This is the first in a series of interviews presented by Roman Saiapin, who embarked on a series of video game designer interviews originally posted on Old-Games.ru last year. His focus is on famous PC games which have made a big impact in the international fan community. We’ll have more of these coming up!
This material is the first attempt at writing in a hypothetical cycle, where the idea of taking short interviews in a question / answer format was adopted as a concept. Taking interviews from whom? From various once more-or-less famous people involved in the gaming industry of past years. Getting close to John Romero or Tim Cain has proven for the time being, so for now we offer you an interview about German developer Blue Byte Software.
The Main Characters
Stefan Piasecki is a screenwriter, writer, producer, professor and academic researcher. During his time at Blue Byte from 1993 to 1995, he was responsible for developing the backstory and plot component of most of the Battle Isle games. To this day, he publishes themed books, and is sometimes indirectly present on a small fan forum.
Thomas Hertzler – From 1996 to 2001, he served as CEO of Blue Byte. In January 2001, the company was acquired by Ubisoft.
Bernhard Ewers – Contemporaneous to Stefan, Bernhard was responsible for the basics of design and programming for the Battle Isle games.
Q. Starting from the basically obvious one – can you tell us a bit about yourself? Might be anything that you think is important to mention in this interview.
A. I started video gaming in 1982 with a rather obscure game console, the Arcadia 2001. I still own it today. Not only this, I own the probably most complete and best researched collection of Arcadia games on the globe. I am even meeting and interviewing people of the former companies. Next to working in the industry I studied social sciences. In 2004 I left the industry, worked on my first PhD, then became a professor in 2010, finishing my Habilitation in 2015. I am researching games and games culture. I am also writing novels – based on accurate research – and of course I publish academic papers.
Q. If I understand correctly, you have been mostly involved in early days of Blue Byte activities that took place before release of the Battle Isle 3 (1995), developing the whole background story as it is. Some time ago, I analyzed the plot of the classic parts of the series, additional documents, in order to understand it and create a brief summary. From one side everything looks like a a sort of “regular” sci-fi fiction for those days of late 80’s and early 90’s, but there is something, that distinguishes the series from many other works in this vein, including “Strategy” like an genre in overall – a touch of mysticism and uncertainty. This feeling seems to permeate the entire series. Starting from early background text and up to swampy, haze-like maps in Battle Isle 2, which is helped not least by the soundtrack. What do you think about it?
A. I was with Blue Byte from 1993 until 1995 and worked on Battle Isle Moon of Chromos, Battle Isle 2, Battle Isle 2 Data Disk and Battle Isle 3. I did testing and worked on the background stories and in-game texts etc. I also worked on The Settlers, Yo Joe! (love it) and language conversions of History Line. I also did a lot of press work, not only for Battle Isle but also The Settlers.
The stories of Battle Isle and its first data disk were written by somebody else – before me. This was a simple story and not coherent. It was hard to follow. So I reestablished it and gave it a deeper touch. In Germany two novels were even published, written by me. A few years back I expanded and reworked them- they now form a four part series called Colony Wars Tranthal.
Colony Wars Tranthal because later for Digital X-citement and Eidos I worked on a new series of games called Colony Wars 2492 (Part 1), albeit the Eidos version of Colony Wars 2 was eventually released as Akte Europa (Europe files). Colony Wars was a vastly improved and modernized version of a Czech game called Signus. Colony Wars was a turn-based game; Akte Europa (Colony Wars 2) was a real-time game – think of Battle Isle and Settlers put onto a RTS level. In 2000 I produced Operation C-Lone, a very complex but great to play turn-based strategy game with stunning effects and everything that might have gone into a Battle Isle 4 if that had followed the original formula. But the game is little known because the then-publisher did not understand how to market it. But if one wants to play a successor to Battle Isle 3 I would suggest Operation C-Lone to get a proper feeling of how I imagine Battle Isle 4.
Q. Blue Byte is mostly known to the public by two series – Battle Isle and The Settlers – these days mostly the second one. Some of our readers are interested in the early history of the company. While things regarding games seem to be quite clear, the company has mostly made a bet on the strategy genre. Can you, perhaps, uncover something not well known in this case? Perhaps something about unreleased titles, or something that you want to make available for the public? Old concept documents, rare demo versions, anything else?
A. I personally would have to dig through my old boxes, Thomas and Bernhard would be the better ones to ask. First the company was named Assage Entertainment, but obviously many English speakers read it as “ass age” which was not so cool. So it was renamed to Blue Byte, named after the blue hour after work and also of course an iconized computer “byte”, which also represented the logo. The first product to be released was a graphics program which I have in a box: Create-a-Shape. A tool that was developed inhouse for the own developers but then commercialized (why not?). Then came Tom and the Ghost, Great Courts and then Great Courts 2. There was unreleased was a version of Battle Isle for the Atari ST. Art exists, maybe some code, but it was never completed.
