STICKY: HYDANCE INTERACTIVE

HYDANCE

WE MAKE GAMES THAT MAKE HEROES

In the sphere of video game development, Hydance is a lot like Niantic; which is to say that they made one good deep dive VR game (an FPS called Clanwar: Worldstorm) and suddenly Nintendo swooped down to hire them as contractors on a shiny new addition to the world's greatest IP: Pokemon.

Officially, they report to Doug Bowser of Nintendo America, but internally they're lead by Bryan Nautilus, a supernaturally laid back entity who holds the company together through sheer optimism.

Hydance have relatively free reign to use the Pokemon brand as they wish, and Bryan Nautilus's key goal is to develop an amazing game while keeping out from under Nintendo's thumb. They don't need support, they don't want oversight, and god forbid a suit from head office comes in to start making changes.

The company is small, sitting at less than 20 people during Beta. Bryan himself heads the UX team, with a sizable portion of the team working directly with him on bug-busting. With such limited staff, Hydance is often lacking in the more specialized departments, and finds itself reusing many of the assets from other Nintendo properties or from its Clanwar: Worldstorm.

With the success of the Beta, Hydance is looking to expand, and anyone joining the company will find themselves part of a small but dedicated team.

SPOILER: Click to show

{PLOT: THE DEEP LORE}

When Hydance was brought on to run UNOVR, they ported over all the same engines and resources from their previous deep-dive VR game: Clanwar:WorldStorm. Players may still find many stock effects left over from Clanwar-- grenade animations being converted into throwing a Pokeball, etc.

During Clanwar, NPC engines had very little interaction with player characters, and were generally killed in FPS combat before developing past basic programming. When these NPCs were re-skinned for UNOVR, Hydance never suspected that the Nintendo-friendly features they put in place-- namely, no death-- would lead to UNOVR NPCs developing beyond the scope of any before-seen-technology.

Major NPCs who experience a variety of regular human interaction are able to progress to true sentience. Players may witness this in their own Pokemon as well as in major NPCs like System Admin:ProfessorAsh. Not all NPCs have progressed to this point, and significant variance may be accounted for, but it is understood that all Pokemon and NPCs have the potential of acquiring free will.

Hydance is unsure what to do about the situation, and as usual, is pretending everything is 100% under control. As the game develops its own in-character rebellion against the world of Pokemon itself, they can only hope Nintendo doesn't take notice and that their own policy of 'no recording game footage' is enough to protect them going forward.

So protect this knowledge. Protect the lives and people who exist in the game. Because if the world finds out what you have, they will take it from you.