The Nautilus Adventure Pack: a Q&A with Juggernaut
by SealWyf, HSM Editor; answers provided by George Cochrane, Chief Creative Officer of Juggernaut Games
Juggernaut is one of Home’s most diverse developers. They don’t produce a huge number of items, but everything they do is stylistically distinctive and technically innovative. To date, their major offerings include the haunted Cutteridge estate and its recent demonic spin-off, the MiniBots game (in both single- and multi-player versions), the Palace of the Seven Winds fantasy apartment and a small but elegant collection of Steampunk-themed items, the first of a projected series of Adventure Packs. This will soon be joined by the Nautilus Adventure Pack, which continues the steampunk style in directions that evoke Captain Nemo and other undersea adventures, set in the 19th century — not as it was, but as it should have been.
George Cochrane, the CCO of Juggernaut Games, has graciously agreed to answer HomeStation’s questions about the content.
HSM: Juggernaut is defined by diversity — products ranging from humorous miniature battling robots to haunted houses to Arabian Nights fantasies. All your releases have displayed a deep sense of imagination and literate play, but seem to have no other linking characteristics. Does Juggernaut have a signature style? A coordinating philosophy? Or do you just create what appeals to you at any given moment?
Juggernaut: When we’re planning a project, we like to look at what is missing from the Home landscape, read up on forum requests and try to understand the sorts of things users want to see, and figure out how we could create those. What do tiny battling robots and Lovecraftian-estates have to do with one another? Thematically speaking – not much! But they were firsts in Home and have resonated with the Home community. If anything, we like to think that the signature Juggernaut style is one of quality and fun. If you’re surprised by something technically and artistically in Home, it might be a Juggernaut item!
Given the stylistic diversity of your previous offerings, I was surprised to see the Nautilus Adventure Pack. I loved the Steampunk Pack, and stylistically, this one doesn’t fall far from the tree. I can easily see elements of the two packs being used together. Was this your intention? Or did it just sort of happen? What led you to pick Nautilus as your current playset rather than, say, Space Cowboys, Hip-hop Gangsta Rabbits or Medieval Mecha?
Medieval Mecha… now that could be fun! After our first Adventure Pack, we had a small Twitter competition for Home users to tweet us what adventure they wanted to go on next, and we were delighted by the number and variety of responses – several users mentioned a 20,000 leagues / Captain Nemo / underwater theme. It seemed a natural extension of what we’d started with the Steampunk Adventure Pack, and a chance to do something exciting with profiled actives, so we went for it. We hope the Home community is as pleased with the results as we are.
The 19th-century adventure genre is one that’s dear to me. But, frankly, I don’t see it as being part of the normal aesthetic of Home, which seems to fall somewhere between anime and gangsta, with excursions into random silliness. In general, I think steampunk and its offshoots appeal to an older, more literate population, one which grew up on the novels of Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard, the “Wild Wild West” TV series and “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. Who do you see as the target audience for this offering, demographically? Do you think they are well-represented in Home?
We were definitely motivated by Nautilus not being a part of the regular offerings in Home! I think if we focused solely on creating what is commonly believed to be popular with Home users, we would never veer far away from gangster clothing and swimsuits, but we don’t believe that to be true. Honestly, when we were starting out on Palace of the Seven Winds, we had to wonder how it would be received in a virtual world full of mansions, villas and clubs. We were blown away by the response to the Palace, and the ongoing support and suggestions for such a fantastical place. In the same way that Seven Winds highlighted some cultural apects that might be unfamiliar to most Home users, we hope that someone might enjoy Nautilus enough to learn about Jules Verne, or at the very least to enjoy a take on the theme they might not have before.
The video includes some very intriguing features, not all of which have been announced in the press release. In particular, I’m looking at the spaces where the video was shot — a Vernesque undersea apartment, and a sandy sea bed. Are these locations we can expect to see in the Estates store any time soon?
The scenes depicted in the Nautilus video were all shot on location at Juggernaut Games’ Studio Lot, which is to say they aren’t actual spaces in Home – yet! We felt it would be difficult to convey the feel of Nautilus with video shot in the Harbor Studio apartment, so we whipped up some simple environments to shoot in. While you won’t see them in the Estates store anytime soon, we’d LOVE to do a full Nautilus submarine / undersea space if that’s something users would be interested in!
Long ago, Home was promised a Steampunk public space, which for some reason was never completed. Given that Juggernaut is making its second excursion into 19th-century fantasy adventure, can we hope for an extension of this style into public spaces or substantive mini-games?
We don’t have any current plans for a Steampunk public space, but as you might guess we have some fans of the genre on the team who would jump at a chance to work on one.
The growing line of “Essence” active items has changed the rules about what active items can do. Thanks to these, we can now add randomly sprouting plants and indoor rainstorms to our personal spaces. And the new item, “Essence of the Tides”, not only adds columns of bubbles for an undersea effect, but lends your avatars custom undersea swimming animations. I can’t wait to try these out! I can only assume that the “Essence” line will continue to grow. Can you tell us anything about where it’s headed next, or at least confirm that more is in the works?
We’ve really enjoyed working on the “Essence” items. They encapsulate alot of our philosophy on Home design: make something that pushes boundaries. With the Essence of the Seven Winds, we were able to let users fly in any of their personal spaces for the first time in Home, something we’re extremely proud of. Essence of the Tides will allow you to swim and tint your screen blue with bubble effects if you like – it should be a lot of fun! There might be an Essence item coming out for the winter holidays too…
As I mentioned in a previous article, one of Juggernaut’s grand achievements was the flying locomotion in Palace of the Seven Winds. I can only assume that something this glorious is not a one-off creation, and that you have future plans for the flight engine. We see some similar actions in the custom moves shown in the Essence of the Tides item, both emotes and swimming locomotions. Can you say anything about the future of flight and similar actions in Juggernaut products?
Now that we’ve created the flight engine, we’d like to integrate it into our future projects wherever it makes sense in Home. Future Juggernaut Spaces (whether private or public) will be built to incorporate or support flight. We’d also love to develop it further, perhaps even into a fully featured game.
Thank you for talking with HomeStation Magazine.
November 20th, 2012 by SealWyf_ | 3 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer, who has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is obsessed with creating new aesthetic experiences in PlayStation Home.
I sure hope I can use the Nautilus submarine in Cutthroat Pirates Cove. I did ask for that before. No? OK, I didn’t think so.
A “Nautilus vs. British Royal Navy” game would be awesome. Just saying.
Great article. I was disappointed when I bought the Nautilus pack though, because I thought the Essence of Tides would have been included.