Heroes of Neverwinter

Facebook games have acquired something of a reputation — partly deserved — for cheap game mechanics, addiction-promoting hooks and squeezing real-world cash out of players for competitive gain. It’s rare that one stumbles across a social title that excites the imagination with a decent back story or a living world that informs your characters actions.

Which is where Atari’s new game, Heroes of Neverwinter, comes in. By setting the game in the rich and involving world of Wizard of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons series, developers Liquid Entertainment hope to appeal to traditional gamers as well as the casual crowd. We spoke to Edward del Castillo, president and co-founder of Liquid, about the challenges and rewards of developing a new generation of social gaming.

 

Can you explain a little bit about the plot and setting of Heroes of Neverwinter for those who haven’t heard much about the game?

We are in lock step with what Wizards of the Coast is doing with Neverwinter in the current Forgotten Realms campaign.

It’s about 100 years after Neverwinter Nights, and lots of cataclysmic effects have occurred in the North to change the layout and the players in that region.  New characters have sprung up and the city of Neverwinter has been torn apart. Now monsters walk within the city. We’re using all the same characters, locations and factions that WotC has introduced this year for Neverwinter.

For fans who are keeping up with the fiction, we made extremely sure that we were in line with everything WotC was doing so that we could be additive. For newcomers, they will get a taste and feel for the new Neverwinter, but we were equally careful not overwhelm with lore that wouldn’t have a bearing on the game they were playing. The great part of this is that it’s a whole new storyline straight from Wizards of the Coast, so you don’t need to know the history of Neverwinter to dive in.

Given the vast background possibilities of the D&D world, what attracted you to the Forgotten Realms setting, and the city of Neverwinter?

Simply put, it’s where Wizards of the Coast wanted us to be. They have been doing a lot with the region of the map this year and they wanted what was happening in the game to coincide with that.

I’m completely on board. I think the D&D fans really appreciate the support that a game can bring to the story, and for people who don’t regularly play D&D it’s a great introduction to all the moving parts of the world.

How do you feel the recent rules changes in the game’s fourth edition affected your development? Do you feel you could have made the same game without the streamlining Wizards of the Coast have done?

Fourth edition is great. If anything it makes our lives easier. This version of D&D is closer to a video game than any previous version so bringing it to Facebook was much easier than previous rulesets.

I was a big fan of third edition and later 3.5, and Liquid could have built a similar game with those rules, but that’s somewhat irrelevant. Wizards of the Coast is completely behind fourth edition, and we think great things can happen with that ruleset.

What compromises did building a game for the Facebook platform force you to make, and what possibilities did it open up?

We had to compromise on monetization — we really wanted to make a game that anyone could play and we felt strongly that that meant making it free to play rather than charging for it up front. As a result we have to put in ways that the player can chip in to support the ongoing development of the title.

It’s different from how D&D players are used to working, so that’s been a challenge. The way I see it, this is the first time that D&D players as a whole have been given a voice in the ongoing development of a D&D game. Think of it like an indie title that asks you to donate if you liked the game.

So, we try to provide positive value-added options for the player to spend money in support of the title (like buying things) and we use that money to continue development. It’s a great cycle that feels like a conversation. Also, we listen very closely to our forums so your opinion matters. I think the number one challenge we’ve had is getting players to understand that and really use all the power they have to make the game they want to play.

The possibilities are endless; the sky is the limit on this game. My vision for this game has always been to provide an online version of the paper game for everyone to play, a new home for the disenfranchised D&D player.

I’m one of the vast hordes of people who grew up playing D&D, and as my adult life evolved I lost the ability to have 5 friends come over and play all day. I missed it. So I want to create a place where people can play D&D when they don’t have enough people or enough time for a full paper game session. Even players who are actively playing the paper game come across this problem, and I want to provide a place where they can go.

Why do you think that Facebook gaming is dominated by what might be called “cleaning up” games – farming, hotel building and so on, and so few “core” genre titles seem to succeed?

It’s a matter of money and perception. Zynga and the others were really smart in the early days. They looked at the Facebook crowd, saw a lot of moms and kids and said, “Hey let’s give them something else to do other than read people’s walls and poke each other.”

They built an entire industry around the types of games that come for free on your computer when you buy it. That was really great because it awakened a whole new segment of the population to gaming. Unfortunately, it also turned off many pre-existing gamers to Facebook.

Now, I think there is the misconception that Facebook is for casual people and not gamers but what’s happened is that many of those gamers have joined Facebook for the social reasons. I believe that they would be happy with a deeper game experience. Core games have struggled on Facebook because they are usually independent labours of love with little or no marketing behind them, often very rough around the edges, and the financial model is very different.

The more core your game is, the fewer casual people you will get, but you get instead is a more loyal fanbase that grows slowly over time rather than bubbling out very quickly. We are early in this space but Atari tells me that they are committed to creating a home for deeper gamers on Facebook.

I was impressed with how much of the mechanical feel of a ‘proper’ game you were able to capture. Was it important to the team that they bring the traditional depth of combat and levelling over to a social game?

Yep, we were never interested in “Farmvillizing” D&D. On the contrary we want to be the most authentic online version of D&D out there.

The game itself is pretty interesting in how it encourages you to take along friends on your adventure. Aside from the commercial imperative, was it important for you that people feel that they are playing cooperatively, in a way like the board game experience?

Absolutely. And it gets better. As the game grows I’d like to tackle coop multiplayer in the coming year and allow a completely authentic D&D experience.

If Atari and Wizards are willing, I will give you a one to one D&D online game that will have a DM component so that you can run an entire campaign from anywhere in the world and play with your friends no matter where they are.

Like most FB games, HoN uses micro-transactions to fund certain actions. How would you react to the criticism that this unfairly upsets the balance of player skill vs difficulty, creating a “pay to win” situation?

This is the toughest of questions. There are really three possible ways to go with pricing, and none are immune to criticism. One is the “Hobby Shop” model, where we sell you everything in pieces and charge you up front. We could have gone this way, but I felt that this would reduce the chance of people trying D&D for the first time.

The second is the “cosmetic method”, where we would sell you things that didn’t affect gameplay. I felt that this wouldn’t get enough people donating to justify the continued development of the game. The third, the “pay to win” method as you call it, was the path I chose because right now the game is more cooperative than competitive so “fairness” is less of an issue than it is in a competitive game.

As the game develops, you should expect to see all three methods emerge. We’ll let you buy decorations for your house and other cosmetic enhancements, we’ll continue to use microtransactions but hopefully in a way that players think is additive and we’ll sell put new premium content up for sale just like a hobby store. Then, depending on which one does better we’ll shift in that direction.

Are you planning more content updates to add new characters, scenarios and items to the game in future? What changes can fans look forward to?

We want to keep specifics close to the vest for now, but absolutely. We want to bring the whole world of D&D into this game eventually.

Given the success of HoN in generating buzz even while in beta, are there plans to expand with further games in the series?

There are plans to expand, but I think the best part of working on a game like this, for us and the player, is that our plans for expansion all revolve around things we can do in game. Like World of Warcraft and other MMOs, we are committed to Heroes as a long term proposition. Anything we could do in a sequel, we can just put right into this game.

 

You can get a look at what Liquid Entertainment have achieved with Heroes of Neverwinter by heading to this page and signing in with your Facebook account. We’re pretty impressed with the progress that the team has made so far, and how well they can use the social medium to tell a compelling story. Hopefully the game’s success will lead to a new era in social gaming based on deep and involving settings and competent gameplay, as opposed to the rat-in-a-maze manipulation of games such as Farmville or Mafia Wars.