every year, which is fairly impressive. I’ve played through four of their games to date and finished three of those four. I ultimately decided that Bound by Flame just was not for me, but I deeply enjoyed Mars: War Logs, Technomancer and Greedfall. In fact Greedfall was on the AggroChat games of the year show and it really was one of the darlings of what was an otherwise packed year of games.

Flawed But Ambitious

In an April or 2019 Article, CEO and Co-Founder Jehanne Rousseau spoke a bit about their motivations and why they seemingly keep creating the same sort of games over and over.

We’re 35 in our team, with 40 at the moment working on the game. We are developing this because we love the type of game. There aren’t that many studios doing this type of games today. I mean, even BioWare have stopped doing it and I’m very sad because it’s what I like to play the most.

Jehanne Rousseau, CEO of French studio Spiders

That really is the thing that drew me to the games the most, is that they are in fact creating games in a genre that seems to be dying. There is a blind ambition in each of these titles that is impressive, but the negative side of that is said ambition sometimes outstrips their technical prowess. They seem to constantly be grasping for greatness and often times end up a few steps short of it. There are numerous things about the games that I would consider a bit buggy at best and poorly designed at worst, in each of the games that I have played there is something magical about them that kept me coming back for more. If you take the sequence of games Mars: War Logs, Technomancer (its direct sequel) and Greedfall there is a clear growth and improvement between each of the games.

The stories that they are telling are simultaneously huge and expansive while at the same time managing to include some deeply personal encounters. There is so much world building happening that feels fresh and interesting, and these worlds are populated with characters that are worthy of them. Where the games fall short however is on the technical execution. Combat often times feels a little stilted and control schemes often feel a little awkward. However much like going back to Dragon Age Origins which also suffers from many of these issues when compared against a modern game, the story and the characters are engaging enough to get you to look past those blemishes.

A Bright Future

The reason why I chose to talk about Spiders this morning, is that I am extremely excited for whatever comes next. After having played a sequence of games and seeing the improvements between each of them, I have to say Greedfall was without a doubt their most polished experience. It came extremely close to being a perfect game, at least in my eyes. It had some mechanical issues still, but the amount of improvement made between it and Technomancer for example were impressive. It is like I am watching a studio flirting with greatness so many times and Greedfall really was the show case of those abilities.

This makes anxious for whatever game comes next, because I feel like whatever title that is will be their big commercial break out. Greedfall was still very much a niche title for the people “in the know” about such things, but across the board it seemed to review extremely favorably. In hindsight it was probably my favorite game of 2019, and while based on their current schedule I don’t expect to see another game until 2021 at the earliest, I am pumped to get my hands on it and play it. Spiders is exploring one of my favorite genres of games… the Bioware style action RPG, and sadly it is a genre that not too many companies seem to be making. I think more than anything I want to keep pushing recognition of this studio out there, because they are doing some really interesting things. Over the last year they went from a studio that I knew next to nothing about, to one of the ones I am watching closely for any tidbits of information that might be announced.

If you are curious about some of my other posts related to Spiders games… you can find the various categories associated with them below:

• Mars: War Logs
• The Technomancer
• Greedfall