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| Apolyton: | Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role on Master of Orion 3 |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: |  Sure... I'll give you the old Troy McClure... my name is Constantine Hantzopoulos and my name never, ever, ever fit on the forms in grade school and high school but they did in college... I've been in the gaming industry for almost 10 years, with a good chuck of those years spent at Looking Glass Studios as a project director/senior designer. Before that I worked at Symantec Corp (6 years) in their development tools group on C++ compilers/dev tools. Prior to that I helped develop the world's 1st dos (gulp!) C++ compiler (Zortech C++) with Walter Bright (who created the classic strategy game Empire) and before that I ran around in Speed Racer feetsie pajamas.
My role on MOO3 takes on many shapes and forms; suffice to say that I'm responsible for the day-to-day product development of the project on the Infogrames side of things. I've been on the project since July of '00 (came on-board 3 roughly months into it).
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| Apolyton: | How did Infogrames get involved in the development of MoO3 and what has been its part in it? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | By default really... when IG purchased Hasbro, MOO3, along with the rest of all the Hasbro/Microprose/Atari IP, came with the deal. Shortly after the purchase, each producer did a full review of the projects they were responsible for with IG senior PD management and a go/no-go decision was made; obviously, a go decision was made with regards to MOO3... other projects did not fare so well, but such are the realities of business, especially during times of transition and change.
Since I'm directly responsible for all product development related aspects of MOO3 on the IG side of things, I personally have sunk a tremendous amount of time and the effort into MOO3, running the gamut from play-testing the heck out of it to tons of design feedback and feature requests/changes to convincing the powers that be that we needed a bit of a redesign, and of course, more time/money... it's been a very long haul for all of us (IG&QSI) but throughout the dev process we've maintained a very solid working relationship because ultimately we share a common goal that we are very committed to seeing through.
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| Apolyton: | You were actually in Hasbro when you joined the project, and continued on it after the purchase from IG. How was that transition and how did it affect the development? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | One obvious upside is that funding and development have continued despite the fact that the game needed a redesign and would therefore be roughly a year or so late. Another is the continued investment into the turn-based genre of games... I can't really comment on Hasbro because I was only there for a short time before IG purchased them.
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| Apolyton: | The game has gone through several milestones where features were cut. Does that show that real life situations limit what we can do or did these ideas simply not work well in the game? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: |  Well heck, we strove to put a man on the moon, make airplanes fly and toasters toast, so I wouldn't go so far as to say that "real life situations limit what you can and cannot do"; however, we don't have the budget that NASA has nor an executive presidential order to "make it so no matter what the cost" :) Hopefully you get the point here... anytime you are trying to move forward and take risks on new gameplay ideas you'll hit roadblocks and 9 times out of 10 those roadblocks mean more time/$$$; it's just the way it goes and it is a natural extension of the creative process. Sometimes new ideas work out as expected, sometimes you find ways of re-shaping them into better ideas and other times you abandon them for the greater good and take on a new tact; all of that applied to MOO3. Imperial Focus Points, for example, were simply too constraining and not consistently applied throughout the gameplay experience and user interface. They ended up doing exactly what they were not supposed to do; slow the game down and give you less control at a higher level as the game scaled up. There were also about 80(!) or so UI screens when there only needed to be about 15; a large portion of that gameplay was folded into the main galaxy map interface and is all accessed in a context sensitive way via the SitRep and Galaxy Map; the complexity is still there, it's just more seamless and transparent to the user and more logically implemented/laid out.
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| Apolyton: | We also had a couple big decisions on delaying the release. How were these delays decided and what were the risks for Infogrames one way (delaying) or the other (not delaying), if any? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | I made the initial calls on delaying MOO3, and those calls were directly related to gameplay; once I raise the proverbial red flag and have had a chance to discuss/analyze the situation with my direct superiors and QSI, we come up with new plan/goals and move forward. I'm boiling it down a bit as it's much more complex than that (finance/legal/sales/marketing/pr re-synch to name a few), so suffice to say that every time a game significantly slips during the dev cycle (no matter what game), it wreaks havoc ;)
The upside is obvious; all the fans of turn based/hardcore strategy games that we are counting on to purchase and dig the game... we certainly hope that in the end, the upside will outweigh the downside, because that directly correlates to a continued investment into the genre. But to do that, we need to deliver a quality gameplay experience, which is exactly what IG and QSI are, and have been, working towards.
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| Apolyton: | Generally these big decisions on delays and cuts came with lots of public feedback, negative and positive. How did you use that feedback? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | Simple really, focus on the positive and ignore the noise (see my answer to another question below for more detail). I find it humorous that people complain when a game is delayed; folks, that generally means they are trying to make it better, not worse. I've been waiting for Hitman 2 forever; it was late, it's now here and it's darn good. In other words, totally worth the wait :)
MOO3 feature cuts and gameplay changes are a different issue; we didn't cut features or make changes to rush the game out the door, we did it to ensure that we had the best possible gameplay experience.
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| Apolyton: | Sometimes the negativism on the forums has been too big. Do you think it was justified in some way; did it hurt the project in any way? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | Well, Confucius say that for every nice thing you say 3 people hear it and for every negative thing you say 12 people hear it (or something to that effect)... seriously though, it hurts more than it helps. Both Infogrames and QSI are totally committed to making a game that lives up to the MOO legacy and if folks don't think that we are working our butts off to make that happen, well, they need to get a grip ;) I mean, why on earth would we extend the development cycle out (more time=more $$$) and make changes to a game that was not fun to play if we're not committed to it? Really folks, there's no conspiracy at work here; we just want to make a great game that's true to the genre but advances the gameplay as well. It really is that simple.
