So how did you get involved in Dungeons & Dragons?
I actually started playing D&D before I even
started working on computers. I got my first basic set when I was in third grade.
I continually ran games for a while until probably about the time I moved to
Texas. That was when the gaming side of me kind of finally just got completely
consumed into a workaholic’s schedule.
Why is there such a huge following for D&D? What makes people, like yourself, so interested in that kind of gaming structure?
Well, computer gaming has eaten away at some of the interest for the genre. But, people have always liked stories of heroism and epic tales. It’s something that goes back in human history. It’s about letting people go in and be the hero and have the adventure.
You helped develop Orcs & Elves which comes out for the Nintendo DS on November 13. What sort of things in the game did you include from your past experience as a “Dungeon Master”?
The Orcs & Elves game speaks almost more to the early computer games that I played like Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale. I always thought that a lot of those games prematurely jumped into these multi-character party based games. I think that may have disappointed many who were really interested in managing their crew of characters but still want to have their adventure. The games I tended to write and now in Orcs & Elves are single character games which make it much more accessible to the casual gamer that we’re targeting on mobile devices. It makes for, in many ways, a cleaner sense of design.
What’s different in the DS version?
The game still definitely has the heritage of the cell phone version. We were given eight times as much space and we had a real 3-D processor to work with. The major difference is that it’s about five times faster; it runs at 60-frames-per-second, so it’s really fast and fluid as you’re cruising around. The game has more levels, more monsters, more artwork, more of everything. You can play through the game at the basic level or, if you choose to, you can play on the harder skill levels where you really have to make the perfect tactical and managerial decisions—drink the right potion at the right time, use your rings appropriately, and do all that picky micro gaming which a lot of people enjoy.
What do you think about how the first-person shooter genre, which you helped create, has evolved?
I definitely do take some pride in looking back at the genre we pioneered and I do think it’s going to be a stable genre. As long as people are playing games now, there is going to be first-person shooters, just like there’s going to be driving games and flying games. I think that the action style of gaming is going to be durable for the long term. When we look at games today, it’s a wonderful market where we have extreme competition. There is a whole lot of great and talented people working hard and big budget companies producing some really fabulous products.
What do you think about all of these retro game brands, like Bionic Commando, Street Fighter and others, reestablishing themselves in this new generation of gaming?