Q. Titan-Net. Computer, mainframe, AI. Story, that started as a basic techno gimmick, in the process it transformed into something more. A stranger, in a world hostile to him, is forced to fight with the machine. But the further the story develops, the more it becomes clear that in this strange world, this may be the only thing who truly understands him, at some point, warning him about how his forced initiative will end. From my point of view, the early 90’s was a time of quite “straightforward” storylines, but Battle Isle series plot doesn’t look like such one – there is basically no clear “good” or “bad” sides here. What do you think about it? Also, one of our readers asked – as far as I remember, it’s not exactly described anywhere what “Titan-Net” actually looks like. In the background text about the local moon, you can see a running robot. Based on some other fragments it sounds like a large mainframe. In a second game you can also notice some sort of android and underground base. Maybe it was originally intended to have many faces? How would you describe its “technical” specifications?
A. It was a large mainframe. My Battle Isle and today Colony Wars Tranthal books tell the complete story. A mainframe that went out of control. My stories of BI (I am not talking about the earlier ones) was a statement regarding the new world. The post-cold-war world was frightened of AI, cyborg-bionautics, new confrontations, robots getting out of control. It was deeper in a sense that usual game stories put man against machine. I wanted to be more realistic so there are different ethnics and many many intercultural and even religious topics to be addressed. My Battle Isle stories were dense, but Colony Wars Tranthal is even more complex. I am considering getting a Russian version published, by the way. If you know a good books publisher let me know. At least the first two Colony Wars Tranthal books were translated in the pre-AI era. I bet today it could be much better done by a machine.
Q. Do any other similar AI’s exist in the Battle Isle universe, if not count Skynet-Titan?
A. You mean computer enemies? I am not sure if I remember correctly. I think no. But back at that time we thought very pacifistic. So to avoid portraying game parties and characters as warmongers I guess we might have put the blame on more AIs, maybe subversions of Skynet-Titan. By the way, we later renamed Skynet-Titan into Titan-Net. I think from BI2 on. Because Skynet-Titan was used in Terminator 2 (1991). I think the first story editors weren’t too critical about using or borrowing existing names. Or it was a coincidence.
Q. What you think about pure science fiction, i.e. only technology, progress, scientific achievements and a science fiction with fantasy elements – magicians, sorcerers, mysticism on the top of the mentioned. Is science fiction with fantasy elements a reluctance to be in the genre, is it easier to make, or does it just sell well? Or maybe pure science fiction (like Stanislaw Lem and kind) is just boring and its age has passed?
In 1996 Blue Byte released a game called Albion, where all the mentioned components coexisted to some extent. Today it’s rather rare. In other words – technocracy and cyberpunk faded into the background.
A. I like Stanislaw Lem and favor alternative history – I have moved away from Scifi and Fantasy, really. And I don’t like biomechanical weapons or space ships. Please no space ships that look like giant bugs or wasps. I am a child of the 70s and 80s. Give me real mean looking spaceships that can explode massively. I have a large collection of movie props of this era btw.
Q. Later titles in the Battle Isle series, Incubation (1997) and The Andosia War (2000), took a rather different direction in contrast to the first three games. Incubation has a cult status for some players, but others, especially with The Andosia War, believe that turning to 3D as well as large changes in basic mechanics ruined once the grand strategy series. What do you think about it? And how would you assess the massive transition in the late nineties to 3D as a whole?
A. I would have fleshed out the basic game system and adapted into it into 3D if I was asked. I guess many players would have welcomed this. But some even complained about the 3D sequences in Battle Isle 2. You can never please everyone. In the 90s there were 3D games and video sequences made for the sake of it. Often it ruined a game concept that would have worked very well in 2D. Technology should follow the game concept and bring it to life, not vice versa.
Q. There once was a timeline on the original Blue Byte site which ended up at 345 N.A., Battle Isle: The Andosia War times, it seems. Can it still be counted as an actual one, also what happened with it?
A. No idea.
Q. ROOM – has this acronym being expanded in some way, or is it simply a designation for sometime former leaders?
A. As far as I remember this was the name of the mainframe with some mythological background, but this never really played a role. In my first Battle Isle book there is still an underground labyrinth with this ROOM.
Q. There is an opinion that the time of daring experiments and enthusiastic developers is a thing of the distant past. Now the world is ruled by large corporations, long-running “games as service” models, or their opposite, in the form of indies – there is no longer room for “mid-sized” companies. What do you think about this?
A. As long as independent publishers know their niche and can maintain their followership I think they can make it. Indeed the “middle” is a dangerous place. If you grow too huge you need external investments to make the next step. Which means you become vulnerable. Or dependent.
Q. Let’s talk a little about the technical aspects of the Battle Isle series. By today’s standards, the barrier to entry/mastery of the original trilogy can be called quite high, and the complexity is far from low. Do you think this is a genre specificity of that time, a purposeful idea, or something else?
A. I think this was driven by the press and the developers. The press always wanted more features, the developers wanted to proof they can. And testing capabilities were limited because all games were often late and money was short. So games were often not as balanced as they should have been. This I mean in general. Blue Byte was good at delivering balanced games.
