Interview met Max Hoberman (Certain Affinity) - deel 2

XP: How will Plunder’s single player challenges work? Are these regular missions where you ‘just’ have to defeat the enemy and be done with it, or did the team imagine some interesting , more creative scenario’s?

MH: We always envisioned the single player as training for multiplayer, so the objectives are the same as in multiplayer. There’s a story to it though and really interesting setups, especially when you get to the levels with multiple teams duking it out. A few of the later challenges are tough too—so tough we had the test team send back bugs that they were unwinnable, and we had to go in and play ourselves to prove that it could be done!

XP: Did Certain Affinity include a single player game due to peer pressure, either from gamers of Capcom? Multiplayer games don’t necessarily need a typical single player (which occupies developers on something else other than the ‘main mode’) when the game is all about a deep multiplayer experience, so ‘just’ a fun and informative tutorial on top of an extensive multiplayer would be fine if the price is right, in my opinion.

MH: We struggled a great deal with this, but ultimately included single player partially as training for new players, partially because so many people are intimidated by multiplayer and because we wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the game. You’re right though—it’s tough to focus on both single player and multiplayer in a single downloadable title. Our focus was definitely multiplayer, but I’m glad we also have a single player mode not just for the practical reasons, but also because it gave us an outlet for some fun storytelling.

XP: I’ve also read that Certain Affinity apparently included a co-op mode. Does this mode only include the single player levels, or are these separately designed missions with co-op play in mind?

MH: The co-operative play is really playing multiplayer with bots. We’re shipping with a map editor so you can pretty much set up any scenario you can imagine, in addition to playing the existing maps co-operatively. I used to play Warcraft II this way with friends a long time ago and it was a ton of fun!

XP: About those custom maps: Firaxis conceived an interesting approach with Civilization Revolution, even though it doesn’t have a map editor. It’s called “Game of the Week” and each week they upload a new map they themselves created for everyone to download. Is this something you’d like to try as well with Plunder or a future project?

MH: We actually have a pool of maps that we intend to release already created, but I don’t think a schedule has been worked out yet. Something like this is definitely worth considering. That said: we’re shipping the game with 25 multiplayer maps plus a map editor, so maps that we release won’t be such a big deal. Especially if the community really takes to the game.

XP: What kind of tools was used to create Plunder’s engine? Certain Affinity’s own technology, an engine from Capcom, XNA, …?

MH: Everything in Plunder is our own engine from the ground up. However, we prototyped the first playable version using XNA on Windows. In fact we were really just toying around, checking out XNA, and Paul and Pete (the two programmers that have been on the project from day one) were moving so quickly that I threw out the idea of creating a pirate game. They ran with it, David worked out a lot of the design details, Chris Wood and the rest of the art team whipped up some fun piratey 3D models, and couple of weeks later we had a networked playable prototype that looked remarkable and was a lot of fun to play. Good stuff!

XP: Will we get to see a trailer of Plunder soon, or at the very least before it’s released? A lot of companies hardly show their XBLA-game in motion at all, sadly.

MH: I believe you’ll see some gameplay footage from Capcom soon. It’s more fun than watching a board game, but don’t get your hopes too high. You have to play it to really get it!

XP: Have you thought about downloadable content for Plunder? What could we expect, other than gamer pictures and themes?

MH: Oh yes, we’ve thought a ton about it. Like fancy online features, this is something else that requires a huge investment. If the game is a big hit we have all kinds of crazy plans though.

XP: I assume you can’t give us two or three idea’s of potential DLC?

MH: Well, besides new maps there are all sorts of fun things that didn’t quite make it into the final game, like a pirate flag editor, new ships, et cetera. What we’d really like to see however, is a central map sharing service. Our “viral” map sharing works amazingly well, but it doesn’t really give you metadata about maps, such as ratings, downloads, et cetera—that’s all basically word of mouth, unless we find a map we really like and help distribute it.

XP: How far is one allowed to go with the map editor of Plunder? Can the player decide everything in the map, like pieces of environments, which paths someone can travel along and so forth, similar to the Advance Wars games in this regard?

