Interview with Robert Boyd over email on an Xbox Live Indie Game
With E3 going on it’s easy to forget some of the smaller guys, the indie developers, the ones that make those free or cheap to play games. E3 is always where the bigger guns are shown, where the critics write their guesstimates on which has the power to propel this industry forward. Just recently I’ve interviewed Robert Boyd from Zeboyd Games and he’s confident he knows the three necessary ingredients for a good role-playing game, and he doesn’t have a few mil in the bank.
Zeboyd Games released their title Breath of Death VII on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Indie Games platform in April where it’s been met with praise from critics across the board. For only a buck, it’s a steal. For those of you that haven’t given it a try I’d suggest buying it, playing it for an hour, then coming back.
Carlos C Reyes (Myself):First, I believe some congratulations are in order. I’m not sure of the profits you’ve made at this point from your title, but I’ve noticed it being talked about on a number of popular websites. Kotaku being the most recent. The article titled, “Hidden Xbox Games You Need to Know About.” It must be a pretty exciting time for you.
Robert Boyd (Creator of Zeboyd Games):We’re very excited at the game’s reception, both critically and commercially. That Kotaku article was especially nice for us as we’ve seen a very noticeable jump in sales & downloads since then.
C: On your website it says that you’ve achieved over 11,000 purchases with a trial-to-game conversion rate of almost 60%. Has that number jumped any in these last 2 weeks? And what would you attribute that conversion rate to?
R: We’re at 13,693 purchases with a conversion rate of 61% as of June 1st.
As for the conversion rate, I imagine our high rating combined with the general attractiveness of getting an RPG for such a cheap price has resulted in many people buying the game outright without bothering with the demo. Also, we did our best to make the first few minutes of the game into a good sales pitch which I think has helped as well (far too many XBLIG developers waste their entire trial time period instructing the player when they should be trying to hook them ASAP).
C: Breath of Death VII makes some obvious homages to Dragon Warrior while also making references to Earthbound, Final Fantasy, Lufia and Mega Man, just to name a few. From checking out what others have said about the game, are there any references or homages you wish people out there were noticing more and what was your game’s ultimate goal that helped keep these asides relevant to your title?
R: From reading various threads about the game on the Internet, it looks like most of the references we put in are being noticed. The one reference that I haven’t seen anyone mention, though, is the FFX plot referenced at the end of the game.
C: Your game brought on a lot of nostalgia, but also great memories. You added elements to BoDVII that really make your title relevant to the current age. I remember being in middle school and playing the original Dragon Warrior for the NES, grinding outside of the first city to save up for the Copper Sword. Your game actually streamlines this process without ruining anything, by simply allowing players to open up the main menu and select Fight to speed up the grinding process. What was the thought behind this decision and the decision of limiting random encounters within dungeons?
R: One of the major problems I’ve had with commercial RPGs lately is how slow most of them are. From slow paced battles (complete with lengthy animations and load times) to every dungeon taking hours to complete,everything’s just so slow. Gameplay elements in Breath of Death VII like being able to start a fight instantly if you want to grind (and making it so grinding is optional if you play strategically) was a reaction to this – if the game goes as fast as the player wants it to, they’ll enjoy it more.
The funny thing is that I think instinctively, many RPG developers realize that their games are too slow paced. This is probably why Action/RPG hybrids have become so much more popular lately. I find this quite ironic because the problem isn’t the turn-based format (Breath of Death VII is very fast-paced and it’s turn-based), it’s the pacing.
C: I’m reminded of Final Fantasy XIII which people jokingly refer to as having a 20 hour tutorial, (and I don’t blame them) so I think you’re on to something. A close friend of mine is actually playing through Dragon Quest VII, which I love, but has a slow start. Two hours for your first battle and 15-20 hours until job classes. I really don’t blame gamers for lacking the patience.
R: Yeah, I’m with your friend. I’m a huge fan of the Dragon Quest series, but DQ7 was just too slow for me. Maybe I’ll give it another try if it ever comes out on the PSN.
C: The combat in your game, while very Dragon Quest-y took a common formula, but tweaked it by adding a combo system for the heroes and a strength bonus for each turn the enemies stayed alive, this was a very cool idea. Were these laid out to help balance the game out, or were they systems you thought of early in development?
