BetaZine Interview

Q. For the Record, please state your name and role in "SpiritWars"

Randy Chase. Designer, Producer, and lead programmer. (I also make the coffee.)

Q. How big is your staff, and how long have you guys been working on this project?

As with most projects, the staff is rather fluid, varying depending on the current phase of activity. We’ve had about twelve people make significant contributions along the way. (And I also want to thank and credit our core group of testers who have provided invaluable input on play balance and have also contributed a level of enthusiasm and moral support that has really been a great help during this final phase of development.)

We first started the original paper design of the game over three years and a half ago. My son and I began prototyping the game on a white board with 3x5 cards representing the playing pieces. That process literally involved months of experimentation and design work before I drafted the initial design documents that preceded any coding or formal development.

Q. Does Kellogg’s Creek have any goals in mind (be it short or long term)?

Like any small game developer, our short-term goals have been rather simple and basic. Surviving as a small developer in this age of corporate dominance is an on-going challenge. The real challenge right now for small developers is to find a viable business model when the vast majority of software projects never break even, much less show a profit. The conglomerates can survive having less than 10% of their titles break even or make a profit. For a small company, even one losing project can be fatal.

With the release of my third game only a few weeks away, I feel like we’ve moved out of the survival mode and can talk seriously about long-term goals without sounding too over-confident or unrealistic.

My personal goals as a developer have not really changed over the years. I’ve always considered my political simulations to be a form of activism software. I believe that is it possible to create a game that entertains, but on a subtle level challenges the player to change the way that they look at the world around them.

Obviously, this isn’t as applicable to a strategy game as it is to a realistic political simulation. However, the general theme and style of SpiritWars does follow my basic goal of creating games that make people think. Too many developers, especially on the Internet, are stimulating reflexes and too few are giving people anything to really think about.

The addictive appeal of SpiritWars is actually rather subtle. You’ll play the game, and you’ll have fun. But where we really hook the player is when they find themselves thinking about the game the next day at work. There are so many playing strategies and strategic options that players can mentally replay each game, seeing dozens of variations in strategy or in dungeon construction that could have turned that defeat to victory.

You can expect future games from Kellogg Creek to continue along that same path. We do have another political simulation in the works, and we’ll be announcing another on-line game later this fall that will again explore some new concepts in Internet entertainment. The common theme is that they will be targeting players more interested in stimulating logical challenges and social interaction than in blowing things up.

Q. Could you give our readers a quick description of what Spirit Wars is?

SpritWars is a next-generation board game that borrows from a variety of familiar game concepts, but delivers a hybrid strategy game unlike anything currently available.

The basic mechanics are very simple and build on the rich tradition of classics games like Chess and Stratego. The player puts pieces in play on the playing field, moves them towards his opponent, and hopes to destroy the other player’s castle while protecting his own. The mechanics and interface were designed to make the game as accessible as possible to a wide cross-section of the gaming community.

Beneath the simple mechanics, however, lurks a labyrinth of strategic complexity that will challenge the most sophisticated player.

SpiritWars was designed to deliver a satisfying gaming experience even to players using slow modems. The bandwidth requirements of the game are about as low as physically possible. We already have players scattered from Europe to Australia, and the players down under are raving about the fact that there are no noticeable latency problems playing opponents half way around the world.

Q. Spirit Wars looks fairly unique. What type of people do you think will be attracted to it?

I’m confident that SpiritWars is a unique product design. There are a variety of aspects that are similar to other games, but the hybrid design really takes the most attractive aspects from a variety of familiar gaming genres and blends them into something unlike anything the players have ever seen.

We are positioning SpiritWars as a "next-generation" board game, but many people are talking about the aspects of the game similar to the popular collectable trading card games. That aspect of the game may be generating the greatest amount of conversation, but I think it is interesting that many of our most active testers have never played Magic or anything other card game.

The hybrid design seems to be attracting a variety of players. While we are drawing players from the card-playing world, we are also getting rave reviews from the war gaming crowd and from fans of traditional strategy games.

Q. I was reading through the documentation and noticed that some things were very simplistic where as others were quite complex. Am I correct in my theory that the main strategy for Spirit Wars will come while making the deck of cards?

The primary goal of building this as a board game was to make it familiar and friendly. As we’ve already discussed, the mechanics of the game are basically pretty simple. Most players are finding that by the end of their second game, they are comfortable with the basic fundamentals of game play. That, however, is just the beginning.

The one playing aspect we most wanted to capture from the world of collectable trading card games was the dynamic ability for each player to explore a virtually infinite range of playing possibilities. Each player can develop a unique playing style and philosophy.

Each homeland (color-based association between spirits and the map terrain) has a unifying theme and strengths and weaknesses. The game supports natural alliances between homelands (Drylands and Flatlands, for example, are natural allies) and each homeland has a primary and secondary enemy. The player, however, is free to explore any possible combination of spirits to create a strategic philosophy that reflects their playing personality.

Some players are already establishing themselves as primarily defensive players, while others are exploring fast aggressive dungeons that result in either quick victories or devastating defeats.

In the member version, this challenge is further complicated by the fact that the spirits available to the player changes after the completion of each game. A player successfully winning using a Wetlands-based dungeon may have to radically change his strategy and playing style if he loses a critical spirit, like Thor or the Frost Giant, as a fatality in a losing campaign.

Q. Someone commented (and I quote) "Spirit Wars is what Magic: The Gathering® should have been" could you comment, and perhaps even elaborate on this issue?

