25 Questions for Rick Goodman Chief Product Officer of 8D World
You were the Lead Designer of Age of Empires. How did the concept come about? Back in 1995, myself, Bruce Shelley and my brother met weekly to discuss possible game ideas. Back then, we all had day jobs, so the idea of starting a game company seemed pretty far fetched. Eventually, through these meetings, the concept for Age of Empires emerged. (The wackiest idea we came up with was a game in which you were trapped on a deserted island and had				Why open your newest studio, 8D World, in Shanghai? Shanghai is one of the most prominent high-technology hot locations in the world. It is a Mecca of engineering, art and production talent. Having personally worked in the industry for many, many years makes the task of recruiting world-class talent a-bit easier. What’s the key to building 8D World into a world-class studio?
to solve puzzles to escape the island. Boooring!) At what point did you realize Age of Empires was going to be a huge success? Six months before the product shipped, Microsoft forecasted world-wide sales of 400,000 units. Back then, only MS Flight Simulator and MS Golf were bigger for Microsoft. Soon after Age of Empires went on sale, the stores ran out of stock. So, for about 10 days during Christmas season, you couldn’t find a copy of it on the shelves. That was a good sign. What role(s) do you play at 8D World? Everyone on a small team wears multiple hats. I myself, wear two, Game Designer and Chief Product Officer. Interestingly, these two roles are traditionally at odds. The Game Designer wants to increase scope and features while the Product Officer wants to reduce them. I believe the ideal resolution of this natural tug-of-war is for one person to be responsible for both. What’s it like working at 8D World? It's a great feeling to be working with other people who share my passion. When I was a kid I was always tinkering with rules variants of board games like Risk. My role is simply a continuation of my childhood passion. I have traded in cardboard for a mouse. I’m an entrepreneur through and through. At a small company everything you do is important. This is my dream job. What do you like most about being a game designer? I have to laugh every time I think about the fact that I get paid for this stuff. Briefly describe the game development process. We begin by writing a game design document, which is like a short novel. It describes all of the game features in great detail. We then design the underlying engineering architecture. Programming and art asset creation follows. The fun part comes when you’re finally able to start playing. At that stage we usually come up with new ideas. We also discover that some of our original ideas are not as fun as well as we had hoped! How important is the designer’s role in creating a game? Someone has to be in charge of “Is it fun yet?” To me, nothing is more			Pizza. Based upon my personal experience, artists and programmers are machines that turn pepperoni pizza into art and code. Seriously, at 8D World we take the time to recruit skilled, motivated, and committed employees. At 8D World, we’re applying everything we’ve learned over the past several years in order to build a world-class development team. A game is more than the sum of its parts, i.e., Programming + Art + Music + Sound. It's a reflection of each and every member of the team. Is creating games for a living, the dream job, it sounds like? Absolutely. It’s also a lot of hard work, but I can’t imagine a better job. We’re all very lucky to be doing what we’re doing at 8D World. What are the three most important elements to be a game designer? Analytical thinking, Communication, Organization. Analytical thinking allows you to think through new game ideas before they are actually implemented. Communications is crucial because everyone on the team needs to understand your vision of the game precisely in order to help create it. Being organized is essential, because a game is really a large software project which takes a tremendous amount of planning and organization to complete. What did you do before becoming a game designer? I have been playing board games since I was 12. After college, I went into accounting. Then, I worked in database consulting. Age of Empires was the first game I worked on and that project commenced in 1995. That means that I have been designing for about 13 years now.
important than game play. I wake up thinking about game play and go to bed thinking about game play. And in between, I think about game play. I make no compromises or apologies for this. Is there anything you dislike about being a game designer? Game development can be stressful at times. When this occurs, I like to procrastinate. For example, I’ll come into work in the morning, sit down in front of the computer and spend the first three hours				In that period of time I have shipped a grand total of 4 games. I think that qualifies me for the Guinness Book of world records under: “Pushing the productivity envelope”. What early games influenced you? Warcraft 1 & 2 and Civilization were the biggest influences. There were elements of all threegames I liked. And, some that I felt could even be improved. I liked the
tweaking my desk top, or searching for the perfect fonts for my design document. After lunch, I’ll defrag my computer, then take a nap. Man, the days just fly by!			epic scope of Civ. and the random maps, but I really wanted our game to be multiplayer. I liked the graphics and action orientation of Warcraft, but I felt that a historical “realistic” game, would have a broader world-wide appeal. What games had you worked on prior to Age Of Empires? Before working on Age of Empires, I was an accountant. So, the answer is none. I love gaming of all types and this includes board games -- which I had been playing 20 years before starting to work on Age of Empires. The possibility of actually designing a game, much less a video game, had never occurred to me up until the time just before the idea for Age of Empires came up. Is there anything you could have done better on Age of Empires? We made a myriad of design decisions which, at the time, were gut wrenching
Do you play any games beside yours? I’m playing Command & Conquer, Titan Quest, SimCity, and the Battlefield series. One game that has yet to earn its place in history is “Command HQ” published by Microprose in 1990. The shear beauty of this game was in its elegant simplicity: two resources, two land units, three sea units and an airplane. Other RTS firsts were the use of a tactical map a separate world map and its use of line of site, wherein the opponent’s units and activities were always secret. Age Of Empires has been called a ‘real-time Civilization’. Was that always part of the plan? Yes, that was, indeed, the original vision. Over time, the vision changed, as development progressed from the conceptual stage to the implementation stage. It's safe to say that none of us had any experience creating a game, so we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. As a result, the game charted its own direction, much more so than any one team member charted the direction for it. Our philosophy was this: As long as the game was becoming more fun to play, each day, then we felt we were on the right path. What was the most exciting thing about the launch of Age of Empires? I guess there is that break-through moment toward the end of the project when you finally start play testing the multiplayer game. The team plays a game and afterwards, everyone jumps up, screaming, yelling, laughing and bragging. Then suddenly, it dawns on everyone that we are talking about our own game – the one that we created. This is a very strange feeling. Give us your major prediction about future. Computers will soon be smart enough to design computer games. Humans won’t be needed. So, in the future 8D World will have just two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the computer equipment.			decisions. When you make big design decisions, there’s no one there to tell you whether you are making the right decision or the wrong decision. Sometimes opinions on a particular feature are divided. I am analytical and objective in nature, so this is always an uncomfortable situation to find one’s self in. In hindsight, allowing our intuition to guide the process was a wise thing to do. What were some of the major challenges you faced during development? If I had to choose one major challenge during development it would the performance of our 2D graphics engine. The graphics engine was relatively slow and we recognized this early on. So our graphics engineer had an idea: Rather than redrawing the entire screen each and every frame, we’d keep track of every individual pixel on the screen and only update those pixels which need updating. I had no idea if such a thing was even possible… But, after 8 months of work we completed the task. And, the game ran 3 times faster! What was your favorite memory of working on Age of Empires? Near the end of the project, I made a bet with Ensemble Lead Programmer to see who could stay awake the longest in one continuous stretch. After 38 hours without sleep, I was exhausted. I could not stay awake any longer. I went to the Lead Programmer’s office to admit defeat, and I found him there fast asleep. His hands still the key board! Who has given influence on your work and who is your favorite designer? I have favorite games, but I don't have a favorite designer. What about Age of Empires are you most proud of? The fact that the game’s high level concept was right for that time. It was an historical RTS with great multiplayer. That seemed to be what the market desired at the time and as gamers ourselves, we were somehow able to identify that.