Unless you're not a gamer or you've been living under a rock lately, you would have heard of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. The word-of-mouth and the excitement it's caused for casual and hardcore gamers alike has been extraordinary. It's a resounding success for Melbourne's Infinite Interactive, so I took the opportunity to ask Puzzle Quest lead designer and Chief Executive Officer of Infinite Interactive, Steve Fawkner, a few questions on their hit title...
Infinite Interactive splintered off from Strategic Studies Group, a local studio that had long catered for a very hardcore, niche market. What made you decide to go the casual game route?
Steve F: I tend to just "follow my heart" with game design. I like to build what I'm currently most passionate about; lately that has been games that have a certain pick-up-and-play appeal. What we traditionally think of as casual games certainly fit this category, but we never made a conscious decision to actually create casual games per se? instead, we actually set out to build a simple-to-play game with broad appeal that had a lot of depth & strategy. As it turns out, that game, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, happens to appeal to both the casual audience and more hardcore audience alike.
With many publishers sticking to tried and true game formulae and sequels, was it hard to push for such a unique and therefore risky game concept?
Steve F: All change and innovation inevitably meets with some resistance. The interesting thing here is that no individual piece of Puzzle Quest is terribly innovative; the only thing new was the melding of two basic gameplay models that had never been mixed together before. Nevertheless, that one incredibly simple innovation had quite a distinct effect on how difficult the game was to pitch.
The reason that publishers stick to tried and true formulae is simple; because it allows them to estimate budgets and profits and lets them run their companies in the safest possible manner. A publisher is really just an entity like you and I, it wants to minimize its risks and lead a comfortable existence - there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, once an unknown element like Puzzle Quest enters the equation - a game that is not easily classified into any single genre - then it becomes impossible to guess just how it will perform in the marketplace. The result? The game is difficult for us to get signed.
We were very fortunate to meet up with D3 Publisher, who were willing to take a risk on a title that everybody enjoyed, but nobody could entirely or clearly classify.
The attention that Puzzle Quest has had from gaming media and gamers themselves has been quite extraordinary. Are you surprised at how well Puzzle Quest has been received?
Steve F: We knew that we had a good game on our hands, but we were pleasantly surprised at how fast the word spread. We always thought it had a broad appeal across a wide band of people who existed somewhere in between the casual and hardcore spaces, but it has surprised us just how many truly casual gamers are still enjoying it, and also just how many absolute hardcore gamers are enjoying it too.
I'm sure you're very well aware that the one small but common complaint about Puzzle Quest is that many say it 'cheats' on harder levels. What's your response to that?
Steve F: There is absolutely no cheating of any kind in the game. It seems that no matter how many times I say this, somebody twists my words into something like "well when he says there is no cheating, he means this bit here, but over there it's still a dirty cheating little whore!"
So once more for the record - there is no cheating of any kind in the game. The computer makes a decision based on the 64 gems it can see, exactly as the human does. It has no secret advance knowledge of gems about to drop, nor of which moves will give it "extra turns" or "wildcards", nor is there any manipulation of dropping gems to give it an advantage.
Puzzle Quest was released in Australia at a much later date than expected. Can you expand on the circumstances surrounding that situation?
Steve F: We had a number of issues work against us here. Firstly the OFLC took quite a while to give us a rating for Australia. I guess that the game contains a LOT of content and they wanted to make sure that there was nothing inappropriate for a G rating.
Secondly, we were selling out of copies so fast (and copies were coming all the way from Europe) that we just couldn't bring in enough to meet demand. As soon as they would hit the shelves in Target and Toys'R'Us, they would be gone 1 day later.
I think we're actually going to start to see the stocks get to reasonable levels now, about 4 months after release.
Has the success of Puzzle Quest opened up new doors and opportunities for Infinite Interactive? We know that you're working on Galactrix, but else is next for Infinite Interactive?
Steve F: A little success goes a long way! We don't have anything we can announce yet, but I think it's going to be a very exciting time for us over the next 2 years. I would really like to explore this semi-casual, semi-hardcore genre thoroughly - not just by cloning Puzzle Quest over and over again, but by producing some more equally-innovative titles that we are all very excited about.
Many companies, such as Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Sony, are invested in the casual games market. In the case of Nintendo and EA, it's quite substantial. What do you think has caused such a high interest in that market in recent times?
Steve F: These companies can see a large new audience with dollars to spend. I think this is fantastic ? and not just from a monetary point of view - because as games become more mainstream we will become as integral a part of popular culture as film and TV. Many people will tell you that we're there already, but we're not - when an average mum, dad and 2 kids sit down for an evening and a video game becomes as viable an option as watching a movie, only then have we arrived.
What have you learnt from the whole experience of developing and releasing Puzzle Quest?
Steve F: Apart from the concrete rewards of gaining a whole lot of skills on new platforms, philosophically Puzzle Quest has reaffirmed a number of things that I had become uncertain of over the last few years: that it is still possible to innovate commercially, provided you do so in a very controlled manner; that a game can still be successful if you put more effort into design than graphics; and that small teams can still mix it up with the big boys!
Do you have any advice for other independent game developer venturing into casual games development?
Steve F: Don't clone existing games - try to evolve the genre with everything you create. There is always room for a better mousetrap.