The comparison between SpiritWars and Magic: The Gathering is stimulating more conversation than I had honestly expected. Most of the members of our team are fans of Magic: The Gathering. As a designer, I personally consider MTG to represent one of the most dynamic breakthroughs in fundamental game design concepts in recent years.

However, I think I’ll leave it to the players and the press to draw their own conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of the two games.

I’ll acknowledge that there are some similarities, but I think that there are far more differences. While I’m an admitted fan of card games, especially Magic: The Gathering, our goal was really to focus on the familiar aspects of the traditional board games. There are aspects that will attract fans of the collectable trading card games, but I really see SpiritWars as representing the next evolutionary step in the traditional of classic titles such as Chess, Stratego and Risk.

There are a few comments or observations, however, that I would make about one very significant difference between SpiritWars and the computer version of M:TG.

As a working journalist covering the industry, I closely followed the development problems that plagued the computer version of M:TG. From the beginning the developers were fighting a losing battle. The need to write AI to allow the computer to play the game was an insurmountable obstacle that was never really overcome.

Most designers, if they are honest, will admit that almost all AI involves either making compromises in design complexity or the use of various cheating techniques in order to create a competitive computer player.

One of the very first design decisions I made was to gamble on the viability of the Internet as an emerging game platform and commit to developing a product that would never be played by a computer. SpiritWars is a game that was intended to be played by human players, competing on-line against other human players. We had several publishing opportunities that we didn’t pursue because I was determined to make a true first-generation Internet game, and I had no interest in developing a stand-alone retail product that the user could play against the computer.

While this restricted us somewhat in establishing a traditional publishing relationship, it also freed us from the restrictive need to worry about AI. This game, in its current state, would never have seen the light of day if we’d had to waste time worrying about teaching the computer to analyze the infinite playing combinations and possibilities.

Q. Currently, how many cards are available? Do you have an estimate or goal for how many cards will be available by release date?

First, we have no cards. <grin> But we do have a lot of spirits. The initial release of the game will feature about 450 spirits. (The current pre-beta version has a working library of about 300 spirits activated and about half that many waiting to be introduced in the next few weeks.)

Q. Will Spirit Wars be expanded on in time (after release) for example, new cards and new features. Or will it be left as is?

The game engine was designed on an incremental development model, with the open architecture design flexible enough to support an evolving and growing gaming experience.

Obviously an integral part of this design is an ever-expanding population of spirits which continually alter and expand the playing possibilities and strategic choices available to the players. Rather than release new expansion sets in periodic large releases, new spirits will introduced on a weekly basis.

Q. Are there consequences for dying currently? If not, do you plan to add consequences and how severe will they be?

There are no rewards for winning or consequences for losing (other than the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat) in the free version of the game that will be available exclusively at the World Opponent Network.

However, in the pay version of the game that we’ll be offering at Kellogg Creek Software, there are very dramatic consequences for victory and defeat.

The spirits populations of the player’s kingdom are effected every time the player completes a game. Each time a player is victorious, he is rewarded as new spirits migrate to his kingdom. Conversely, as in any epic battle, the losing play will suffer fatalities and see the population of his kingdom diminished as some spirits are destroyed.

In the member version of SpiritWars, detailed player histories are maintained, including won-loss records, player ratings and a history of performance against specific opponents.

Q. Have you a plan/schedule  for the Release ?

SpiritWars will enter the final phase of development with an open beta test that is scheduled to being at the World Opponent Network the first week in October. During that six-week beta period, all members of W.O.N. will be invited to try the game out.

Prospective players should keep in mind that this is a formal beta-test period, and will involve the usual fine-tuning of both game play and the interface. Normally, I would prefer to follow the traditional development path and not release the game to the public until we had completed the formal beta testing process. However, due to the growing interest in the game, we and W.O.N. have decided that this final debugging phase of development should be a public event.

The formal release of the finished W.O.N. version of the game is scheduled for release in mid-November and the release of the membership version at Kellogg Creek will follow about two weeks later.

On behalf of the rest of Betazine and myself, thank you for your time. If you have any closing comments, now is the time.

I would like to briefly explain the philosophy behind of our business model for SpiritWars. As both a parent and an avid player of M:TG, I am personally troubled by the concept of competing in a playing world where the person with the biggest wallet gets to win the majority of the time.

Players quickly discovered in the world of collectable trading card games that there is a direct correlation between the money invested and the probability of winning. The other major flaw in the real-world M:TG community is that the inflated value of the cards quickly removed one of the most appealing aspects of game play: ante. Few players could afford to risk losing cards when they represented such a large financial investment.

Our flat-fee business model can re-introduce the concept of winning and losing playing pieces, without anyone worrying about the cost of the pieces. I should note, however, that in SpiritWars you don’t win spirits from your opponent. The loser suffers fatalities and those spirits are removed from the playing world. The victory attracts new spirits who migrate to the kingdom of the winning player. The most important thing to keep in mind is that no one is ever charged any extra fees to increase the size of their playing population.

Even though we are positioning SpiritWars as a board game, we know that the two obvious comparisons already being made are to Chron-X and Sanctum. I’m confidant that consumers are going to welcome our commitment to providing them with a fair and level playing field in which no player will ever have a competitive advantage simply because they were willing or able to spend more money. Success at SpiritWars will only come through skill and activity.

Magic: The Gathering is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
SpiritWars is a registered trademark of Kellogg Creek Software, Inc.