| Dorel:
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I was wondering if there's ever going to be a point where you think that it's going to be finished. Where you're going to poke at it and you're going to go, "You know, I don't think there's anything else we can do with this, you know. We're out of ideas."
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| Cleaver:
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(laughs) No. No. These things are never finished, man. It's going to go on forever. I confidently expect, and of course, I would rather hope, that people will be playing Puzzle Pirates in ten years or more. And I confidently expect that there will be people adding stuff to the game at that time. It may be in ten years that Three Rings is no longer supporting the game, because maybe Three Rings won't exist, or who knows- I hope it does and I hope it is still supporting the game, but there are lots of scenarios. We would not intentionally let the game die. I think that there would certainly be the possibility of volunteers picking the game up and adding more stuff, and so-on and so-forth, even in a very long time. There's always going to be stuff to add, man. I can't imagine being able to think that the game's done, or being able to think that there's things in the game that you wouldn't want to change. I think that's the nature of—if there are people playing, then there should be change. If nobody's playing then it will become a sad and quiet place. But probably still sit there on a server somewhere, because servers aren't expensive to have mucking around.
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| (?):
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I'd like to say because my mic wasn't working before, my favorite part of the game is your willingness to change it for the people who play it. I think you've done a really good job of customizing it for the players.
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| Cleaver:
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Thanks. It's tough, right. It's tough to know what to do. And what the right thing is. There's the players we have now, there's the greenie hordes of doom, and there's the potential players who we'd like to have in the future. And so we're just trying to balance things out, and find the right path. Swings and roundabouts, but hopefully we are generally moving in a positive and forward direction.
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| (?):
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So does your girlfriend play?
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| Cleaver:
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Yeah, she does actually. She got really really into it. She's kind of busy and doesn't play as much as she would like to, but yeah, she plays and she enjoys it. She wants more clothes, keeps asking me, "Why don't you give me more stuff; why can't I have an octopus?" and I'm like, "No! You can't have any of that stuff." So, there you go. She's actually kind of secret, I'm not going to tell you who she is.
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| (?):
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Do you play anything except for your blue character?
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| Cleaver:
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Not recently, no. I used to. Back in Beta, I had a crew and a flag and all sorts of stuff. I got thoroughly addicted to my own game, which was great, it was really fun. But I haven't really done a lot of that since, and I guess I've just been real busy. I should probably give that another crack, actually. Start from scratch, see where I can go.
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| (?):
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I think you should come back and play with everybody. That would be fun.
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| Cleaver:
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Well I think you're asking two things, right. There's Cleaver playing with everyone, which is being sort of the, "Woo! Cleaver's on the ship." And there's playing an anonymous character that no one would know who I was. And I think both would be good.
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| (?):
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Yeah I was thinking coming back and playing as a regular pirate.
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| Cleaver:
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No one would ever know then, would they?
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| (?):
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You would tell us.
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| Cleaver:
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No I wouldn't!
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| (?):
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Maybe he's Thanos.
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| Cleaver:
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Curses! My secrets are revealed!
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| (?):
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But I thought I was Thanos!
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| (?):
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Thanos is everyone. I thought everybody knew that.
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| (?):
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We all know secret identities have a way of getting around.
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| Cleaver:
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Thanos is Nemo really, it's all true.
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| (?):
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Don't tell anyone, but I'm actually Stevedave.
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| (?):
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No, I'm Stevedave. Or I'm the greatest Stevedave, anyways.
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| (?):
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I've got another one: With all the greenies that keep coming in, if they start to get sent to the other oceans, that's pertaining to the shanghai points, is there eventually going to be another way to get ships renamed because there's only going to so many greenies coming in every month?
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| Cleaver:
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Yeah, I guess. We'll see. There's still sort of pretty healthy influx and eventually we'll have to rethink that, you're right. Because sooner or later that's likely to drop off, especially when we have many more oceans. I'm not entirely happy with the way shanghais work either. We may consider doing some revisions there. I think it's worked pretty just as sort of an incentive and a fun thing for people to have. But maybe there's some other stuff we could do.
