Adventure Forge a Toolset for Game Masters, Storytellers, Authors, and Artists

With Adventure Forge, Endless Adventures is attempting to bring to market a toolset that will enable game masters, storytellers, writers and artists to create their own narrative-rich video games without the need for coding. Behind the project is Jordan Weisman, known for BattleTech, MechWarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies. The toolset is best compared to Tabletop Simulator. An interview with Weisman about the possibilities, challenges and a very special niche.

Adventure Forge by Endless Adventures is a toolset aimed at empowering game masters, storytellers, authors, and artists to create their own narrative-rich video games, with no coding required. The company was founded by serial entrepreneur and game designer Jordan Weisman. The platform aims to democratise narrative game creation with easy-to-use tools. It is the brainchild of CEO and founder Jordan Weisman, known for franchises such as BattleTech, MechWarrior, Shadowrun and Crimson Skies. His previous business ventures include Virtual World Entertainment, acquired by the Disney family; FASA Interactive, acquired by Microsoft; Wizkids, acquired by Topps Inc; and Harebrained Schemes, acquired by Paradox Entertainment. Endless Adventures will start inviting players later this year.

GamesMarkt: Endless Adventures introduced the no-code game creation platform Adventure Forge last year. How has the feedback on this platform been since then?

Jordan Weisman: We have been bringing in small cohorts of people as we have been developing the platform. We have been blown away by the widely diverse and enormously creative small games people have been making with the tool. We have also been learning a lot about how we need to introduce people to this incredibly powerful set of tools and have been developing tutorial videos and wikis in response.

GamesMarkt: After working at Harebrained Schemes for many years, what motivated you to realise a platform for the easiest possible game development at Endless Adventures?

Jordan Weisman: My goal with Adventure Forge is to empower fans of game genres to unleash their creativity to create and innovate the genres they love by providing them with a powerful toolset and an easy publication platform. Endless Adventures brings together the two biggest sides of my career, tabletop game designer and video game designer/developer. As a videogame designer, the game we develop tells the story we wrote, it may have many many emergent elements but they all exist within the “play space” we created. As a tabletop RPG designer, we create the universe setting and mechanics but it's the players and game masters that write the story and create the magic, and the most rewarding times in my career have been hearing those stories and being blown away by the creativity, authenticity, and often very emotional content they contained.

GamesMarkt: You are specifically targeting storytellers, authors, and artists. How are you trying to get these people onto the platform?

Jordan Weisman: Adventure Forge, our first genre-specific no-code authoring tool, is dedicated to the wide spectrum of narrative games for which we are trying to attract storytellers, designers, and artists. Some of the groups that we are initially engaging with are; tabletop game masters, as they have experience with both game mechanics and storytelling, visual novel authors as they are experienced with interactive storytelling, CRPG makers who use existing tools, and fanfic authors who are interested in adding interactive elements to their storytelling.

GamesMarkt: What types of games can be created with Adventure Forge?

Jordan Weisman: Wow, we have to keep rephrasing this because our users keep broadening the spectrum of types of games possible to be created with Adventure Forge. The platform includes powerful tools for text/conversation creation, isometric game creation, and an extremely versatile tool to create 2D interactive games and interfaces. We originally set our sights on choose-your-own-path interactive fiction, dating sims, visual novels, and isometric RPGs, and we have seen innovative games that mix those genres together, but we have also already seen users creating hidden object games, strategy games, various types of tactical combat, and many others.

GamesMarkt: And what kind of support/assistance do you offer to interested developers?

Jordan Weisman: As mentioned above we have created a series of tutorial videos and a wiki, a process that will be ongoing as we are always adding new features and depth to the platform. We have created and are testing a chatbot that provides step-by-step answers for how to create things in Adventure Forge. Most importantly we are creating a community for all Adventure Forge Gamesmiths, what we call creators, including our content team and developers, to support each other with tips and techniques as we all learn to harness the open-ended power of Adventure Forge.

GamesMarkt: What is the business model behind Adventure Forge? How does Endless Adventures make its money?

Jordan Weisman: The Adventure Forge application will be free on Steam and soon afterwards on iOS and Android. The free app presents players the games that we, and Adventure Forge Gamesmiths have created. An in-app purchase unlocks the creation tools for players to become Gamesmiths. We will also be selling game universe “starter kits” for Gamesmiths who want to accelerate their game creation within one of the game worlds that we have created thousands of assets for. If Gamesmiths choose to monetize their games, which we make very easy for them to do, we will share in that revenue. Lastly, we will be looking at how Gamesmiths creations are received by Adventure Forge players to identify high-performing games to “spin out” of Adventure Forge as stand-alone game applications to be published on all applicable platforms and we will share in that revenue as the game’s publisher.

GamesMarkt: Adventure Forge will be released on Steam, initially in Early Access. Is it a game platform or a distribution platform? Or something like Tabletop Simulator, in which there are DLCs for various tabletop games?

Jordan Weisman: Tabletop Simulator is a good analogy as Adventure Forge is both an authoring tool set and a distribution platform.

GamesMarkt: The games can be created by users. What are the problems with user-generated content? For example, how can you prevent offensive, dangerous, inflammatory, or other unwanted content from being distributed on the platform?

Jordan Weisman: With any UGC platform there is the dynamic tension between making the platform open for people to express their creativity, their cultures, their life experiences, and to tell their stories, and yet protect consumers of that content, in our case players, from offensive content. This is a tough problem and I am sure that our approach will change over time, but our current plan has the following elements:

• When Gamesmiths start the easy publishing process they fill out a questionnaire about their game the data of which is then presented to players to help them find games that are appropriate for themselves.
• When players open Adventure Forge they are presented with a collection of games for which the working title is called “civilization”. All the games in civilization have been reviewed for objectionable content and thus is a “safe space” for players.
• If players want to play games that have not yet been reviewed yet they can go to the section with the working title “wild-west” which is where all games initially appear.
• When Gamemasters are ready they can apply to have their game moved from the wild-west to civilization which kicks off a review by a combination of AI and human moderators.
• While games are in the wild-west if players encounter offensive material they can flag it for review and if it fails that review the game will be taken “down” and the Gamesmith will be informed of the problems and if necessary disciplinary action will be taken.

GamesMarkt: What market niche are you targeting with Adventure Forge and is it big enough for sustainable success?

Jordan Weisman: In all forms of media except games, the largest platforms in terms of aggregate content consumption are all user-generated content platforms. The power of micro-communities to support their creators is in aggregate an enormous economic engine. We believe that our approach to creating genre-specific, no-code, AI-enhanced, authoring tools is the key to unlocking this potential for video games.

GamesMarkt: Finally, can you give us an overview of the company Endless Adventures?

Jordan Weisman: Endless Adventures Incorporated was founded about four years ago to create an authoring tool backend for a physical/digital hybrid card game created by my son Nate Weisman. That game never came out but the tool started to take on a life of its own and was then used a year later as the storytelling engine for my son Zach Weisman’s very successful hybrid board game series Sea of Legends. Over the first couple of years the team was very small, hovering around four people lead by myself and our lead engineer Ian Underwood. About two years ago we started scaling the ambition for Adventure Forge and correspondingly scaled the team to its current size of 32 people. We anticipate additional growth as we come to market, continue to expand Adventure Forge’s feature set, and begin development of our next Forge.