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| Grab Your Picnic Blanket, Have a Seat with Your Ant Buddies, and Meet the King of the Anthill! | |
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Welcome all Ants
players, big and small, far and wide! Have you ever wondered what it takes to design a game? Or what makes a game fun? Or how the creators took a simple bunch of ants and made them powerful forces?
These are just some of the questions we wanted answered and we climbed to the top of the anthill to ask Joshua Howard, the creative mind behind Ants
. He took some time out to give us a glimpse into the development behind this awesome fun-filled game and share a strategy or two.
What is your official job title and what department/division do you work for?
Joshua Howard : Currently I am a Product Planner, working for the Entertainment Business Unit, in the Internet Gaming Zone. At the time I did Ants I was a Program Manager, working for the Kids Online group. Describe your job and what part of the Ants game were you in charge of? Joshua Howard : For the Ants project, I was the Program Manager, responsible for the overall project management of the title. I was also the game designer. I managed the project, worked with my team, oversaw the entire process of pitching the game for approval, documented the original design specifications, scheduled all of the work and various teams involved, and managed the day to day issues through the process. As the game designer, I worked with the team to make sure Ants was going to be fun. I made decisions about everything from the type of Ants to how the maps would be designed. How did you come up with the idea of Ants ? Joshua Howard : Real-time strategy games (what we were calling "straction" games) were just coming into their own. We discovered that the games available or coming soon had two main shortcomings. First, the games were not simple enough or fast enough to be learned in a single play experience, and second, none of the games let you get into the "fun stuff" (the part where you actually get to bang heads with other players. Many of the games emphasized too much building, researching, and exploring. We kept asking ourselves, "When do we get to the fun part?" Microsoft Ants was our answer to these two issues. It was designed to be playable and learned by virtual gaming novices, yet be fun enough to offer a long time gamer an engaging experience. It was also designed to be a quick play game, giving players a chance to enjoy a complete game in under 15 minutes. The idea of using Ants made sense because we thought we could really invoke a sense of personality that tiny little army men would have lacked. It also gave us the creative license to not be 'realistic' and therefore the freedom to make the game what it needed to be. Did you model Ants after any other game? Joshua Howard : Ants , being what many call a real-time strategy game, was less modeled after any one other game and more an attempt to bring the real-time strategy game genre within reach of a different audience. As a game designer, what do you feel are the most important aspects of the game? What do you think makes games "fun" for people of all ages? Joshua Howard : This question makes my brain hurt -- no answer I have thought of was a good answer. So I'm just going to say this: making a game is not a science, it's an art. You know it's fun because you know it's fun. What were some of the expectations and challenges in creating this game? Joshua Howard : One of the toughest challenges was in getting the user interface right. There are a lot of things a player can do, and a lot of information they must be able to deal with. Coming up with a way to let the user deal with the game in a way that would be understood and used by novice and experienced gamers alike was a very tough problem to solve. In the end, we were very happy with the interface, both the control scheme used (no reliance on a right mouse button, but enabling it for users [who are] comfortable with [the action]) and the graphic controls (the buttons, the mini map, the scores, etc.). How did you decide which features and game play options would go in this game? Joshua Howard : Early on in the process the team had many discussions about how the different parts of the game might work. Knowing in general the kind of game we wanted to make...gave us a solid direction to work from, letting us fill in details as we needed. Many of the game features came out of the goals and requirements we had for the game, like it must have a very easy to use chat system. Several features in the game were envisioned very early on in the design, described almost to the detail of what actually [ended up] in the game. Other elements of the game were more general at first, like the types of Ants in the game. Once we had the game in a somewhat playable state we had lots and lots of people test it -- both to see if it was easy to use and to see if it was fun. Some of our original design ideas were changed as a result of players offering better solutions to certain things. Finally, some features, like in most products, were in the game simply because we could do them. A number of times the developers would come to me with a neat way to do this or that, or something we hadn't thought of. But because it was a cool thing we put it in. A great example is there's a feature so subtle many players probably don't even notice it, but when pointed out, players will realize how cool it is: the border of the game screen matches the color of your player's Ants. Are there any game tips or strategies that you would like to share? Joshua Howard : My strategies became obsolete within the first few weeks of the game being released. Though I was a decent player compared to the rest of the team, I was not the best. But even the best person on the team was quickly overcome by real players soon after the game was released. This was one of the coolest parts