Back to the past. Part 1. Interview with Stefan Piasecki, former screenwriter (1993-1995) at Blue Byte (1986-2001)
This material is the first attempt at a hypothetical cycle, where the idea of conducting short interviews in a question/answer format was adopted as a concept. Taking from whom? Various once less or more famous people involved in the gaming industry of past years. Getting close to the supposed John Romero or Tim Kane has proven to be difficult at the moment, so for now we bring to your attention a publication about Blue Byte.
Brief information about the main characters:
Stefan Piasecki – screenwriter, author, producer, professor and academic researcher. During his time at Blue Byte from 1993 to 1995, he was responsible for developing the backstory and story content for most of the Battle Isle games. To this day he publishes thematic books, and is sometimes indirectly present on one small fan forum.
Thomas Hertzler – From 1996 to 2001, he served as CEO of Blue Byte. In January 2001, the company, founded in 1988, was purchased by Ubisoft.
Bernhard Ewers – Around the same period, he was responsible for the basics of design and programming.
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Question. Stefan, I also initially tried to establish contact with Bernhard and Thomas, but attempts over a couple of weeks were unsuccessful. I believe that our potential readers would also be interested in hearing their opinions on a number of issues… Could you help me with this?
Answer. Don't know. I would advise you to try again and again. Sometimes the answer comes after a long time. I haven't talked to Thomas in quite some time, and Bernhard probably in years, but I guess they're fine. Today everyone is very busy with pressing matters, as you may have noticed in my example.
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Question. Let's start with the obvious – could you tell us a little about yourself? Anything that you consider necessary to mention in the interview.
Answer. I was introduced to computer gaming in 1982 through a fairly obscure console – Arcadia 2001. I still own it. Moreover, for it I have probably the most extensive library in the world. I even meet and periodically interview former employees and companies involved in the development.
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Question. If I understand correctly, then you were mainly part of the Blue Byte team in the early years of the company before the release of “Battle Isle 3: Shadow of the Emperor” (1995), developing the entire backstory of the series as such. Some time ago, I analyzed the plot of the classic parts, additional documents, in order to create a brief summary of the main events. On the one hand, the resulting result is reminiscent of a fairly typical science fiction of the late eighties and early nineties, but on the other hand, there is something that distinguishes the series from many other works of a similar kind, including the strategic genre as such – a certain touch of mysticism and uncertainty. This feeling seems to permeate the entire series. From the earliest text, which served as a rather tangential addition to the boxed edition, to the swampy, foggy, mist-like maps of Battle Isle 2 (1994), helped in no small part by the soundtrack. What do you think about it?
Answer. I was with Blue Byte from 1993 to 1995 and worked on almost all parts and expansions, from the first to the third. I did testing, worked on backstories, in-game text, etc. I was also in charge of press relations for not only “Battle Isle” but also the “The Settlers” series (1994).
The stories specifically “Battle Isle” (1991) and “Battle Isle Data Disk I” (1992) were written by someone else before me. At its core, it was a simple and incoherent story. It was difficult to follow her. So I revised the whole concept and gave it more depth. Two novels by me were also published in German. They were updated and expanded a few years ago and are now a four-part series called Colony Wars Tranthal.
The name was chosen because I later created a new series of games for Digital X-citement and Eidos called “Colony Wars”, although the Eidos version was eventually released under the “Akte Europa” (1997) brand (“Europe files” ). The CW was a turn-based game. AE is a real-time game, a kind of “Battle Isle” and “Settlers” translated into a real-time context. In 2000, I created “Operation C-Lone”, a very complex but wonderful strategy game that has everything that could be included in the conditional “Battle Isle 4” (approx. lane: During development, the concept was heavily revised and “Battle Isle: THe Andosia War” (2000) was revealed to the world if it followed the original formula. But the game remained little known because the publisher at the time did not understand how to sell it. But, if someone wants to play the ideological successor to BI3, I would recommend them “Operation C-Lone” for the most correct presentation.
