Stormfront Studios Interview
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GB: What sort of relationship did you have with SSI in the early 90's, and were you ever given the opportunity to work on any of the other "Gold Box" titles? Don: As I mentioned, working with Chuck Kroegel, Dan Cermak and the SSI crew was a great experience. Being handed the car keys to the Gold Box series (after Secret of the Silver Blades came out) while they worked on Dark Sun was a great honor, and when Gateway to the Savage Frontier went to #1 on the sales charts we felt good about having earned the role we were given.
GB: Stronghold was much different than the other D&D titles you've worked on, but it was very well received by the public and has been hailed as the first real-time strategy game ever released. How did the premise behind Stronghold come about, and why do you think we haven't seen more kingdom simulators within the Dungeons & Dragons universe?
Don: We came out a year after Westwood's Dune II first blazed the trail on RTS, and with Stronghold we were the first to do a 3D display. although in our case the 3D was an optical illusion created in 2D with display planes and careful use of camera angles!
Stormfront was much smaller then, so I was still involved as co-designer on the project. I had always been interested in the category, and had programmed the kingdom sim (Utopia) for the Intellivision in 1981-82 during the original video game wars between Mattel and Atari. The success of Sim City gave us a recent hit to point to when we pitched the game to SSI, and they went for it.
Why haven't there been more such sims in the D&D world? I really don't know, since richly developed worlds like the Forgotten Realms are so well suited to the genre.
GB: After having developed many D&D titles that were very much focused on the role-playing elements, why did you choose to move to a more action-oriented route for Demon Stone? Is this something Atari wanted you to pursue, or were you given the freedom to develop the game however you'd like?
Don: Stormfront is focused on developing immersive, high-energy console games that bring you into an exciting world where you play a pivotal role in a compelling story.
That was exactly what Atari wanted from the game. We've been playing the original Dungeons and Dragons since 1975, and D&D was always about a combination of strategy, high energy and story. it's just that the big battle scenes were running in your imagination, not on the living room TV!
We believe that as technology changes over the next few years games will be able to drive more of the same strong emotions that we're accustomed to feeling when we watch thrilling movies. Many of the best ideas for how to do this can be implemented on current hardware, and in both The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Demon Stone we've worked to (raise the bar) on creating this kind of experience.
John Hight and the team at Atari were very supportive of this vision, so we always felt like we were on the same page.
GB: What is next for Stormfront Studios? Do you have any plans to work on future Dungeons & Dragons games or even a non-D&D role-playing game?
Don: I wouldn't be surprised if we did D&D again in the future, but we have no concrete plans for it right now. Our next game announcement is an exciting one, but the publisher has it tightly under wraps so the news is still a few months away.
Thanks very much for inviting me to talk with you about D&D!
Thank you, Don! We appreciate the time you took answering our questions.
