August 15, 2008

KingsIsle’s director talks about Wizard101
By Michael Lafferty

“The game has a very unique flavor to it; it doesn’t easily classify itself”

The game infuses some of that delightful childlike innocence and joy that older gamers fondly remember from their youth, while at the same time melding in gameplay elements that appeal to those same gamers. It is challenging, maybe a bit of a grind, but takes card-game play, adds a dash of role-playing and presents it all in a family-friendly atmosphere.

The game is Wizard101, from KingsIsle Entertainment. It is an MMO currently in open beta. GameZone got a chance to play the game and before long, even the youngest member of the household was enthralled and leveling up a character or two.

Intrigued by the impetus behind the game, GZ got in touch with KingsIsle and had a chat with J. Todd Coleman, the director at KingsIsle Entertainment about the game.

Question: This is a game that should have broad appeal, from the young to older players. For whom was it targeted and how have you put guards into place to protect younger gamers?

Coleman: Well, we certainly hope it will have broad appeal …. We originally created the game for kids, starting at around age 8, but once we started testing it became pretty clear that our game was pulling players from a very wide spectrum. Our community now consists of a very unique blend of kids, CCG players, parents and grandparents and MMO veterans.

Q: What was the impetus behind creating card-based combat, and how did you manage to break it down so effectively to make it simple to understand and yet have the layers of thought behind it (like the whole element of the round-by-round power points)?

Coleman: That’s the real trick, isn’t it? One of the hardest things we’ve had to face was to strike a balance between depth of game play (which is necessary for our CCG to feel strategic) with an approachable interface; we had to find a way to layer the design concepts so that a player could start with just the basics and learn new elements over time. The thought process is something like: start with health, damage and healing spells. Pretty straight-forward. Now let’s add in accuracy, damage ranges, and spell ranks. OK, that works. Now power points… seems like that might be confusing, so let’s marry that concept to the spell rank, make them one and the same. That works! Oh, and hey, let’s tie that into mana consumption, too.

It takes a lot of iterations, we would try one idea, toss it out, then try another. What was it Thomas Edison said, “I haven’t failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways it doesn’t work?” That’s a lot like design, it required a fair number of tinkering to make it feel right. The basic concepts haven’t changed much since we first had the idea, but the devil (as always) was hugely in the details.

It’s hard for me to even remember a time when basic RPG concepts weren’t something completely familiar – the idea of “hit points” seems so basic, right? But if you want to stretch outside of the normal audience, you have to go back and explain these things. You have to explain how hit points work, and experience, and really build the experience from the ground up.

Q: You have a lot of mini games at the fairgrounds that play off familiar arcade-style games. What was the impetus behind putting them into the game and how did you select the themes that would work in this world?

Coleman: The mini games are there to break up the normal game play experience; with a strong reward loop (like Wizard has), players will actually keep going after that next reward past the point where they really should take a break. We added mana, which limits the number of spells you can cast on any one adventure, and mini games as a way to say … hey, take a break for a minute. We don’t want you to push forward so quickly that you burn out on the game.

Inspirationally, the mini games also gave us a fun canvas to play around with; basically, we pulled ideas from our own childhood, back when we used to haunt the local arcades and play for hours on our apple 2Es. We took the games that sparked our imaginations, as kids, and used those for inspiration. That’s why so many of the mini-games have an old-school 80s arcade feel … it’s no accident! That’s where we started, when we were kids thinking about how cool it would be to make games for a living.

Q: When you launch, do you play on multiple servers? How many different zones will there be?

Coleman: We don’t have “servers”, per se … the game is divided up into Realms, and there are actually a handful of those running in Beta already. The key difference between a “server” and a “realm” is that players are not locked into a realm, they can hop between them at will. As such, we don’t ever force the player to choose one, we just pick one for them… and since players can (and do) hop between Realms constantly as they move through the universe and teleport to their friends, the process is mostly invisible.

Q: You have space for individual rooms. Will players be able to decorate those? Will players be able to form their own guilds or houses? Aside from dueling or jumping in and helping in a combat situation, what do you have in place to enhance the multiplayer experience?

Coleman: We have a plan for house creation and decoration after launch, I call it “off-campus housing,” where players will be able to buy a dark wizard’s tower or a floating palace in the clouds. Players will be able to collect and craft items to decorate their homes, and invite other Wizards to visit.

Q: Is there an end-game? It seemed that there were story elements driving quests through the first levels, do those stories continue to drive the game, do they bleed over into other story arcs, or will players uncover new storylines as they progress?

Coleman: There is, actually – this is a departure from most virtual worlds. Every area in the game is tied together by a primary narrative thread, and the story actually includes a beginning (the player arrives at Wizard City and signs up for class), a middle (the player grows in magical power) and an end (the player faces the ultimate bad guy to try and save the world.) Beyond that, we’ll be adding new chapters to the story to keep the world as engaging and immersive as possible.

Q: What is the level cap? How many different card sets can players have for combat?

Coleman: We have a 50 level system right now, but there is nothing stopping us from adding more to that later. There isn’t actually a limit to the number of Decks that a player can create – with over three hundred unique cards in the game, players can construct an amazing variety of Decks … and when the PvP tournament system comes online, soon after launch, they’ll be able to test those Decks against other players. That’s when things will get really interesting! 

Q: What do you find the most appealing aspect of this game?

Coleman: I love broad spectrum of characters that we’ve created: Ninja Pigs, Evil Snowmen, a criminal feline mastermind named Meowiarti… The game has a very unique flavor to it; it doesn’t easily classify itself.  From a design standpoint, I’m also very proud that we didn’t just copy every other MMO on the market. We set out to create something very different, and the result is extremely polished and (dare I say) very engaging and fun.

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