The Operator is a crime solving game delivered entirely with UI

The Operator has players solving complex crimes, but does so indirectly by having you help field agents by combing through databases and analyzing clues using complex software to help them make arrests.

Game Developer caught up with Bastien Giafferi, the game's creator, to talk about what appealed to them about exploring the role of lab techs and analysts in crime solving, the thought process behind designing the various interfaces for different kinds of analysis tools and databases, and how the story beats would help shape the systems players would use to navigate them.

Game Developer: The Operator sees players assisting field agents with investigations into complex crimes. What inspired the creation of this game?

Giafferi: I had the idea for the game while watching The X-Files for the 10th time… There's this scene where Mulder and Scully find a strange sample in a body and ask a lab technician to analyze it. When the technician gives them the results, he's shocked and asks where they found the sample. At that point, I thought it would have been great to see the action from this person's perspective instead.

What drew you to have players act as assistants rather than the agents in the field? How did that affect your design for solving crimes in the game?

I think it was just more original. One of the strongest constraints I had was my skill set. I can't do art per se, so I had to do something different. I quickly came up with the idea of doing a UI-only game, and it made sense that the player would be the assistant rather than the actual agent. I really like to use my constraints as a creative tool.

The biggest consequence of this decision is that the player has a better overview of the cases than the agents themselves, so it became clear that there must be a conspiracy somewhere. It also works better because I can present a situation directly to the player, with limited access to a subset of evidence, and ask them to solve a specific problem. It basically turned the game into a puzzle game.

Image via Bureau 81.

What thoughts went into the interface for the game? How did you design the overall look of the game to make players feel like they're working with complex, high-tech investigation systems?

My goal was to mimic a real OS. Since I work on Windows, macOS, and Linux, I took a bit from each. The interface was designed one step at a time, and for each part, I tried to think about how the software would actually work. For instance, with a chemical analysis software, it made sense to have a place somewhere in the FDI where the samples would be stored and an automated system that would take this sample and put it into a very sophisticated machine where you'd have to input settings based on your sample. This would both create gameplay and serve the story. Since immersion was one of my pillars for this game, I really tried to ensure the interface and software would be as credible as possible.

How did you choose the analysis systems players would use in the game? What ideas went into their design and how they would make evidence-checking more interesting?

I chose the systems based on the ideas I had for each sequence. Most of the time, the ideas for a specific sequence were based on story goals, and they had to be different from the previous ones. I didn't want to use the same system the same way twice.

For instance, in the first case with Agent Andrews, my story goal was to show that the FDI was censoring information, and that it was the first time we worked with HAL and Agent Andrews. The only objective for this sequence was to prove that the accidental fire that cost the life of Mia Cole was not an accident in order to reopen the case. With that in mind, I looked for a way to prove a fire wasn't an accident. The best idea I had was to analyze an ash sample and discover that gasoline was used to start the fire (not much of an accident…). I then created the chemical analyzer just for that use case.

What challenges did you face in making those systems interesting to the player without overwhelming them with options on how to proceed with a case?

I really wanted to make sure the game was accessible to everyone. I didn't want to include gameplay that required complex knowledge. Some things are deliberately difficult and overwhelming, like the bomb defusal, but that serves the story. For the bomb, the goal was to make you feel helpless. It's your first day, you're not even supposed to be there, so of course defusing a bomb is hard without the proper knowledge!

I think the hardest part was dealing with my own limitations when it came to polishing the game. A lot of the ideas I had were just too complicated to polish. Because of that, I focused first on the mandatory evidence. If a sequence was too easy or just too obvious, I'd obfuscate the evidence a bit or add more easy-to-make evidence to help hide the important parts. Depending on how the information is presented to the players, it's really easy to hide the key information or make something more obvious.

Image via Bureau 81.

What challenges do you face when creating the evidence you give the player in the game? How do you give them enough clues to figure things out without telling them too much?

To be honest, the biggest challenge I faced was my own ability to polish. I had to cut a lot of "flavor" evidence because it was simply too hard to polish. When I started developing The Operator, AI was just starting to get really great results. For a small creator like me, it was a really great tool, allowing me to go much further. But as development progressed, and as ethical concerns around AI rose (especially with the data used for training said AIs), I decided to remove AI-generated content entirely. However, some evidence simply couldn't be replaced without a proper budget (like burnt photos of an apartment, for instance) and had to be cut.

As for the "clue distribution," since I knew exactly what the player would know in each sequence and what I wanted them to understand, once I found a gameplay or puzzle for the sequence, I decided what piece of evidence to put there. As for what the players understood, a lot of playtests were done!

Image via Bureau 81.

Can you walk us through the process of how you design a case for the game with a specific example? Take us from start to finish on how you came up with the concept and how you figured out how to relay the story through narrative moments and evidence.

I started with the plot twists I had in mind and the sequence ideas I really wanted to create. For instance, I knew I wanted a sequence where you help an agent defuse a bomb over the phone (a bit like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes). I then created the story and the characters to combine those sequence ideas and twists.

For instance, in the Evidence Room sequence, the story goal was to retrieve hidden evidence from a previous case. It was a good opportunity to create an entirely new interface, as we had to break into the FDI's evidence room to access this evidence. I decided to go for an MSDOS-inspired UI. In terms of gameplay, since the goal was to stray as far as possible from the base UI, I decided to use keyboard-only navigation.

For experienced players, it's easy, but for non-technical players, this is the first challenge of the sequence. Every available key is displayed under the window, so even if you're not used to this kind of interface, you can still do a bit of trial and error to understand how it works. It also made sense for this interface to be highly technical, so it's harder to find what we're looking for.

There is also an overarching storyline contained within the investigation systems themselves. Can you tell us a bit about how you wove the story into the analysis systems in a way that would make players feel clever for finding those "secret" elements?

I think it's actually the other way around. I wove the systems into the story. Because the story was laid out first, I knew exactly what I could hide and where so it would seem like an unimportant element. Some players probably noticed those details and figured out some plot twists sooner than they should have, but that's okay. For instance (spoilers), at some point at the beginning of the game, you can ask Mike (your "friend," except that he's not) about his wife, and Mike tries to act like it's a fact, but if you check the database at this point, you'll see that he doesn't have a wife. It's a hidden detail that almost nobody notices, but if you do, you really feel smart.