MH: We used the map editor to make all of the maps in the game, so yes, the player can decide everything and anything in the map, including the game rules. Besides the size and general lay of the land for example, you can define where each city lies, its starting upgrades, name, win condition, number of merchants, types of curses, and so forth.

XP: Will there be clan support in Plunder? Co-operating with your fellow team members does seem to be of vital importance from what I could gather, after all.

MH: Sorry, no clans. Just pirates.

XP: Were stat tracking and a dedicated portal à la Bungie.net brought up during the planning stages of Plunder? If so: what did you and the team decide about those features? Too soon for a relatively small company to start working on something that big, or was there something else stopping you?

MH: Unfortunately yes, you’re right on—too early for a small team to let itself get distracted by that sort of thing. Perhaps if Plunder was the only thing we had going on, but we were also working on a Halo 2 map pack, from then on Left 4 Dead, and now on another project too. For the future, we have plans within plans....

XP: Has the team considered a pixel by pixel decal editor for Plunder, so one can create his own flag emblem? Or did anyone involved with the project object to this for a certain reason?

MH: We seriously considered a pirate flag generator and I was bummed that we didn’t get it in! This whole “feature prioritization” business is a real buzzkill.

XP: Will there be plenty of pirates merrily singing? That would make an awesome soundtrack!

MH: Our audio budget was so small we thought we’d have to dig up Martin’s old Commodore tracks! Luckily he found a composer that was able to create a catchy pirate tune for us... Wait ‘til you hear it.

XP: Here’s an opportunity to set the record straight once and for all: is Plunder the notorious Pimps at Sea?

MH: I knew you were going to ask that! Anyway: when Plunder was being conceived Pimps at Sea provided some inspiration, especially for going pirate. The real inspiration was Settlers of Catan though—David Bowman (Plunder’s design lead) and I really enjoy the game and wanted to see what would happen when you turn it real-time. It started out way more economic though, with a lot more depth to upgrading towns by buying “workers,” more “blinging” of your ship, et cetera. :-)

XP: Why didn’t you ‘steal’ the title then? It was such a delightful and catchy name!

MH: Well, our code name was Pirate’s Booty, that’s also catchy!

XP: Seeing how Plunder is Certain Affinity’s first XBLA game, what do you think of the service’s enforced size limit? Do you wish that Microsoft would increase it again in the near future, so that there may be more room for everyone to work with?

MH: This hasn’t been a problem for us whatsoever. It really depends on the game you’re designing, but Plunder just happened to fit this limit without any extra work on our part. I should probably have more of an opinion on this but I’ve been too busy to give it much thought! I suspect we’ll run into some problems with our next title, but so far Microsoft seems to be keeping pace, increasing the limit, and Capcom has also had some success pushing things through, so I’m not too worried right now.

XP: Finally, do you think Xbox Live Arcade as a service could improve? For example: right now it’s up for debate right now whether XBLA has become less accessible thanks to the changes of the Games Blade made by the Fall Dashboard Update of ’07.

MH: Absolutely, there’s always room for improvement! One thing I’d definitely like to see is improved sorting of games. More specifically, there are now so many titles available for download that it’s hard to distinguish between them. This could be addressed in a number of ways, including user ratings, filtering by features, etc. It’s not a new problem. As things stand there’s tremendous pressure on us to name our game something that starts with the letter “A” so it shows up at the start of the list!

XP: About the sorting of XBLA games… An official announcement about that recently came up. Microsoft admitted that they need to do a better job at organizing the games, but their “solution” is rather controversial. They intend to delist games that match three criteria, but here’s the thing: such games will still be on the server and it can still be downloaded as long as it’s recommended by a friend, should you not have a particular game yet. What’s your opinion about this whole ordeal?

MH: Well I’m glad that they’ve acknowledged that there are problems. How’s that for a cop-out answer? In all honesty I’ve been so busy I haven’t paid the whole situation enough attention, but I would certainly like to learn more and see where they’re going in the future. I know that this is a hot topic for Capcom too, something that they regularly bring up—it’s nice working with a publisher that’s on top of these sorts of service-level issues, it helps us focus on making great games!