During the NGDC, we knew we were making a guy who was a “trader by day, ninja by night.” But it was up to me to flesh this guy out. So the first thing I did was come up with his name.
Martin Ryker designed by Shaun Ellithorpe
To come up with his name, I went looking for names that meant things like “swift,” thinking he’s supposed to be a ninja. I settled on Ryker, which means “fast” or “strider,” and Martin, which is derived from Martis, which is rooted in Mars, the god of war. I thought it was a fitting name because Martin is waging his own war against Claudius Capital.
Once I had his name, I had to start thinking about Martin’s backstory. For this, I mainly started asking myself questions like “what’s his job?” “How did he end up working at his company?” “What company does he work at?” “Why is he framing the other company for insider trading?”
Working through these questions, I named the two companies (which is also how Michael Claudius from Claudius Capital came into being). I also had to figure out why Martin was a trader rather than a ninja (the whole team agreed that being a ninja would be the first choice here). It was a little before we were packing up at the library on Friday night that I solidified his backstory: the other company had bankrupt him, and he was looking for revenge.
Since the NGDC was only 48 hours (and everyone lost a few hours due to technical difficulties), I was extremely grateful that I managed to have Martin’s backstory figured out all within the first night.
So on Saturday I worked on his dialogue a bit. While I had his backstory, I had a bit of a hard time nailing a voice for him. In the end I tried to go for more of the more “strong silent type” of character within the game. I kept his dialogue short and snappy (you can see a few lines at the beginning of the demo, when his assistant Pearl is telling him what to do – he has very short replies).
I later had to write dialogue for the trailer. Since Martin is the one talking through the entire thing, I had a harder time keeping with the whole “strong silent type.” Overall I thought his dialogue was alright. If/when Hostile Takeover is made into a longer game, I’ll take another stab at nailing his voice down.
An Acquaintance with Letters 