Antidote is a graphic adventure game told in the second person where you are the lead character. All of the characters react to your actions and decisions through the game. The choices you make are yours alone and only you decide if the events unravel in your favor.
Flaskco is the company behind the revolutionary StundArt technology which revolutionized law enforcement by providing a non-lethal and safe alternative to criminal apprehension. The astonishing commercial success of StundArt has placed Flaskco in a leading position in the research and development of medical and biological technologies for use in personal, commercial, and government applications.
Three years ago, an accident occurred that left Justin Simmons in a coma-like state. Justin led work on a StundArt technology for an alternative to syringes used for vaccinations. This technology would allow inexpensive mass vaccinations by eliminating the cost of providing new needles for each patient. One day, Justin accidentally injected himself with his own work and fell into an irreversible coma. After a few months of research, Flaskco dropped funding for the cure. Shortly after, Justin and his wife Carla suddenly disappeared.
Seg started writing the script as a PHP web application starting in late 2001.
Antidote is the first thesis project for the New Media Bachelor of Arts program at Emerson College in Boston, MA. While written prior to Seg's enrollment at Emerson, production occurred between 2004 - 2005, filmed at Emerson College, and developed at various coffee shops in the Boston area.
The game itself isn't complete and never will be. The nature of a live action video affords very little margin of error, and there were plenty of errors. You'll notice this particularly in Justin's room where the layout and walk space doesn't make sense. The fix for these issues would be to re-film the entire production again.
Antidote was created in Macromedia Director MX 2004. At the time it was the only solution for live-action video besides creating an engine from scratch. This allowed the game to be released on Windows and Macintosh platforms. It also saved me from core engine programming which isn't my focus.
The camera used was a Panasonic AG-HMC line of cameras which featured 24fps in progressive scan. The 24p frame rate proved to be a huge benefit for a number of reasons. The lower frame rate reduced the size of the game without sacrificing quality and progressive scan eliminated scan lines that would occur with interlaced video. Video was edited in Final Cut Pro and Compressor to compress the video for distribution.
Originally from the Detroit metro area, Seg is a new media artist and non-profit administrator living in the San Francisco Bay area. The first recipient of a BFA in New Media at Emerson College, Seg went on to develop special projects for Enrollment & Student Affairs at Emerson. In 2007, Seg moved to the San Francisco area where he developed games at Telltale Games and co-founded Ümloud!, a charity concert using Rock Band for Child's Play Charity.
Seg blogs randomly at Seg On Media and more frequently tweets at @TheSeg.
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