Zero Kate Thirty debrief

Zero Kate Thirty, the standalone Christmas mini-episode, is available here.

I feel like my aim’s been a little off in the past couple of episodes. Reflecting on it, I think I’ve (unwittingly) made the mistake of trying to write episodes you guys will like instead of writing episodes I want to play.

This came from a good place – I love and appreciate you guys, and I want to make you happy – but I think it led to a couple of meh episodes. I’m just not smart enough to write episodes that other people are going to love. I can only write the stuff I find interesting and hot, and if people like it or not is up to the universe.

Rick Rubin has some wise words about this on Instagram. 

Zero Kate Thirty
In early December, I had the idea that we could race out a little Christmas episode for you guys. My plan was to dust off an old draft for an action set-piece, bring it up to date in the new engine, and get it out on Christmas Eve.

I wasn’t sure it was a good idea – there was no sex in the outline, and I wasn’t sure anyone would enjoy playing it. But I felt like it might shake my writing out of its rut and, with Rick Rubin’s advice ringing in my ears, I decided to just go for it.

The writing experience
This was fucking hell! Everything took longer than I expected. I was routinely burning 12+-hour days all through December, turning down social invites (not that I got many 😭) and just trying to get everything written in time.

In the end, some planned things had to be cut, including a third battle branch (where the heroine could investigate the explosion at the south wall instead of securing the ops centre or assisting at the main gate; this would’ve led to a CQB rifle shootout with suicide bombers in the motor pool) and some alternative options after securing the ops centre.  Plus a lot of polishing.  And it was still a couple of days late.

It was also great, I had so much fun writing this that I just didn’t wanna do anything else. I really enjoyed writing Zero Kate Thirty, I really enjoyed playing Zero Kate Thirty, and I was so pleased and humbled that the mini-episode got generally positive feedback.

Some of my favourite parts of this episode were:

• The artwork by our illustrator, lovely Victoria. The heroine’s tactical gear was cool, her thermal base layer was hot, and the head wound makeup was fucking disgusting.  The episodes only start feeling real when V's artwork gets coded in.

• The mechanics of the final battle; this could’ve been a really boring series of dice rolls, but introducing some tactical decision-making (and the relentless but affectable advance of the assaulters) made it a lot more exciting. Special thanks to DESPear on this section, who saved me from making a serious design mistake at 19:56 on Boxing Day.

• Introducing suppression to the battle scenes; it’s an important part of modern warfare, but it’s rarely reflected in films or video games.

• The subtle physical intimacy between Tig and Kate, on top of the generator: this idea came entirely from Behbeh, who realised that this scene could be kinda sexy. I executed her idea pretty minimally – it came in just a couple days before Christmas – and I think this scene could’ve been made really quite steamy with a little more time.

• Kate’s spunkier, funnier personality. I really liked her in this episode. (If I had more time, I’d have expressed this more through dialogue options than scripted lines for her – as a player. it’d feel more rewarding to pick the snappy, zingy lines yourself and have NPCs react).

Overall, I think writing this episode was really good for the project. I feel like the main thing I learned from it was that I just need to try to make episodes that I like, not ones that I think will be popular.*

I’m going to try to take a few more risks with the writing in 2024; I hope you guys will enjoy it.

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* (and also that the A-10 Warthog is in fact armed with a GAU-8 Avenger, not a Vulcan cannon)