Cleaver interview/Part 3

In May 2005, Cleaver agreed to be interviewed in a Ventrilo chat session hosted by Bluetta. Questions were posed by a variety of guests, who either contributed to winning Cleaver in the auction, or won a ticket in three events Bluetta hosted. Llama recorded the interview. Part three is transcribed below.

Part 3 - Inspiration, competition and teamwork

Bluetta:	Then, Stevedave.
Stevedave:	Okay, I've been debating several questions in my mind, but, I think I'm going to settle on - a personal, somewhat one - before the whole Puzzle Pirates thing started, what would you say is one of your favourite games / console / PC whatever of all time?
Cleaver:	Favorite game of all time...
Stevedave:	A small list will do or whatever.
Cleaver:	Probably my favorite game that's not a MMG or a MUD is erm, was Elite on the BBC micro which you may have heard of; it was very big in England, not so big over here, and was the basis for the wing commander games and a number of other games - but essentially it was a very open-ended space simulator when you roamed around in your ship and shot down pirates and gathered booty and so on - so it was wireframe 3d graphics which at the time was totally awesome. BBC micro being basically a 6502, a bit like a commodore 64 in terms of its capabilities in the 1981 time period. So that was my favourite single player game, but then shortly after I was hooked at that, I started playing MUD at Essex University and then I would sort of dream of elite 3D space games online like a MUD; MUD was game that had most influence on me, and looking back on it, it was a very basic game compared to MUDs now, but it was still seminal and number one - did you want something more recent? Those were both like 1980s.
Stevedave:	The only other thing I was going to ask was - were you ever eaten by a Grue?
Cleaver:	Sure, yeah, but only ever on a friend's computer. I never played that game - I never had that game on my own computer, so I like went up to someone's house - I was like, "whoa" - PRS80 or a 808 PC or something.
Bluetta:	Okay Dorel, you have a question of your own making now? That's not one we already asked?
Dorel:	I'm hoping that. I was just wondering how satisfied you are at the success of Puzzle Pirates compared to like other MMOs, I know it's like you have this other major big bang stuff, like WoW or something, and that's kind of not a good comparison, but even then, are you happy with the success of Y!PP compared to the success of others out there?
Cleaver:	Not really (laughs) I wouldn't say I'm pissed off, I think we've done very well considering we have a very peculiar, offside game and we were working it out as we went along, and really - probably made some mistakes in doing that - having said that what we managed throughout to maintain control of our own destiny, and that is really really important to us, and the evidence, the experience we've had is really borne out that that was a good idea - a great example of this is something I may have brought up in private with my private colleagues. But if we'd been reliant upon the Ubisoft deal, and if we'd not been able to have digital downloads of the game, at this point, we'd be looking at going out of business, and so the fact that we have digital downloads and that's our main business, and the Ubisoft thing was totally an incremental thing on top means that we're in a really strong position compared to where we could be, and we're really really fortunate. So I'm pleased, and yet I'm not fulfilled, in terms of the ambition, so that's still half of the game. I don't see this, by any means- the fat lady has not sung on Puzzle Pirates, the game is very deliberately not designed with the latest graphics, so there's no risk of it getting to be an old game- "Oh, that game looks old now." That's not the issue. And particularly not for the audience, where I think we can be really really successful, which is not the fifteen year-old Miniclip kids, it's in fact the much older game players on Yahoo! Games, and RealArcade and so-on. And it's getting to that audience that has been the ongoing challenge, but we're actually starting to see some encouraging signs, so I think my ambitions may yet be fulfilled. I mean the fact that we're there, and we're making some money, we have ten thousand subscribers, and a good few thousand more equivalent people in doubloons, and 500,000 people who've played the game, and of which I'd say 100,000 have actually enjoyed it, had some fun with it. I mean, all these things are great things, I'm not putting down our achievements by any means, but I have unrealized ambitions.
Bluetta:	Okay. We'll go to Jacquilynne next.
Jacquilynne:	As what I would describe as an "ex-programmer," I'm still kind of fascinated by by Game Gardens, and one of these days I'm going to stop poking at it and actually do something productive with it. How do you feel that's going? What's been the reaction that you've had to opening up the toolkits like that?
Cleaver:	I think it's going pretty well, I mean we didn't have any, unlike Puzzle Pirates where we had, you know , that's not the expectation. And we have had some expectations of payroll and so-forth, but with Game Gardens we were just throwing it out there to see what happens. I think the challenge there is getting an audience together, obviously, and encourage those early signs, and some day saying "People are actually playing some of the games." Earlier though, you know, three or four people on Sagashi, so I'm encouraged there. I would like to more tightly integrate it with Puzzle Pirates, I'd like not have the somewhat flaky interface that it has now, so that we can lead more people into the Game Gardens games. The fact that a few people have developed games with it is great, and hopefully over time we'll see more of those. I think there's a little bit of "chicken and egg" with the audience thing, so I'd like to find ways of doing that. If anyone has any great ideas about getting a bunch of people playing Game Gardens, then by all means, send them my way.
Jacquilynne:	Okay. I'm just going down the list at this point... Caspian.
Caspian:	You seem to have a really good team put together- the balance of artists and programmers- but I've kind of wondered how in the beginning you guys all got together and got started?
