As Chief Creative Officer of Seven Lights, I spent 2007-09 creating The Continuum, a free-to-play, online collectible wargame playable in any web browser.
- Over 2.5 million characters and pieces of equipment sold in 6 mos
- $32 Monthly Average Rate Per Paying User (ARPPU)
- Over 200K games played and more than 115K sign-ups in 6 months.
"Most of the browser-based games we see tend to be very simple, aiming to attract casual gamers looking for a quick diversion. The Continuum, a new Flash game... is looking to break this trend, featuring an extremely polished interface and deep ranking system that will keep gamers' attention for hours on end."
-techcrunch.com
The Continuum combined strategy with a deep and involving narrative to create an all-new kind of gaming experience. Part RPG, part turn-based strategy game, part collectible miniatures game, The Continuum takes familiar gameplay elements and weaves them together in a totally unique way.
The Continuum's narrative is set in a "multiverse" that is the combination of four completely different "realities." Each reality has its own distinct races, creatures, cultures, backstory, and aesthetic.
To establish The Continuum's backstory, I wrote and art directed three full-length comic books (issue #1,#2, and #3) distributed at "The Four Best Days in Gaming—GenCon" as well as digitally at thecontinuum.com.
The comic series became so popular that role-playing forums were created on thecontinuum.com to give the fans an environment to play out The Continuum's narrative in their own way.
When the site came down in 2010, there were over 3,500 posts in the Role-playing forum.
The Continuum has the depth of the Marianas Trench. There are so many different things to see, do, and digest. My task was to keep that depth while making it as simple to use as an iPhone*.
"If I had to describe it in one word, it would be DEEP... for something so complicated, it is remarkably intuitive and easy to navigate....The lobby for finding matches is very well designed....The combat process and resolution is, like much else in the game, intuitive. This really takes the edge off the complexity when put into practice."
-Multiplayer Online Games Directory
*Apologies to all out there that find using an iPhone difficult.
The Continuum team was comprised of 8 individuals working on different aspects of the experience. As Chief Creative Officer, it was my charge to create, oversee, and maintain consistent art, copy, audio, and code throughout the game, site, comics, merchandise and music (below).
Continuum Soundtrack
Disruption (Continuum Theme)
War is Imminent
A Measure of Stillness
Shoulder to Shoulder, Face to Face
Blood and Steel
Beaten, Unbroken
"I demoed the game... and man-oh-man, am I sold. This game is going to get me in a lot of trouble, I can tell."
-popmatters.com
If you are creative you have a lot of, "What if?" moments.
That is exactly how The Continuum started. What if we were to take miniature's gameplay, combine it with the development system of an RPG, facilitate multiplayer internet gaming to get a game in whenever you want to play, make the game free to play, and create a digital goods economy for gamers who wanted buy, trade, and/or create epic scale battles?
"...THE CONTINUUM is anything but traditional, as it combines the worlds of both strategy video games and table-top RPGs to provide an experience that truly is one of a kind."
-grrlgamer.com
Lastly, we needed a destination that ran parallel to the game for The Continuum's ecommerce store, a player's account management, news updates, leaderboards, forums, comics, etc. TheContinuum.com became the starting point for a player's continuum experience.