[EDITOR'S NOTE: Click here for links to all of our BattleBlock Theater Week coverage]

By Emil Ayoubkhan -- Project Manager

As part of OXM's week-long coverage on BattleBlock Theater (BBT) we decided to do something we've never really been comfortable with before: give a somewhat detailed tour of our studio, and have a few team members talk about their roles in helping develop BBT. We're all somewhat private humans, and we get scared to take pictures in the office, or talk about our development process. 

Although this type of hesitation in sharing more about our company doesn't necessarily translate into our individual personalities, it does make being open about all of our day-to-day work lives a little more difficult. With all of that said, though, we put aside our social deficiencies, grabbed a camera, wrote down a few paragraphs about what we do, and started taking some pictures.

When coming up with content for this post, I asked a few members of the dev team to list out some of their daily development processes. Below you'll find three separate stories from three separate humans:

Dan Paladin - art director/our boss

Ian Moreno - production & audio coordinator

Megan Lam - usability lab moderator

From design meetings, usability lab sessions, testing, crunching, drawing, screaming, laughing, crying, to just about every other imaginable emotion you can think of, BBT has grown to be our biggest title ever. Sure, we've only had two other games before this, but it's all relative somehow, right? Further into this post you'll find more information about our testers, and level designers too. One day when we have more time we will be able to talk about ALL of our employees, but for now here's a small sample. 

Dan Paladin - Art Director/Co-Founder:

"There's a lot going on behind the scenes of BBT. The mix for this game has always been an interesting one. It combines many familiar elements and yet it ends up feeling different than anything I've ever played before. I believe there isn't a single game you can fairly correlate BBT with.

"To get our mixes just right, it takes time. When we make additions or changes, we let them marinate. Eventually those changes either feel very right or reveal what tweaks must be made.

"We work very organically and let the game lead us where it wants to go, rather than forcing a formula upfront. For example, we based BBT's base gameplay off of our Alien Hominid PDA mini-game. The only melee move we once had would be to simply push people. We found ourselves (and other players) wanting to push each other for hours. Then we added a punch. But the punch could simply be ducked under. So we added a low-kick to kick people in the face. This went on and on until we developed a melee system that has a very satisfying rock-paper-scissors--type outcome.

"It is also important that all these abilities are easy to pull off. This way someone of a lower skill level can manage to fend off a more skilled player in satisfying ways.  Skilled players still come out ahead, and yet can never feel 100% safe during combat."

Ian Moreno - Production Coordinator:

"My relationship with BattleBlock Theater is definitely multi-faceted. Seems to rotate hourly, whether it be helping with Usability, assisting with Test, or adjusting text strings for talking cats. Though the underlying task at hand, that is about as omnipresent as our game's narrator, would be the audio assets in the game. Whether it being working with our Sound Designer and composers/musicians, there's a constant degree of tweaking, editing and manipulating (files not people :-)). The audio in the game has always been a challenge from day one. There's a specific tone with BBT and the overall sonic spectrum has to complement it and at times elevate it.

"It's an ongoing process, still ongoing in fact. It's a constant search. Though this not only comes in the form of finding new music, but also finding new in-game scenarios that need...something. And that something isn't necessarily a sound effect or a song or a narration quip. Maybe it's just everybody in the office chanting 'Prisoner' into a mic. Well then I guess that's just ambiance. But I like to think it's just The Behemoth."

Megan Lam - Usability Lab Moderator:

"For me, the behind-the-scenes of our usability lab comes in three stages. First, stalk out people and lead them into the lab — can’t have a playtest without people to play the game. We schedule participants based on the need, such as testing participants with a specific skill level or a specific age group. Sometimes a participant will come in for solo play and other times participants will do co-operative play. Mixing it up to check out different aspect of the game!

"Second, a small group of us work together to set up the lab and then have participants run through the game. This means multiple events happen within minutes before participants arrive: Emil preps the audio and visual equipment as Ian checks the build while I load up the survey questions. The participants play through however much time was allotted for that playtest and give us invaluable feedback for the game. Everyone watching, like those cats in BBT, can’t keep their eyes off of the playtest. Sitting through a playtest and being able to learn so much about the interaction players have with the game, as well as with each other, you can see how much psychology goes into creating a game.

Third, we have the post playtest information gathered and analyzed. During the playtest, we log the time per level, the character deaths, and also keep track of what the participants in the lab are doing. Are they sitting up, hunched over, do they seem confused, happy, stressed, wiggly, angry? After all of this data is collected and analyzed we make adjustments, integrate it into the build, and start the process all over again."

As mentioned above, our usability lab (built from the ground up inside our office) allows us to refine our game experience in a very scientific way. Filled with enough technology to rival Skynet, our lab runs about three days a week and generates over two terabytes of recorded video weekly. 

We have three of our staff running the lab on a weekly basis (Ian, Megan, and myself), but while we are actively watching the sessions from the control room, we also stream the usability lab feed to the other development team members. In all we have a total of eight people watching the feed for each two-hour session, and when we're not quietly judging everyone from behind our one-way mirror, we spend our time analyzing every single movement in the game.

What do we hope to find through all of this? Nothing really specific, but we know it when we see it. People might say, "Oh that was cool" in reference to their experience at the lab -- but until they are making all kinds of crazy sounds and sitting one inch from the monitor because they are too excited to play, our jobs are not done. Thankfully, almost all of the changes we've made have not only gotten us better results, but they've quickly gotten us closer to completion.

Outside of art/animation creation, sound design, and usability lab sessions, we have an in-house test team (Damian, Larry, Josh, and Adam -- pictured below) that smash their heads against our games all day long. Located down the street from our main headquarters, these dedicated employees have a strict diet of Red Vines, non-diet soda, and Skyrim. Think about the last time you've been playing a game for three years straight. 

Sharing an office with our test team above are our three main level designers for BBT (Ryan, Aaron, and Kyle -- pictured below). Tasked with creating, organizing, and refining the hundreds of levels that will be included in BattleBlock Theater. Next time you're at Comic-Con, PAX, or wherever else we end up being, you'll see these guys on the show floor doing demos of our games, talking to fans, and quietly taking notes for how to make the BBT experience better. 

So this concludes our look inside the world of BattleBlock Theater development and our offices. While we are still chasing that ever elusive "release date," we are very proud with what we have accomplished so far, and excited to share this small glimpse of it with you today. Keep checking back all week for continued BattleBlock Theater Week coverage, and we hope to see all of you somewhere outside in the future.