Question. Blue Byte is best known to the public for two series – “Battle Isle” and “The Settles”. Maybe more so for the second one. Some of our readers are interested in the early history of the company. Although everything seems to be quite clear with games, the company has made its main bet on the strategy genre; maybe you could shed some light on something little known? Something about unreleased games, facts about something; maybe something you would like to make available to the general public? Old concept art, rare demos, something else?
Answer. Personally, I'll have to dig through my old boxes, the best thing to do would be to ask Thomas and Bernhard about this. At first the company was called “Assage Entertainment”, but apparently many English people read the name as “ass age”, which was not so cool. So it was changed to Blue Byte in honor of the blue hour after work (approx. lane: “blue hour” is one of the names of twilight) and, of course, the byte, which also represented the logo. The first product released was a graphics program that I have in my box. If necessary, I can scan the cover and look at the name. This was followed by Tom and the Ghost (1989), Great Courts (1989), Great Courts 2 (1991). There was an unreleased version of “Battle Isle” for the Atari ST. There are old drawings, maybe some code, but the porting hasn't been completed.
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Question. “Titan-Net”. Computer, mainframe, artificial intelligence. The story, which began as a simple techno trick, eventually turned into something more. A stranger in a hostile world is forced to fight a machine. But the further the story develops, the clearer it becomes that in this strange world he may be the only one who truly understands it, at some point warning about how his forced initiative will end. From my point of view, the early 1990s were a time of quite “straightforward” storylines, but the plot of the Battle Isle series is not so – there are fundamentally no obvious “good” or “bad” sides. What do you think about it?
Also, one of our readers asked – as far as I remember, it is not described anywhere exactly what “Titan-Net” actually looks like. In one of the accompanying texts about the local moon, you can remember a running robot. Judging by some other fragments, this AI looks like a large mainframe. In the second game you can also see a certain android and an underground base. Maybe it was originally intended that he would have many faces? How would you characterize its “technical” characteristics?
Answer. It was a big mainframe. My books “BI” and “Today CWT” tell the full story. Mainframe out of control. My stories in the case of “BI” (I'm not talking about the earlier ones) were statements regarding a new world. The post-Cold War world was afraid of artificial intelligence, bionautic cyborgs, new clashes, and robots getting out of control. This aspect was deeper in the sense that conventional game stories simply pitted man against machine. I wanted to be more realistic, so I had to touch on different ethnic groups and a lot of cross-cultural and even religious themes. My stories in “BI” were intense, but “CWT” is even more complex. By the way, I'm thinking about publishing a version in Russian. If you know any good publishers, please let me know. At least the first two CWT books were set in a pre-AI era. I bet a car today could do it much better.
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Question. Was its scope somehow limited geographically?
Answer: The answer was given earlier (approx. lane: apparently it is recommended to read books).
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Question. What do you think about pure science fiction, that is, only technology, progress, scientific achievements, and science fiction with fantasy elements – magicians, sorcerers, mysticism in addition to the above. Is science fiction with fantasy elements a reluctance to stay in the genre, is it easier to create, or does it just sell well? Or maybe pure science fiction (Stanislaw Lem and others like him) has simply become boring and its age has passed?
In 1996, Blue Byte released a game called “Albion” (1996), where all the mentioned components coexisted to one degree or another. Today this is a rather rare combination. In other words, technocracy and cyberpunk have faded into the background.
Answer. I like Lem and alternate history. To be honest, I've moved away from science fiction and fantasy. And I don't like biological weapons or spaceships. I'm a child of the 1970s and 1980s – give me real, ugly spaceships that can explode. By the way, I have a large collection of movie props from that era.