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| (?):
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I guess I've got some more general questions. Although first, I'll make a comment. Pretty recently on the forums, maybe I was just reading this today, somebody made a suggestion about a refer-a-friend mechanism whereby somebody might get some kind of a reward in game or something. I suppose that's like shanghais, kind of, but who knows. But my general questions are, I guess I've already asked what would you do differently, but have there been some real surreal moments like somebody's recognized you on the street, or somebody's sent you something really wacky, or anything like that related to the game. What have been some of the biggest surprises? I also remember, maybe it was from the Game Developer's Conference when you were talking about how you were just dumbfounded that here you put all this work into the economy and everybody's so pissed off because the skirt looks funny.
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| Cleaver:
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(laughs) I don't know if I'd quite put it like that, but certainly people care very much about the color of their skirt. But, you know, fair enough. I care about the color of my skirts, too. I've lost the question, what was the question before that?
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| (?):
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I was just asking if you'd had like, surprising moments or surreal moments too.
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| Cleaver:
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Yeah. Various and sundry surreal moments. I'm trying to think of a good one, I always get a bit stumped when I come to things like this. I think hearing second-hand removed, so-and-so was talking about the game or rather people talking about the game in a completely unconnected way. One of my colleague's father is a political science professor. He was at a conference, and his colleagues were raving about this game, blah-blah-blah with an incredible political economy in it, and it turned out to be Puzzle Pirates. "My son works on that!" The colleagues were very impressed. It's things like that, from entirely circuitous routes, that are amusing and pleasing to hear. In terms of being personally accosted, I get personally accosted quite a bit, but that's usually because I'm wearing a pirate hat. Which makes it very easy for me to be identified. So at E3 last week, or at the Game Developer's Conference or what-not, I get a bunch of people coming up to me and going, "Oh, Puzzle Pirates, blah-blah-blah." Which is great, and obviously largely why I'm wearing the hat, so that's good, but I'm stumped to think of one that was particularly strange. I'll have to think about that a bit more, maybe I'll come up with something.
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| (?):
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Do you have any funny moments from the office, or great booches to share with us? I just learned about the chat booch that Peghead did a year and a half ago, apparently it's pretty famous, any funny stories?
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| Cleaver:
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That's probably the best booch ever. I don't have a better booch story than that. That was certainly a class operation. Funny stories around the office- slaving away so hard that we don't have time for funny stuff. No, we have a fun time, but I'm stumped to think of anything tremendously amusing. I guess last weekend was sort of amusing. We were up at the crack of dawn 8 a.m. for the Bay to Breaker's Race, we put together a little pirate ship and loaded it down with grog and pushed it all the way across San Francisco. So that was fun, and somewhat goofy. We ran into a lot of pirates, so that was also amusing. Small crew, only four of the lads managed to make it up to that one, but it was 8 a.m. on a Sunday. So yeah, that was last week's goofiness. We do silly stuff like that. But I don't have any hilarious tales to regale you with off the top of my head. [9:30]
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| (?):
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How about the boring stuff. What does a normal day in the life of Captain Clever look like?
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| Cleaver:
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Uhm, you want the whole thing? Like top to bottom?
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| (?):
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Well as detailed as you can afford to do.
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| Cleaver:
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I tend to get up around 7:30 or 8:00 and I usually make it to the office around 10:00. And then most of my time in the office these days doing e-mail and answering questions, and sort of moving various things along. Spending really most of my time recently trying to do deals with other companies which is surprisingly time consuming. And doing other business and stuff like that. But I also am gonna keep an eye on what is going on in the game and spend a fair bit of time talking about new features and stuff and so on. And then there is bits of general management so in terms of time at the office, I sit in front of the computer and do a lot of e-mail. We have a pretty quiet office, but we do have discussions and so forth, and then we do have occasional meetings. Not too many of them, thank god. I am usually there until- sometimes I have a nap after lunch, which I am a big fan of -and I am usually there until after 8:00 pm. Sometimes quite a bit later, but I usually try and get home before 9:00 or 9:30 and then I will eat a small dinner and usually fall asleep immediately after wards. And then wake up on the couch at midnight or some other ill-gotten time and then crawl into bed. But sometimes I do other fun stuff like martial arts and so on, and on the weekends I try and get out and about and do other things instead of sitting on the computer all the time. I know that is sacrilegious possibly in this crowd. The pizza message is there for a reason kids! *laughs* So yea, that is pretty much what I do. It's not ultra-exciting from the outside, but I'm basically doing what I love. It's very rewarding.
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