Q. Battle Isle 2. For its release year, 1993, it has a pretty good balance and an abundance of different types of units, which is often not found in many modern strategies – air, ground, water, underwater, not counting auxiliary vehicles, the need for repairs and refueling. The variety of landscapes is not inferior to it, with the possibility of shortening the path to one point or another on ice in winter. At the same time, the enemy’s behavior strategy seems to be making a bet on production of units that could capture buildings. As a rule, having an initial quantitative advantage in heavy units, as it is exhausted, the AI adheres to the strategy of producing the mentioned units. Was this originally intended, or is it due to some other specificity? Maybe you can tell us something about other interesting technical aspects, not necessarily regarding the second game specifically.
A. I cannot remember really.
Q. Battle Isle 3: Shadow of the Emperor (1995). According to some reports, it was the first game with full support for video inserts, through which the plot and weather messages are presented. Was it difficult to be pioneers in this regard? How do you rate video in such cases in general? Does it add value to the narrative, or is it mostly a somewhat “alien element” for the “gritty” strategy genre?
A. It was difficult. Blue Byte bought an SGI machine for this and the software was also new. There were few examples that could be used as references. And there was only Compuserve or Usenet to use for browsing through mailboxes or BBSs, which was slow. Many tricks had to be found out by the artists themselves, namely Torsten Knop. But Thomas Hertzler was a 3D enthusiast as well. In general I think what was done for Battle Isle 3 (or also Akte Europa – which had video sequences combining real large scale studio stets and CGI) followed the hype Wing Commander 3 created. Everybody was asking for it. But the technology wasn´t matched with proper integration into game play and storytelling techniques. Our ideas were ahead of its time. But today these games show the peak of what was possible 30 years ago.
Q. Your favorite unit type and why.
A. In Battle Isle – the G7 Main Battle Tank I would say (if I recall the name correctly). Size and length matters 8-)))
Q. In your message on the one forum, dedicated to Battle Isle modding, you have mentioned that in later times you have been involved in working on other titles, which are Colony Wars 2492, Akte Europa and Operation C-Lone. I’ve also noticed Tiny Tiger (1999) on MobyGames. Perhaps you can tell something interesting about these four? About the third one, apparently, there is really not much information on the Internet, it seems.
A. The strategy games please see above. TT was actually a series: Tiny Trails, Tommy Tiger and Tommy Tiger 2. I love them still today: The concept of Chip’s Challenge turned into lush, comic 3D. I had the idea because next to the large-scale (and expensive) RTS-games we wanted something that we could develop quicker and less expensive, which gave us sooner playable results that we could have fun with. I was (and still am) a huge fan of the Atari Lynx. Take the concept of Chip’s Challenge, the visuals of the contemporary Nintendo games in the late 90s and you had the Tiger series.
Q. During the development of Colony Wars 2492, were you primarily involved in writing and producing, or did you also make other work, be it, for example, the fictional novel that came with the game or the game graphics?
A. I was the producer. I did the project management, wrote the story and provides outlines. I also changed many graphics to make them better looking.
Q. Are Colony Wars 2492 and Akte Europa related to each other in terms of world, lore, history?
A. Yes, Akte Europa should have been Colony Wars 2. But there was another game out with that name when Akte Europa was in the works and Eidos was too shy to go to Sony and tell them to change their name.
Q. Why, even though Akte Europa published by Eidos, the game was not released in English?
A. I have no idea. Even the cut scenes – the movie – was filmed in English. Our efforts were unparalleled. As I said, large studio sets, great effects. Shooting in English and professionally dubbed with well known German actor’s voices.
Well, one rumour I heard was that they had another strategy game under developed which was published at the same time. Its reviews were very bad, but obviously it cost them much more than ours. So maybe they tried to protect their investment. But I really don’t know. We were a German team and had partly Eastern European developers and artists. I have a feeling that this played a role. We were maybe the ugly cousins from the continent.
The Akte Europa reviews were good and the game had many novel and remarkable features like a fuel system, topography, you could destroy everything so the landscape was fully interactive. You could even set the wood on fire to stop the enemy. It had hundreds of tiny infantry men to storm a fortress. Much like The Settlers. It has a resource system, transportation with ships and even trains…
Q. Have you tried to take part in the development of any games after the release of Tiny Tiger and Tiny Trails (1999)?
A. Yes, some more. In 2004 I switched sides and I am now a scientist, partly researching games, teaching as a professor of Political Sciences and Sociology.
Q. Are you familiar with different works produced by fans during the years? ASC: Advanced Strategic Command, Battle Worlds: Kronos, Battle Isle 2020? In particular, there were rumors that some of the original developers also participated in the first two. What do you think about them and such works overall? Do they add actual value, or, perhaps, they rather ruin the status of the original titles that became classic by now?
A. I have talked to some of them years ago. Great guys. Lovely game and fine attempt to recreate the original spirit. But I haven’t played them really.
Q. Warcraft (1994), Dune (1992), and several other titles. Back in the day together they formed a RTS genre that today, it seems, rather dead then alive, which cannot be said about TBS. You can see its elements here and there in different combinations, same goes for hexes as well. What is your opinion on this case / what probably went wrong?
A. I cannot say. Maybe there will be another run of such games.
Q. Anything you want to add at the end for our readers?
A. Not at this moment. Oh, read my Colony Wars Tranthal books!
