From the Blog
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Love at First Site
A few months ago, we got a piece of mail from Ryan (Ryan withheld his last name, even on the return address of the envelope). Ryan had played Firewatch and, quite generously, turned around and bought the Crime by the Numbers Notebooks available at store.camposanto.com. As a side note, there are many finely made pieces of merchandise on our online store, all fairly priced and ready to ship worldwide. The notebooks, which you can find scattered around the world of Firewatch, are reproduced down to their inside covers to be exact replicas of the type of pulp paperbacks you’d find in a supermarket and then carry with you out to the woods. On the inside back cover is a fake order form for other novels from their fictional publisher, and, much to our delight, Ryan Real-Last-Name-Withheld, was the first Campo customer to take the bait.
Yes! A compliment and an excuse to spend days on a one-off, never-to-be-reproduced piece of merchandise for a fan. Our favorite type of mail. Plus, if you’re Jake, you now have a reason to head to Craigslist and buy an expensive large-format photo printer at a deep discount. Should we be working on our second game? Absolutely. Could we spend a few dozen hours of time on fulfilling Ryan’s order instead? You betcha.
Let’s see, Ryan Real-Last-Name-Withheld, would like one copy of Mo Marlowe’s Love at First Site and included $4.50 to exactly cover the costs plus shipping and handling. A few hours of illustration by Claire Hummel, a few more hours of design by Jake Rodkin and a little elbow grease in the form of creative writing by me, Sean Vanaman, and voilà, one copy of Love at First Site, ready for our friend Ryan.
A couple things to note: the “order form” itself (again, not a real order form, a prop, in a book that is itself a prop in a video game) is expired. Secondly, Conrad Hummel, the fictional (ie: not real) publisher of the prop book that is itself a prop in a video game, has included a letter to let Ryan Real-Last-Name-Withheld that not only is this the last copy of Love at First Site but, it’s the last book in the entire warehouse. In other words, we’re never going to make one of these again for literally anyone. Unless you’re Stanley Tucci, we would definitely do it for him.
We never head from Ryan Real-Last-Name-Witheld (oh God, I hope he got it) and he never posted this anywhere on the internet so we thought it was time to share it with you. We hope you enjoy the fact that we made it as much as we enjoyed the actual making of it.
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The Firewatch Soundtrack is now available on vinyl!
It’s $25.00 and you can get it on the Campo Santo store right now.
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Firewatch is nominated for some 2016 Game Awards!
- Best Performance: Cissy Jones as Delilah
- Best Performance: Rich Sommer as Henry
- Best Indie Game
- Best Art Direction
- Best Narrative
Tune in on December 1st to find out if Campo takes home some hardware and thanks as always for your continued support!
- Best Performance: Cissy Jones as Delilah
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Firewatch is now updated and enhanced to support the PlayStation 4 Pro.
If you’re one of the first to pick up a new PlayStation 4 Pro this week, be happy to know that Firewatch has been updated to support the new console!
With a lot of talk about what a “4K console” offers and what “PS4 Pro Enhanced” means, we thought we’d quickly break down the update for you.
- Standard PS4 Customers: no change
- PS4 Pro Customers with a 1080p Display: enhanced detail distance, smoother loads, and much higher quality shadows
- PS Pro Customers with a 4K Display: the world is now rendered at WQHD (2560x1440p) and the UI renders at 4KUHD (3840x2160) and you will have enhanced level of detail of a standard PS4
Furthermore, this update features the roll-out of Free Roam Mode detailed here! This is a free update for all customers, PS4 Standard and Pro alike.
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Free-Roam Mode Comes to Firewatch!
If you, like so many others, have finished Firewatch and yearn to return to the Shoshone, then today is your lucky day. Firewatch’s free-roam mode gives you an objective-free game world to explore, dynamic 24-hour time of day and miles of trails to hike. The patch is now live on PS4 and coming to Steam this morning (and is already on Xbox One).
Unlocked when you’ve finished Firewatch, you can find free-roam in the special features section of the main menu. -
Experience Henry’s lookout tower in VR thanks to Steam Destinations!
If you’ve got a Vive or Oculus Rift you might be familiar with Destinations, a great app that lets you visit all manner of real and imagined places. Today we’re releasing Henry’s lookout tower and you can walk around and poke your nose all over it in VR.
To get Firewatch stuff into Destinations we had to rebuild the scene in Source (Valve’s engine) and I think you’ll agree that Jane did a masterful job.
It’s really stunning to be in Henry’s personal space. In fact, while messing around in it the other day, I picked up and then dropped the twenty-sided-die in his desk drawer and it rolled underneath his chair. Then, because I was using the Vive, I had to get down on the actual floor and reach under there to get it. It was an interaction I could never have in non-VR and was pretty thrilling despite this Destination being a simple static scene.
Enjoy! And yes, we included the turtle.
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I’d like to talk a little bit more about that, what it means for a Firewatch movie, and why we’d do something like that, in general!
Almost a year ago we got an email from Akshay Mehta. He claimed that he worked for Good Universe, a company in LA run by two men, Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane, and that they had made successful movies. (Most recently, the horrifying Don’t Breathe, but Joe had run Lionsgate for years and brought you a few little movies based on The Hunger Games). His claims were validated by Google in addition to the fact that he repeatedly said “I’m legit, bubby!” like a real Hollywood deal-maker. (Akshay didn’t actually say this but I could tell he wanted to.)