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| Apolyton: | After the MOO3 experience, how do you see the role of a fans community during the development of a game? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: |  For me, it's interesting to note that when I started in this industry, the fans didn't really have an immediate way to contact developers about design ideas... sure, we got some phone calls, snail mail and the occasional 30+ page fax (!!), but the ratio of feedback was nowhere near what it is today. Since you got less, the quality of feedback was generally higher and much more articulate (thoughtful questions/suggestions), although I will note that most of it did come post-release. Now it's basically a wall of noise due to the fact that anyone can say pretty much whatever they want without any consequences to their actions/words... the point here is that you're sifting through a lot of BS to pick out the juicy bits, and it is getting harder and harder to find those juicy bits in relation to noise. It's easy to flame from far away without repercussions, a much different story when it is face to face. Fans need to remember that we are paid to work on the game and not sit on the discussion boards all day to answer questions; that being said, it behooves publishers and developer alike to monitor and read what the fans are saying; I'm all for dev diaries and plan files, monthly updates/screen shots, discussion/community boards, dev chat
I'm not trying to sound negative here, I DO thinks the fans play a very important role in the development process; I got into this industry because I am a fan; a fan created one of my favorite tactical on-line shooters, Counterstrike. I download tons of mods each week for all kinds of games; all that comes from community and that is what makes us all gel and share that common interest in gaming goodness. Heck, I don't know what I'd do without guys like Sencho, Xentax and Apoc and the rest of the crew; these folks monitor our MOO3 discussion boards (not an easy job!) and do it for free; really, how can I complain about that?
I'm also running a surprisingly first-rate external beta program (thanks to Apolyton!) using fans as testers... the feedback has been exceedingly helpful and, what's more, I am very pleased with the professionalism of the testers. These folks know their stuff and they've gone a long way in helping make MOO3 a better game. The only thing I wish I had done differently was start the external beta program a few months earlier.
So, taken as a whole, I've seen it as a positive experience.
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| Apolyton: | There have been lots of discussions on the "eye candy" in MoO3, especially the battle graphics. Are you on the "give me gameplay I don't care about graphics" side? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | That's kind of a loaded question, so I'll just say this; it all comes down to a combination of the type of game (design) you are doing and what's technically/visually needed to realize that vision. Personally, I tend to lean toward the gameplay over graphics side, but I'm a hardcore gamer and my own tolerance for crappy gameplay is very, very low, so I can't really speak for the masses; if the sum of all parts pulls you in and creates those sustained moments of delicious interaction, whether it's on screen or happening in your head (or a combination of both), then I can look past the eye candy and dig in to the brain candy ;) But that's just me. |
| Apolyton: | Is there a possibility for the future to offer bigger resolutions and more up-to-date graphics in a patch or expansion? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | Honestly, it depends on how well MOO3 sells. I'd certainly like to do an expansion pack and bring back some of the better features that were cut; add a scenario/mod editor, more races and a hardware-accelerated space combat renderer. Ultimately, only time and sales will tell.
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| Apolyton: | Except for race customization, how open is MOO3 to mods (in terms of the game files, graphic formats, etc)? Will you offer any tools? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | No mod tools are planned with this release. However, I'm sure some clever folks will find ways to change/enhance the game... the low level design and art hooks are all there and fairly accessible... beta tester are already figuring some stuff out, like hacking in your own leader names and making flags for your empire :) Plenty more there...
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| Apolyton: | Are you going to offer some service for finding multiplayer opponents? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | Yes, you can connect through built-in GameSpy browsing, GameSpy Arcade or directly via TCP/IP and LAN. I'd also like to point out that some excellent Fan Sites like the Orion Sector http://www.orionsector.com and The Guardians Web http://moo3.guardiansweb.de/ or, if you read German, MOO3 Planet http://www.moo3planet.de/ are all great places to meet up and match with other fans, so check 'em out folks!
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| Apolyton: | What's you comment on the race balance so far, what's your choice? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: |  Well, I think we still have a ways to go on the balance side of things, but each race is really starting to show its own distinct personality and way of doing things, which is ultimately what we are aiming for. Overall, I personally tend to gravitate toward the Evon, masters of diplomacy, spying and subterfuge... hard to catch, you can get "in" and "out" relatively unscathed, wreak havoc on other Empires and blame it on someone else. They are also very good in the diplomacy/senate department.
Second would be the Harvesters, because they simply kick butt, but that's all I'll say about that... I also like creating my own twisted custom races.
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| Apolyton: | What's the reasoning behind not making a demo? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | A demo was planned ages ago but ultimately dropped due to time/resource constraints. Right now, we're simply focused on getting the game finished and polished and honing that "just one more turn" experience (a job in itself!).
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| Apolyton: | How does Infogrames see turn-based games? Are you interested in doing more of them in the future? |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | Infogrames vigorously supports the turn-based genre; we have Civ3: Play The Word, Eye of the Beholder GBA (isometric turn-based combat) and MOO3 all coming out within the next few months, and a few others in the works that I'm not at liberty to discuss right now... that being said, I would dearly love to bring back some of my own personal favorites; XCOM, MOM and Covert Action strike home hard with me, especially XCOM... these are all some of my favorite games of all time and I'd be crazy to not push hard on the brass to bring 'em back to life.
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| Apolyton: | And most importantly, what's the current release date? :) |
| Constantine Hantzopoulos: | As most people know, the game has officially been pushed back to the 4th Quarter; expect to see it on store shelves end of November!
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