Andrew Brazier
Andrew Brazier of Headfirst Productions is part of the development
team of the upcoming Simon the Sorcerer 3D.
Are you still
on target for a late July release date?
It’s looking possible–there
is a lot of hard work being done at the moment to get it out on time.
Hasbro
has the distribution rights for the UK, but not North America. What has Hasbro
convinced that the European market is more conducive to adventure games than the
North American market?
Our games have always sold best
in Europe, most specifically Germany, and I think that was the market that Hasbro
were most interested in. They were less convinced of Simon 3D’s selling
potential in the USA, but Southpeak were more eager!
There have
been rumors that Southpeak might forego distributing Simon 3D in the United
States due to some system incompatibility problems. Can you comment further on
this?
As far as I am aware, the only problem with Southpeak
was that Simon 3D disappeared from their release schedules, and there was
brief panic amongst fans that they had dumped it. What actually happened was that
because Simon 3D slipped past its original release date, they removed it
from their schedules until they knew a more firm date.
You have
said that it costs more to make a game in 2D than in 3D. Can you elaborate on
this?
Adventures are probably the most expensive and laborious
game you can make–there is so much work that has to be done: design, script writing,
voice recording, animation, backgrounds, and programming, it’s no wonder that
there are not as many being released now as in the “old days.” 3D is
better in a way, because as far as backgrounds go, changes can be made very easily
and quickly–whereas with a 2D hand-drawn background, you have to redraw a section
of it if a door needs moving or something else is incorrect, which takes a long
time.
Simon 3D was originally conceived as a 2D game
and then scrapped in favor of 3D because many publishers were not interested in
2D. Do you think that the publishers were speaking for the market in general or
for adventure gamers as a whole?
It was definitely because
the market was heading towards 3D–adventure gamers still, on the whole, want
2D games, but I’m afraid they’re not going to get them. 2D nowadays is pretty
much confined to RTS games–everything else is done in realtime 3D now. No publisher
is going to invest money in a game that they see as using an outdated technology;
they want cutting edge, hardware-pushing titles that drive the genre forward.
Just
Adventure recently conducted a survey, and an overwhelming amount of the respondents
replied that it did not matter to them if an adventure game was 2D or 3D. What
can adventure gamers do to convince publishers?
True adventurers
will play a good adventure even if it was purely text-based–they enjoy the story,
the puzzle solving, and exploration, they are not as impressed by frames-per-second
or polygons counts as fans of other genres. Publishers, however, have to look
at the future market and think ahead–a game that has a new technical feature
or fantastic graphics will always secure more press attention than something that
is not groundbreaking, and press attention translates directly to potential sales.
It would be a very brave publisher who releases a text adventure in today’s market–the
adventure fans are a dedicated bunch, but unfortunately not as big a target audience
as the first-person shooter market.
Will Simon 3D be
CD only, or will we possibly see him on DVD?
At the moment
there are no plans for a DVD version, but it’s a possibility. The cost of mastering
to DVD is pretty expensive at the moment, so I don’t know if we could recoup the
costs in sales. It’s something to consider for our next games, though.
Has
your marketing department given any thought to including Simon 1 and 2
with Simon 3D since a great many newer adventure gamers have never
played or been able to obtain these classics?
We thought
about that, but Simon 1 and 2 still sell well separately, so we’ll
still be selling them on their own. They are still available to buy direct from
the Adventure Soft online store at www.adventuresoft.com.
Have
any characters been carried over from the previous Simon games? Sordid?
Alix? Calypso?
Sordid and Calypso are returning, but Alix
is taking a rest in this game. There are also a few other recognizable characters,
such as the Swampling, Runt, and even Hedgehog Boy. Plus a whole host of new characters
to meet (over 80 in fact).
Will anyone who has not played the
first two Simon games have a problem understanding Simon 3D?
Nope–there is a handy “Previously, on Simon the Sorcerer”
bit at the start that explains what happened in the last two games. Simon 3D
has a real “pick up and play” feel about it.
Is
Simon 3D still to be keyboard only, or will there be gamepad or mouse support?
There should be gamepad support, but not mouse. It is not really possible
to control a character in a 3D world in a third-person viewpoint with mouse only,
so the keyboard has to be used. It is a very simple interface, though, and very
easy to pick up.
You have said that you let your imagination
run wild in the realtime of Simon 3D. Can you give us an example of something
weird and wonderful that you were able to do in this game that could not have
been done in a 2D version?
I don’t really want to mention
anything specific because it’ll give the game away, but there are a lot of puzzles
that couldn’t really have been done to the same degree in a static 2D environment.
Plus, we can get in puzzles that involve things like using sound in a 3D space,
which is also impossible in 2D.
How much of Simon has been influenced
by other British comedy writers such as Douglas Adams, Eric Idle, or Terry Pratchett?
Or are all British people just naturally funny?
Funny weird
or funny ha-ha?! Simon (the lead designer) and I are naturally fans of the best
British comedy, like Douglas Adams, as you mention. I certainly wouldn’t compare
Simon 3D to the standards of the British comedy greats, but it has its
moments that should raise the odd chuckle or two. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
stories are very similar to Simon’s world in a number of ways–but I guess
there are a lot of comedy-fantasy crossovers.
Simon seems to
never have been as popular in the United States as he is in Europe. Is this due
more to the Pythonesque humor of the games or just poor marketing?
A bit of both, I’m afraid–the Americans sometimes just don’t
“get” what us English are on about, which is fine, because it works
both ways! Sarcasm in particular works differently across the Atlantic, and that
is one of Simon’s key features (it is the lowest form of wit, after all).As
far as marketing goes, Simon 2 was never released in the US, which may explain
why he isn’t so popular over there. The majority of orders taken on the Adventure
Soft online store are from the US, though, so there are a lot of Simon fans out
there–thankfully the Internet means it is easier for them to get their games
from Europe than it was before … hurrah for the WWW!
As
Simon matures, what type of woman do you see him with? Is he more the Pamela Anderson
Lee or the Martha Stewart type?
He’d undoubtedly want it
to be a Pamela Anderson Lee type–but she’d eat him up. He fancies himself as
a bit of a ladies’ man, but history (and Simon 3D) shows that he isn’t
really that successful. I guess he’s just always going to be unlucky in love …
getting rid of that ponytail and pointy hat would probably help him out a load …
Celebrity
Death Match–Simon versus Harry Potter. Your prediction?
Simon
in the 2nd. Harry’s just too nice to stand a chance. There’s been a lot of debate
in our office about Mr. Potter–he is so like Simon it is uncanny. Let’s
hope Simon 3D gets sales figures as good as the Harry Potter books !
Who
would play Simon in a movie?
Hmm … difficult …
I would say Macaulay Culkin but isn’t he like 36 or something now? To be honest,
I can’t really imagine Simon in anything other than cartoon form … that’s it–Cartman
would be an excellent Simon the Sorcerer.Screw you guys–I’m going home!
