Q: Where did you come up with ideas for each faction/leader? Are they based on specific people/historical civilizations, or did you just say 'here's an ideal, what if it was taken too far?'
A: We wanted to let the player devise his/her "vision of the future" and try it out against other, competing, visions. So we designed the characters to espouse different political/social viewpoints, to provide interesting foils for the player character.

Q: We know a lot of work goes into play balance, but do you think there's a 'strongest' overall faction that works with several play styles? Do you think any imbalances are because of a faction's bonuses or its AI? Is there one that seems stronger in multiplayer, when AI isn't a factor?
A: We've done our best to avoid having one or two factions predominate; whenever (during testing) we became aware that one faction was particularly strong or weak, we modified its power to adjust it toward the norm.

Whenever I'm playtesting and am confronted by the "choose your faction" menu and I see a faction that I really "don't want to play", I try to figure out why I don't want to play it and increase its power or whatever so that it is cool enough to want to play. Likewise, if at the beginning of a multiplayer game I'm thinking "okay, I'd better choose the Hive so that Tim won't get it" then it's probably time to reduce that faction's power. At various times, the Spartans, Believers, Gaians, Hive, and University were all been accused of being "too powerful".

I think we've arrived at a nicely balance set of factions for SMAC. If release "in the real world" reveals some imbalances we hadn't previously detected, we'll of course consider enhancements later on.

Q: What brought about the art revision? Is it possible that the original art will be released, either as an option to customize the game or as part of an expansion pack (since a lot of the buttons etc. have been moved and functional areas are different in different graphics revs.)?
A: Back in the summer, we decided that we wanted to have a more consistent look-and-interface throughout the game, rather than have each individual screen carry its own organization and style. We came up with a nice, functional look and applied it to all the areas of the game.

Q: What's the current thinking on adding hotseat, which seems to have a lot of fan support, and PBEM, which seems to have a fairly vocal following as well?
A: It's something we're still thinking about; we're checking to see if it's technically feasible to add some of these features in a future enhancement.

Q: Finally, will we see a patch for the demo or a new version of the demo before the release? (The questions were sent before the release of the new version of the demo) What are you currently working on improving?
A: Yes, I believe a new version of the demo is already available for download.

Right now we're working on a free downloadable enhancement for the game which will contain some additional features which players have asked for.

That was all ladies and gentlemen, We hope you found it interesting. Questions by John Bell, Jason Beaudoin, Markos Giannopoulos. Our thanks to Brian Reynolds for his immediate response to our request and Lindsay Riehl for her help on arranging things.

PAGE 1 | PAGE 2 | INTERVIEWS INDEX