Making Contact: Building an Ops Room Game

Making Contact: Building an Ops Room Game

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Making Contact: Building an Ops Room Game episodes

  • Episode 1: Command what you cannot see.

    The podcast behind Contact: Wait Out, an ops room command game.

    In episode 1 we go inside the game. Tom explains what an operations officer actually does, with a story from his own time running aviation operations, when the call was whether to hold a helicopter on the ground for thirty seconds. Then we walk through the first scenario from the chair: one section out on patrol, a sand table that is always out of date, a drone feed, helmet cameras, two radio nets and a chat log. Ryan talks about building a room he has only ever seen in photographs, and why the fidelity goes into the ops room rather than the battlefield. We get into the room as a character, pattern of life, combat effectiveness and keeping it fun, and finish with what worries us and where we'd take it with a magic wand.

    Chapters

    00:00 Cold open

    00:38 Picture this

    01:43 Welcome back

    02:50 Who we are, and why this game

    04:49 A small team, a game with real depth

    06:10 What an ops officer actually does

    08:01 Your seat in the game

    08:54 Tom's job: aviation operations

    10:37 Hours of nothing, then everything

    11:17 Hold the aircraft

    14:02 Making pressure fun

    14:35 The first scenario, from the chair

    17:14 Devlogs and building in the open

    18:07 The art: building a room from photographs

    20:26 One step removed: where the fidelity goes

    21:27 Replayability and what comes next

    24:27 Co-op, and soldiers who carry on

    26:41 The room is a character

    28:26 Pattern of life and consequences

    30:03 Combat effectiveness and duty of care

    31:54 Never the same twice, and the after action review

    33:29 The challenges

    36:45 The magic wand

    39:57 Get involved

    Get involved

    Watch the playtests and read the devlog: contactwaitout.com/devlog

    Sign up for news: contactwaitout.com

    Join the Discord: discord.gg/gVXbshznpb

    Did one of these jobs and willing to talk to us? [email protected]

    New episodes every fortnight.

    Contact: Wait Out is a work of fiction. The theatre, places, units, people and operations in the game are invented. Features discussed are in development and may change.

    Contact: Wait Out is an ops room command game. It is not made to glorify war. It is made to represent, with respect, the real challenges that everyday soldiers and officers faced.

    41 min
  • Episode 0: Contact. Wait out.

    The podcast behind Contact: Wait Out, an ops room command game.

    In our first episode, Tom and Ryan introduce themselves and the game they're building together. You're the ops officer in a small patrol base. Your platoon is out on the ground and you're not. Everything you know arrives through a radio, a drone feed, a helmet camera and a map you keep up to date by hand, and you make your calls on that. We talk about why nobody has built this game before, what the room has to feel and sound like, what the first grey-box playtest felt like, and the kind of community we want to build around it.

    Coming up: a deep dive into the vision for the game, then our first guest.

    Chapters

    00:00 Cold open

    00:24 Contact. Wait out.

    00:59 Welcome to Making Contact

    01:33 Who we are: Ryan

    02:22 Who we are: Tom

    02:52 Why this game

    03:32 The game in a nutshell

    04:29 Why not another milsim

    05:19 What the player sees

    07:42 Building the room: immersion and sound

    10:21 The first playtest

    11:24 Why this game, and who it's for

    14:00 The community we want

    16:08 Why a podcast, and building in the open

    17:46 How to get involved

    18:47 Next time, and a future gem

    19:32 Outtakes

    Get involved

    Sign up for news: contactwaitout.com

    Join the Discord: discord.gg/gVXbshznpb

    Did one of these jobs and willing to talk to us? [email protected]

    New episodes every fortnight.

    Contact: Wait Out is a work of fiction. The theatre, places, units, people and operations in the game are invented.

    Contact: Wait Out is an ops room command game. It is not made to glorify war. It is made to represent, with respect, the real challenges that everyday soldiers and officers faced.

    20 min

About Making Contact: Building an Ops Room Game

From the publisher's feed

The podcast behind Contact: Wait Out, an ops room command game. We're Tom and Ryan, a two-person indie studio trying to make our first game, and this is the whole journey, out loud. The wins, the…