Meet Your Indies: An Interview with Game Designer Hidden Path

Robots fight aliens in Hidden Path's acclaimed game, "Defense Grid."

Have you ever dreamed about working on a video game? We got some time this week to talk to a local independent game developer, Hidden Path, about what they've been working on lately, and they also shared some inside knowledge about what it's really like to work in the industry! Read on to get the details from founder and CEO Jeff Pobst.

Tell us a little about the background of Hidden Path. You have some quite experienced people working there -- what made you all want to get together and make indie games? Why Seattle?

Seattle has one of the largest game development communities in the nation. A lot of this started with the large companies that brought people here to make games. Microsoft, of course, has made games here since Flight Simulator. As they purchased game companies around the nation, many of those folks moved here to the Puget Sound.

The group of us that formed Hidden Path Entertainment came from making large retail games at Sierra (here), Ensemble (Dallas), FASA (Chicago), and Access Software (Salt Lake City), and we all ended up working in Redmond together at Microsoft on an exciting consulting team working with game developers around the world for the new Xbox platform. After helping developers make their games even better for Xbox, Xbox LIVE, and Xbox 360, we decided to get back into game development ourselves and form Hidden Path Entertainment.

We’ve worked on many projects at Hidden Path Entertainment, some of which have been released to the public, and many of which haven’t as of yet. We’re likely best known, though, for our original strategy & puzzle title called Defense Grid.

Defense Grid got universally positive reviews and has been lauded in several places as one of the best games of 2009. It's certainly addictive! How did you take a common mechanic like tower defense and make it into such a fresh, successful game?

I think the newest thing we brought to the table was the idea that the incoming enemies were there to "steal" something rather than just trying to get from point A to point B. This created a multi-peaked emotional curve. There was an emotional increase as the aliens got closer and closer to your cores (similar to when the aliens would get close to the exit in other TD experiences), but then there was a second emotional experience from the time they actually got a core (and the music swelled up more), to the time where they would or wouldn't be prevented from escaping with that core.

Now there’s a new mid-game experience of stress and response where the player knew a bad thing had happened, but it wasn't the end of the world, and there were steps they could still take to prevent it from hurting them further.

In addition, the "handoff" mechanic of the aliens being able to pick up dropped power cores (dropped when other aliens were killed) turned out be a great gameplay experience. It helped keep the map fresh preventing easy "front-loaded" or "back-loaded" solutions. This was because the main hot spot on the map where you need to be preventing enemies from escaping could move around to different parts of the level as the cores were stolen and then passed off to other aliens when an enemy died.

Novice players saw the cores as "lives" and worked hard to keep that last life in order to be able to continue through the game. We could balance this to be difficult to do appropriately for novice players, but not hugely difficult or impossible as many TD games seemed to be at the time. Meanwhile we could keep the more serious players engaged by awarding achievements or medals for retaining all of the cores at the end of a level which was much more difficult to accomplish. In this way the same level had different objectives for players of different skills.

How do you come up with these ideas and then how do you pick what to develop?

As a small developer we usually pitch ideas to publishers who have both the financing and the distribution to get games made. We often pitch them a game idea, and sometimes publishers like that game or sometimes they have another game in mind and mix our pitch ideas with theirs. From there they can finance the development of the product and when it is complete release it.

In the case of Defense Grid we had earned enough as a company over the years to finance the game ourselves and re-invest back into the company, so it was a significant step for us to take: do we think we could build a solid product here, do we think there is a market for this, and do we think this is worth spending our money for development on? We’re obviously very happy that the game has had such a great response.

While your games are on Live Arcade, the Xbox Indie Arcade has made it easier than ever for independent developers to get their games out in front of people. Could you share your thoughts on the Xbox Indie space? Do you see it as competition for Live Arcade?

I think comparing the two channels is to compare two different kinds and sizes of projects. The Indie games channel often has games that are developed by people on their own time in addition to their regular jobs, or with budgets in the $50,000 or so range. Often that supports a just few people for a few months. At the moment, to make games with larger budgets, teams, or development cycles than that would be pretty risky on the types of returns that folks are seeing on the Indie games channel.

These days, games developed for Xbox LIVE Arcade have budgets in the $750,000 to $1,500,000 range with a larger team developing all the content over the course of a year or more. Again, budgets larger than this for one platform are a bit risky, so there is always the tension between making the best possible game one can make for less than the market will be willing to pay for that game. Since people choose to buy the game only after it is made in these channels, there is inherent risk in making games, but the size of the risk is very different in each channel, as is the size of the possible success.

I think the best thing about the Indie games channel is that anyone can try their hand at making a game and learn what is involved and have the opportunity for people to buy it. That is pretty incredible. Also, it is an amazing way for people to showcase their skills and talents and build a portfolio to show potential employers what they are capable of when resources are scarce.

If you could make any game that you wanted, with no budget, time, or market constraints, what would you make and why?

That is a very difficult question to answer, because by taking away all the constraints, you also take away the goal of what we might be trying to accomplish. My business partner has a sign on his door that says “Creativity Loves Constraints” and I think there is a lot of truth to that. At the end of the day we are in an entertainment industry and software, content and gameplay are the tools that we use to entertain people.

The “market constraints” have a lot to do with the audience. What do they want? What will they enjoy? They buy what they want once they see it, and we know very well that they definitely do not buy what they don’t want.

When I was at a publisher, I used to tell developers who were pitching games to us that there weren’t any bad game ideas; there were just bad game budgets. In other words, the idea to make a game that only 50,000 people will like is a perfectly acceptable idea as long as you can make the game for less than what those 50,000 people will spend on it. Often in our industry there is a disconnect between game scope and the size of the audience willing to buy that game.

Because it is so hard to predict what people will be willing to purchase, it creates a real problem for our industry when budgets are large. Studios have a much easier time approving sequels to be made because it is much easier for them to calculate how many people will buy a sequel if it is of decent quality. It is very hard for them to finance a “new idea” and go on faith that the people will come once you build it.

What's actually next on your plate? Any sneak previews you can give us?

Most recently we’ve had the honor to help out the folks at Valve on the Counter-Strike franchise. With Valve we released the first major update to CS in 6 years over the summer; updating the technology, adding new statistics, achievements, fixing long-standing issues, and creating a better Counter-Strike experience. We also were able to release expansion content for Defense Grid in the form of 4 new map packs for Defense Grid.

Thanks for your time, Jeff. We'll definitely watch out for those!

You can read more about Hidden Path or Defense Grid at http://www.hiddenpath.com/, and Defense Grid is also available on your Xbox 360 via the Live Arcade marketplace.