Cleaver:	That's a good question. Very fortunately, it was actually- what brought the whole thing about was a chance meeting at the Game Developer's Conference in 1998 with myself and Mr. Paul Phillips, who's now a somewhat renowned poker player, who if anyone watches the World Poker Tour, might have seen Paul Phillips battling it out against the various other famous poker players, and actually winning a vast amount of money at one point. But at the time, Paul was a dotcom-er, and Paul and I met up and we hit it off. And then later, Paul introduced me to Michael, who's Jack. And Mike and I got along, and a bit later we happened to be living in San Francisco at the same time, and we started hanging out. At the time, we were both unemployed, and we were both kind of bored, so after a we decided we wanted to make some games, and we talked a bit about what kind of games we were going to make. We almost, thank heavens we didn't, did a sort of mini-Lord of the Rings-type, almost like Puzzle Pirates meets Middle Earth, but very much more scaled back, sort of a series of poker games. We almost did the Lord of the Rings games for Electronic Arts, but thank God we didn't, and when that fell apart, we sat down and I went through a list of wacky ideas. Mike said, "Hey, I like the one with puzzles and pirates- let's do that one." And so, at that point we started the company and got going with it. Since then, we've hired some people who we already knew, so Peghead and Red and actually Landon(?) and Calrissian are both from Go-to-net(?), Mike's previous company. And then some people who are just total random, that we found from Craigslist. And that would be Nemo and Bluebeard and Hussar just turned up. So a bit of a mix there between people we knew and just chance recruitment, we've been very lucky that way.
Bluetta:	Alright, Looseweed, first question for you
Looseweed:	Hi. I've always seen you guy's target audience to be sort of the adult roleplayer, more than the adolescent computer-gamer crowd, more than like console gamers, or whatever. I was wondering what your perception of the target audience for Puzzle Pirates is, and what do you have planned to get to that target audience? If it's an adult target audience, then what's your plan on getting to those guys?
Cleaver:	Yeah, topic-du-jour, isn't it, on the forums and so-on. I see the audience for Puzzle Pirates, I mean, the tricky thing is, what the potential audience is and what the actual audience is. But, I mean, looking at both the potential and the actual, I think what we have now is an interesting mix, which is: We've got a bunch of kids, too many, right now, no doubt about that. But I don't think it's invalid that kids should play Puzzle Pirates, particularly on the doubloon servers. So I'm not going to throw that opportunity away, but obviously it's fraught with problems, and they're not necessarily who somewhat older people want to hang out with. So, there's them. The two target audiences, from my point of view, are, as you say, I think you call them "adult role players" and I think that's a reasonable way of putting it. I think of them as post-core(?) gamers. People who were really into roleplaying, or really into computer games of various forms, or maybe really into MMORPGS. And they find Puzzle Pirates and they think it's a breath of fresh air. Something really new. They're sick of level grinding, or what-not, they really like the roleplaying, and so-forth. So that's a really interesting audience, and obviously a lot of you guys and me and loads of other great players. And the other audience, and this is a much larger audience, not necessarily that we're going to get a lot of them, but this is a lot larger audience in terms of the demographics. It's older puzzle game players, casual game players, the people who you'll find hanging out on Pogo, Shockwave, Yahoo! Games and so-on. That's a majority female audience, it's more like 70-30 on most of those sites and (?) quite a bit older. That, I think is really interesting for Puzzle Pirates. Now, a lot of those people don't like Puzzle Pirates, and will never like it, because it's too intensely social for them. They're concerned about, there's just issues about the way the game is that are really difficult to overcome, it's probably a little complicated. However, a lot of them do like Puzzle Pirates, and I think there's a great deal of potential there. The problem with reaching the "jaded" gamer audience, if you like, it's not a terribly big audience to start with, but also, it's not really a problem, I think we've done a really good job of reaching that audience, I think awareness of Puzzle Pirates is very very high there, I mean if you look at, for example, Penny Arcade, where we've run a lot of ads. I think we've essentially tapped out that audience. We ran a bunch of ads before Christmas on Penny Arcade and saw basically no response. So I think Penny Arcade, all those guys, know about us. They've made a decision about whether they're interested or not. And maybe something will change, maybe if we push doubloons, or something will change, then we can draw a lot more of those people back in. But certainly there's the awareness there. Whereas on the other side, with Yahoo! Games and soforth, there really isn't the awareness, and it's really a question of us just doing deals with those sites. And we can't afford to buy advertising on those sites right now, maybe in the future we could. But right now, we're focused on just trying to do the same kind of deal that we had with Miniclip where they basically promote the game. And from my point of view, that's the largest opportunity we have right now, possibly outside of international deals, well actually, even including international. So, does that cover it?
Looseweed:	Yeah, it certainly does.
Bluetta:	Okay. Skipping over the repeats, Randall is that a question?
Randall:	Yes. We've been talking a lot about not(?) Puzzle Pirates, so I think the really obvious question is, I mean we all know what's on Ice, but what is the next big thing on the list for Puzzle Pirates?
Cleaver:	Nemo already gave it away.
Bluetta:	Furni!
Randall:	Oh, it's actually furniture?
Cleaver:	Well, you need somewhere to put it right, the furniture?
Randall:	So housing? Which brings me to- more details on that?
Cleaver:	Uh, no. (laughs) No more details on that right now. It will become clear soon. I don't know how long it's going to take, which is one of the reasons I'm reluctant to talk about it, but it's being worked on right now. We also have a bunch more games coming, but housing's uh- furni! More furni, that's probably the big one.