R:The combo system & the enemy turn bonus were both gameplay elements that were in the game at a very early stage. One of my problems with RPG “strategy” is that all too often, gameplay becomes trivial once the player has access to spammable multi-target heal spells. Putting the battles on a pseudo-time limit (take too many rounds and the enemies may become so powerful that they start one hit killing you) and by adding a risk/reward mechanism with the combo system was an attempt to eliminate this problem.
C: Having previously worked on XNA titles that were interactive stories, (similar to choose your own adventure books) what would you say was the most difficult aspect of making your own role-playing game?
R: Probably programming the battle system and related code. I went in thinking that I’d have the battle system code done in a week or so and it ended up taking over a month to do.
C: Since you mention programming, what sort of background do you have that has helped you in creating BoDVII? What advice would you give to gamers that may have some solid gameplay ideas, but feel as though they lack the resources to do what you’ve done?
R: Actually, my formal programming background is pretty minimal. I took 1 programming class in my freshmen year of college and I’ve read a few books and that’s it.
If you have some good ideas for a game, but lack the programming skill to actually pull it off, I’d say get the programming skill! Either that or find someone with the skill. I will say that you need to disabuse yourself of the idea that you can just be the game designer or writer and let other people actually do the work of building the game – that might be true later on once you’ve proven yourself as an amazing designer, but early on, you need to actually get in the trenches, so to speak, and help build the game yourself. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to be a programmer, but you do need to be able to actively contribute something essential like code, graphics, or music.
C: I noticed a lot of smart gameplay decisions in BoDVII, for one I noticed that combat lacks a lot of unique attack animations, but much of this is made up for with unique sounds and extremely fast combat, was this for that very reason, to speed up combat? Or was it just a reasonable decision considering your time and budget restraints?
R: The lack of much animation in combat was primarily a result of our time and budget constraints, but I am a big fan of fast paced combat so that was a nice bonus that came out of that decision. In fact, towards the end, I was starting to get worried that the game was maybe too fast paced and people would end up being able to beat the game in just a couple of hours. I was very pleased when my first complete playthrough of the game revealed a game that was about as long as we had been shooting for.
C: The end game content was easy to level for once a certain “Unite” attack was acquired, was this to speed up the player’s ability to complete the optional dungeon without giving them a headache?
R: Yeah, I figured at such a late point of the game, the player has earned the right to some easy grinding if they want it.
C: This bugged me so I have to ask: why did you choose to treat potions as the ultimate-all-purpose-elixirs? Did all other items seem gratuitous or was there some kind of restraint that made that decision just the right one for your game?
R: Originally, I was going to have a greater variety of items, but it dawned on me. When the player has a lot of items to choose from, they usually end up saving most everything because the powerful stuff is rare and they don’t want to waste them on a less important fight. By just having 1 powerful item, the player is more likely to use them when necessary because they know they’ll just get more later on.
C: Would you consider Earthbound a large influence to BoDVII? I very much got an Earthbound vibe when I was running into random encounters with “Looters” and cars in the more suburban “dungeons.”
R: Yeah, I’m a big fan of Earthbound so I’m not surprised that it ended up influencing our game a good deal.
C: Now that you’re working on your next title, what’s the most valuable lesson you think you’ve learned from BoDVII?
R: Gameplay & good writing are key. Our game is much lower tech than your average retail RPG, but despite that, I’ve received many emails from fans saying that our game has been the most fun they’ve had playing an RPG in a long time. You don’t need fancy graphics or complicated systems to make a fun game. You just need good pacing, a well thought out design, and enjoyable dialogue.
C: At the other end of the spectrum, is there anything you believe BoDVII lacks that you’ll make sure your next game has covered?
R: Like most RPGs out there, I think I could have handled status ailments better. That’s one thing I’m really focusing on with CStW (the acronym for our next game) – making sure that there’s a greater variety of battle situations, so that less straightforward abilities like status ailments have a chance to shine. One status ailment in particularly will be crucial to the gameplay and story and…whoops! Almost gave it away!
C: If there was one thing you’d like your players to take away from Breath of Death VII, what would you say it is?
R: I hope they have fun with it and look forward to our future games! I also hope it inspires some people to make their own RPGs – give me something fun to play!
There you have it folks, the most valuable aspects to an RPG: good pacing, design, and dialogue. Let’s see how Robert does in those regards with his follow up role-playing game, Cthulhu Saves the World, coming out in August of this year.
