Deck Nine Games

Deck Nine

Deck Nine Games (previously Idol Minds) are the developers of Life is Strange: Before the Storm. They were founded in 1997, being focused on PlayStation 1 games. Nowadays they are focussing on narrative adventures like Life is Strange. They are self-proclaimed fans of Life is Strange. They currently reside in Westminster, Colorado, United States.

History

Deck Nine Games (formerly known as Idol Minds up until May 2017) is a small, independent game developer studio dedicated to the "forging of stories and gameplay into transformative entertainment experiences."^[1] They were founded in 1997 by Mark Lyons, originally focused on PlayStation 1 games. The company's earliest hit is a snowboarding series called Cool Boarders. Over the years, Deck Nine (as Idol Minds) has worked with publishers such as Sony Entertainment and Activision.

For the past three years, Deck Nine has been focused on expanding their genre to narrative adventure games. Their efforts have been directed towards developing "StoryForge", a suite of tools for writers, directors, cinematic artists and content creators that allows them to create an interactive story and turn that story into a fully functioning narrative game. The writing tool PlayWrite integrates writing traditional screenplays and the branches and consequences found in narrative games. It allows writers to focus "on amazing characters, intriguing plots and agonizing choices" and spend more time on writing, reading and playing a story before it goes into production. Additional functionalities include scene graphs, motion capture, audio recording scripts and output to their custom cinematic tool. The cinematic tool StoryTeller is essential for creating film-like moments blending a mix of automation and easy to use controls to give artists creative command of features such as lip syncing, blending animations, emotion events, cameras and camera effects (depth of field, chromatic aberration etc.).

On May 31, 2017, it was announced that long time PlayStation developer Idol Games had rebranded and would be known from this date as Deck Nine Games. On this same date, it was revealed that the studio has partnered with a major AAA publisher (which we now know to be Square Enix). The studio rebranded due to their shift to story-driven-narrative games following their development of the new toolset called StoryForge, which focuses on "meaningful storytelling and rich gameplay" and would function similar to the engine used by Telltale Games. StoryForge will allow the integration of "motion capture, narrative choices, music and more". The development team consists of motion capture professionals and cinematic artists who will be working 'in house'.^[2]

Before the Storm is the first narrative adventure game Deck Nine Games is working on, in collaboration with publisher Square Enix and the original Square Enix team that participated in the development of the first game.

Webb Pickersgill, Before the Storm's Co-Game Director at Deck Nine Games has commented that:

"I love working with the actors to bring the characters to life. My directing style requires my actors own their characters. I make sure they deeply understand who they are playing, and the details of the life they are living. We do workshops to explore the body language and refine the details that make what that character unique and interesting. Then, we explore each scene and often discover what blocking and body language works the best for each moment."^[3]

Team

Mark Lyons (President / CTO)
Jeff Litchford (Vice President)
Andrew Weatherl (Art Director)
Chuck Carr (Audio Director)
David Hein (Producer)
Webb Pickersgill (Co-Game Director)
Chris Floyd (Co-Game Director)
Zak Garriss (Lead-Writer)
Ashly Burch (Writing Consultant)
Felice Kuan (Co-Writer)
Mallory Littleton (Co-Writer)
Jonathan Zimmerman (Co-Writer)
Ross McCall (Sr. Narrative Designer)
Christopher Means (Level and Narrative Designer)

Phil Bache (Voice-Over Director)

Alejandro Arque (Game Designer, Square Enix)
Toby Palm (Community Manager, Square Enix)
Scott Blows (Brand Manager, Square Enix)

Trivia

From 1997 to May 2017, Deck Nine was known as Idol Minds.
Life Is Strange: Before the Storm is the Deck Nine's first narrative adventure.
The name "Deck Nine" comes from a storytelling game from the 80s.
The company became widely known for their physics engine in the 2007 game Pain, which was the most downloaded game on PlayStation Network in 2009.^[4]
A Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Deck Nine Games team took place on August 10, 2017.^[5]