Around this time, it was right after E3, we were getting a few emails about the future film rights to Firewatch and we kept putting them off. It felt silly to pursue a film deal for a game that wasn’t even out yet and probably could be a stinker. Nevertheless, I got to know Akshay and months later, about four days before Firewatch came out, I was in LA and stopped by to show them the game.
Joe, Akshay and the rest of Good Universe work on Wilshire Blvd., about a block from an office where I used to make copies for a pair of producers in college, about fifty steps from Rodeo Dr. and a strong 7-iron from the agency WME. If you’ve ever watched an episode of Entourage, you have seen this stretch of street many times.
Sitting in Joe’s office, I started talking a little bit about what we wanted for Campo Santo as a company and quickly began to hate the sound of my own voice and transitioned into showing them the game. It was maybe 5pm so I figured I had 45 minutes before folks wanted to head home but we spent the next couple of hours combing over the prologue, Day 1 and Day 2 of Firewatch. It wasn’t the first time we’d talked to folks about the story or the game but it was the first time I’d played with anyone and had such a strong emotional reaction.
They understood what type of story we were trying to tell and were curious about the tools we employ to tell it. I’d never experienced anyone in that business have the sort of process curiosity they showed along with an easy-going demeanor that didn’t try to big-time the one guy in their office with an indie-game running on a giant laptop.
Conversations moved from Firewatch to the abstract ways Campo Santo and Good Universe could work together going forward. And in the end, we decided that, while developing a Firewatch movie is exciting, and we are definitely in the early days of doing that, in Good Universe we had another company that shared our values and we could call upon with weird and exciting ideas (and that they could do the same). It’s not dissimilar to the wonderful partner we found in Panic Inc. when we set off on this scheme at the very beginning.
It felt ridiculous to not pursue a partnership with these folks. It’s rare that you find people who don’t just share your creative values but your business ones as well. Solid relationships are the only way anything in any creative business gets made.
So, when will Firewatch be in theaters? Who will play Henry’s hands? Who will do the voice of Turt? For those of you who understand what film development means you a) know I couldn’t say if I knew and b) know that getting a movie made is a tireless process that mixes luck, timing and sheer will together to create success. What I can tell you is this isn’t a situation where we sold someone the rights and they’re off to do whatever they want with with it – anything you see out of us will be the product of a partnership, brought to you by tireless people like Akshay and countless contributions by everyone here at Campo along the way.
Until next time. We’ve got convertibles to purchase and sunglasses to don. We’re in the pictures, bubby.
-Sean
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Firewatch is out now on Xbox One!
Because game launches and updates across major platforms are never as perfect as one would like, here is all you need to know!
I live in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia or Argentina! The game is out on Xbox One at Midnight PST on September 21st! (12am PST and 3am EST on September 21st in the US) Get it now!
I live in Europe, Australia, New Zealand! Some ratings issues delayed our Xbox One launch here but we’re aiming to have the game in your hands on September 30th in Europe and the week after in Australia & New Zealand.
I already have the game on PS4/Steam/GOG and want that sweet Firewatch Audio Tour! There will be rolling updates throughout the day on September 21st after 9am PST in the US. PS4 users should have it as of 9am.
I heard something about a Free-Roam mode? Yes, Xbox customers will be getting a free-roam mode on September 21st and we will be rolling it out to other platforms in the coming weeks.
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We went to PAX West 2016!
For those who were there, thanks so much for stopping by the booth and saying hi. For those who weren’t there, you were missed but this update is for you.
We announced that Firewatch was coming to Xbox One on September 21st!
We’re really excited to finally be on the bone and introduce a whole new slew of future Firewatch fans to the game.
We unveiled the Firewatch Audio Tour for all platforms!
The Firewatch Audio Tour is one part devlog mixed with one part scavenger hunt all presented like a museum tour within the world of Firewatch. We’ll talk way more about it (seriously, try to shut us up)in the next two weeks. But everyone will have it on September 21st or very very shortly thereafter (PS4, Steam, GOG, everyone!).
We had a sensational photo-booth!
Thanks to Panic Inc. and Happymatic, fans could get their picture taken with Forrest Byrnes or even the dev-team if they so desired. Also, Cabel from Panic went as far as to have a bunch of prop walkie-talkies made, surprising the team with them the night before.
We partnered with Syber and CyberpowerPC for in-booth sick rigs!
Fans got the chance to play Firewatch on one of Syber’s Steam machines or Cyberpower’s towers. They’re great machines (Cyberpower assembled our dev machines) and they were a great partner at show. Thanks CyberpowerPC and Syber Gaming!
And here is some coverage of all the new Firewatch news!
RPS talked with Sean and Jake about the update.
Engadget, Kill-Screen and Polygon talk about Firewatch on the Xbox One!
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Firewatch is coming to Xbox One on September 21st!
You’ve been inquiring and those inquiries were not falling on deaf ears. We’re thrilled to finally be sharing Firewatch with our friends in the Xbox community.
Along with the main game, we’re also shipping the Firewatch Audio Tour (a free update for all customers!) which we’ll talk a little bit more about tomorrow. The short version: one part scavenger hunt, one part museum tour, one part game dev workshop, mixed with a dash of inside Campo Santo goofs. We think you will like it very much.
Furthermore, we’re going to be rolling out a free-roam mode to all customers, beginning with Xbox One (again, you asked!). In free roam, you’ll be able to live in the Shoshone with a full day/night cycle and explore with a few hidden secrets.
Thanks to everyone who’s made Firewatch such a success and we’re stoked to grow the Campo Santo family! We’ll see you on September 21st!