about being a part of this project, seeing players take the game in totally new directions we had never thought of. What do you like most about your job? And what do you like most about working in a gaming community? Joshua Howard : I really like games and all types of gaming: computer games, board games, arcade games, war games, abstract games. You name it! More than just playing them, I love to design them, talk about them, read more about them, and be with others who like myself breathe gaming. The best part about working in a group related to games is that I get to work with lots of great people who, like myself, love games. It's not just the playing of the games I enjoy, it's much more about the people involved. It's great to be a part of the largest gaming community on the Web, and to do it for a living is even better! Right now there is the scuba, fire, combat, bomber, and thief Ant. Were there any other Ant types that may have been rejected? Joshua Howard : Yes. In fact...there were a number of Ants that we considered early on in design that we did not end up using. Some of them were the Jump Ant, Balloon Ant, and Wall Ant. We even considered the Magnet Ant (who would do a dance and attract enemy Ants to itself), the Spy Ant (who could [mimic] the color of an enemy Ant), and several others. On a 1-10 scale ranking (as a player) what would you give yourself? And why? Joshua Howard : I'm probably a 7. Though my strategies may not be the most unique, I can do them very well. I do get beat often by players, but tend to be one of the better players in my group of friends that play together. Are you going to put any other warrior Ants in this game? Joshua Howard : Nope. The game is done as it is. There are currently no plans for another version of Ants , though it would be a pretty cool idea to consider. Will the Ants ever have new maps, like Ants in the winter time? Joshua Howard : New maps, yes. New map art, unlikely. Based on the requests of many of the Ants fans, I am hoping to have a new map or two before the end of the year. Who knows, if players respond really well to new maps, we may do more as time goes on. Are all the foods on the map your favorite foods? And is that why you put them there? Joshua Howard : In trying to come up with the various items we could use as food, the team brainstormed on what kinds of food one might find laying on the ground. Things like candy, spilled drink, picnic food, all made sense - even if they weren't that exciting. The really cool food, in my opinion, is the strange food like the Steak Whiz or Pizza in a Tube. Also, the giggling gelatin food on the Gauntlet map is pretty disgusting if you look at it too long. My favorite foods would have to be the Choco Fishy Snax (it sounds so awful) and the Potted Meat (the way it moves in its can all by itself is creepy). What do you think is important for the Ants to do to survive? Joshua Howard : It's important to realize that the way to win the game is to get more points than any other player, not by killing your opponents' Ants. Lots of players like to go on the offensive and do lots of damage, but in the end, if the other player is good, going on the offensive too early can backfire, because you're not focusing on collecting food. I think it's best to annoy the other players just enough to slow them down, while not letting yourself be slowed down too much by them. That's what I think is the most important thing to keep in mind. What is your favorite Ant and why? Joshua Howard : I like all of them! Each has their own personality, but for me, the two that stand out the most is the CombAnt and the Thief Ant. I like the CombAnt because he is a big dumb guy who easily loses track of what he is supposed to be doing. If he sees a chance to go whack on another team's Ants, he'll start moving. The way the CombAnt acts is exactly as I pictured it in my head five months before the game was ever done. The Thief Ant is very cool because of how it steals food. It was the team's idea of having the Thief Ant go in a side door to steal food, and I was skeptical about how it would work out and how it would look, but in the end I think it's one of the best animations in the game. Is there anything you wish you could add or change about this game? Joshua Howard : We would have loved to do a level editor something that would let players build their own levels. It wouldn't have been difficult. We just didn't have the time to get it done. Just as the play styles have changed a lot since the game was released, based on new strategies coming into play, a level editor would have allowed the game to have even more play variety as players built and traded their own levels. Have you worked on any other games besides Ants ? Joshua Howard : I have designed a number of board games and card games. Ants was my first computer game design. While working on the Zone, I have been working with computer game developers, helping them tweak their designs to be the best games possible -- though none I can admit to, right now. Any other comments or suggestions you'd like to share with your Zone players? Joshua Howard : None of us on the original Ants team could have guessed that Ants would be so well received, especially so long after its initial release. All of us are very happy that people are still playing the game, and still having a great time with it. The lesson Ants has taught me is that something doesn't have to be flashy, or cost a fortune to make. Just as long as it's fun, people will appreciate it! The Zone thanks Joshua Howard for giving us a glimpse behind the scenes! And also a special thanks to Leonardoe and Paul Johnfor contributing interview questions! Now that you know how the game is created, scramble into a game room and start playing! And remember to have fun! If you have an original content submission or idea for the Zone, please e-mail us at Zidea@microsoft.com. Thanks! |
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