Today we're joined by Manos, one of the Co-founders of Arcweave to discuss what their game design tool can do and how it can help you during your game development project.
Hey, Manos! Thank you for joining me today! Can you first give us a quick rundown on what exactly Arcweave is?
Arcweave is a web app for designing and prototyping games. It is highly visual and supports real-time collaboration. Our tool allows users to create diagrams (called 'boards') to represent the flow of a story or game logic. We strive to keep it as easy-to-use as possible, so that writers and designers can focus on what matters most: the creative aspect of their work.
Arcweave sounds really powerful. How can it help developers make better games and improve their production?
Developers and content writers can collaborate in real-time, organize their game content and prototype ideas fast without writing any code. When they are ready they can export their content to be used by a game engine and take it from there.
Is there a specific type of game that you would see gain most from using Arcweave?
So far, people mostly use it to design adventure games, RPGs, and to write branching dialogues for basically any game genre that asks for it.
Obviously it helps narrative more than physics, but users tend to surprise us.
I can certainly imagine that. Game developers tend to be a creative bunch. Is there a big learning curve with it?
Arcweave itself is very easy to use, so the learning curve is quite shallow. This leaves all the space for the real learning curve, which is developing your very own narrative skills.
How did you come up with the idea for this tool?
We were frustrated that people had no appropriate tools to work and collaborate with, when designing games. As we figured out, many game designers use Google Docs to collaborate—which is fair enough, since they support real-time collaboration, but how do you deal with the branching chaos of game design? Moreover, Twine has unlimited capabilities when it comes to writing interactive fiction, but people use it as the only substitute when it comes to making "playable" flow diagrams.
Plus, from the start we wanted to create a tool that we, ourselves, would love to use—the classic cliché—and one that would be *simple* to do so.
Any tips or tricks you'd like to share for Arcweave users?
Use multiple boards and jumpers! Don't keep everything on the same monster-board! Screenwriters break the story down in scenes and sequences. Novelists have chapters. Arcweave has boards. Break your story down to as many boards as you need. Also, organize your game entities in folders. Help yourself.
Learn more? Watch our YouTube tutorials and read the documentation.
What are your plans for Arcweave's future? What exciting things can developers expect?
We are aware that different users use Arcweave in different ways. Some embrace it in their workflow as a content management tool, exporting the JSON file and continuing on their game engine of choice. Others are happy to use it to design and publish their interactive fiction. Others use it to run prototypes for their customers, before building their apps or games at their platform of choice. We try to cater to all kinds of users, which makes things a little complicated, but it's worth it.
We plan to offer an online API in order to facilitate connecting Arcweave projects to live apps and games and allow users to change game content in realtime via our drag n drop interface. We aim to be the get-go tool for everyone to start designing games and interactive experiences, even without any prior knowledge!
Thank you Manos, for lending us your time and giving insight into Arcweave. For everyone interested in learning more about this great game development tool, visit Arcweave website here.
If you want to learn how to better use Arcweave, you can jump into their tutorials section here, or check out their comprehensive list of tutorial videos on youtube.
And don't forget that Arcweave has graciously provided their subscriptions and discount codes as rewards in many GDWC 2021 categories, so remember to enroll!
