As we prepared to pitch a game idea, our team explored a number of games and experiences that were related to the living-room experience we wanted to create. Here’s one of the games we tried, and what we learned about our project in the process.

Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator lets a group of players pretend they are on a “Star Trek”-like show, each taking a different station on the bridge of a ship. Every player has their own screen with a unique interface, and they share a “mainscreen” as well. There is also a captain role that does not have a screen, but they work with the other players to direct the ship. When we arrived at EA, they asked us to take a look at this experience because in many ways it is like the multi-screen experience we want to create.

Artemis does several things right. First of all it has a strong thematic consistency, maybe because of the show that inspired it. The game has its own language and conventions that players learn to adopt over time, and it can become a very immersive experience. Second, we are fascinated that at its heart Artemis is an information filtering game. Players are genuinely interdependent because, as a group, they receive more information than they can manage. Much of the game involves mentally processing the information you receive, and deciding when and how to surface the important information to the rest of your crew. Finally, the game actually demonstrates the importance of the captain role in a crew scenario. As a conduit for information, the captain becomes the hub of the information-filtering experience, and they enable the team to work as a single entity when it counts.

But Artemis isn’t perfect, and there are several ways in which it is a poor model for an experience targeted at CES. The biggest problem for us is that it’s a hard game to learn. The user interface isn’t great, there’s no tutorial, and the objective isn’t immediately clear… this is the kind of game where you probably turn to a wiki after the first round, and a show floor audience isn’t going to have patience for that. Another problem with Artemis is that some stations are just more fun to play than others, and if you get one you don’t like you are stuck with it for the entire session; not a great demo experience. Third, we weren’t thrilled with how Artemis utilized the main screen. It has a cinematic view, but to be honest there’s not usually much to see there. After a few missions, our crew would usually switch the mainscreen to long range sensors and leave it there. Even worse, when the captain is doing a good job the crew will rarely look at the main screen, because it can be somewhat redundant with their own view. Finally, the fun factor in Artemis can depend a lot on your fellow crew members, and especially on the captain. If your captain is just barking orders and not communicating the plan, the game can feel like work. With only first-time players on the show floor, we don’t want to risk this in our game.

So our biggest takeaways from Artemis are that we need to make the TV impressive and important, and that maybe Artemis’ crew-style multiplayer isn’t the right model for us to pursue for CES. With Torch, you’ll see that we’re taking a different direction.

Artemis logo from the Artemis homepage here.