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Question. Later games in the series, Incubation: Time Is Running Out (1997) and Battle Isle: The Andosia War (2000), moved in a completely different direction from the first three games. Incubation currently has a slight cult status for some players, but others, especially when it comes to “Andosia War”, feel that the move towards 3D, as well as big changes to the core mechanics, has ruined the once great strategy game. What do you think about it? And how would you assess the massive transition of the late nineties to 3D in general?
Answer. If asked, I would create a working system and adapt it to 3D. I think many players would welcome this, but there were also those who complained about the 3D scenes even during “Battle Isle 2”. You can never please everyone.
Question. “ROOM”. Is this abbreviation somehow deciphered or is it just a general designation for former leaders?
Answer. As far as I remember, the term was the name of a mainframe computer with some mythological connotations, but ultimately it never played much of a role.
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Question. There is an opinion that the time of bold experiments and enthusiastic developers is a thing of the past. Now the world is ruled by large corporations, and either the “game as a service” model or its opposite in the form of small indie companies has long been in operation. There is no longer room for “average” players. What do you think about it?
Answer. As long as independent publishers understand their niche and are able to support their fans, I believe they will stay afloat. Indeed, the “middle” is a dangerous place. If you get too huge, you'll need outside investment to take the next step. And this inevitably means that you become vulnerable.
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Question. Let's talk a little about the technical aspects of the series. By today's standards, the barrier to entry/mastery of the original trilogy can be called quite high, and the difficulty is far from low. Do you think this is a genre specific thing of the time, a purposeful idea, or something else?
Answer. I think this was provoked by both the press and the developers. The press always wanted more features, the developers wanted to prove that it was possible. At the same time, testing opportunities were limited because all the games were often late and there was not enough money. So the games were often not as balanced as they should have been. And here I mean the situation as a whole. “Battle Isle”, in turn, was an example of a well-balanced game.
Note. “Battle Isle 2”. For 1993, it has a fairly good balance and an abundance of different types of units, which is often not found in many modern strategies – air, ground, water, underwater, types of troops, not counting auxiliary equipment, the need for repairs and refueling. Not inferior to this component is the variety of landscapes with the possibility of shortening the path to one or another point along the ice in winter.
At the same time, the enemy’s behavior strategy, apparently, is always approximately the same, and if you arm yourself with a map editor, you will notice that there are few basic patterns of behavior, and some, apparently, have not been figured out by the fan community over the past years.
It was decided to try our luck and address this question to Stefan, although here, of course, it would be better to talk with one of the programmers.
Question. The enemy primarily relies on the production of units capable of capturing buildings. As a rule, having an initial quantitative advantage in heavy units, as it is depleted, the AI adheres to the strategy of producing said troops. Was this how it was originally intended or is it due to some other specificity? Maybe you can tell us something about other interesting technical aspects that are not necessarily specific to the second game?
Answer. No matter how hard I try, I can't remember.
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Question. “Battle Isle 3: Shadow of the Emperor” (1995). According to some reports, 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 vein? How do you generally evaluate the use of video in such cases? Does this add value to the storytelling or is it more of an “alien element” to the “hardcore” strategy genre?
Answer. It was complicated. For this Blue Byte bought an SGI type machine (approx. lane: if the context is taken correctly, then the average cost of one similar machine produced by Silicon Graphics at that time was estimated at approximately $250,000), the software was also new. There were few examples. And there was only compuserve/usenet, which was slow. Many of the tricks had to be figured out by the artists themselves, namely Torsten Knop. But Thomas Hertzler was also a 3D enthusiast.
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Question. Your favorite unit type and why.
Answer. I would say “The G7 Main Battle Tank I”. Size and length matter 8-))).
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Question. In your post on one of the forums dedicated to Battle Isle modding, you mentioned that you later participated in other games, namely Colony Wars 2492 (1996), Akte Europa (1997) and Operation C-Lone ( 1999). I also found a mention of “Tiny Tiger” (1999) on MobyGames. Perhaps you can tell something interesting about one of them? In particular, there is not much information about the third on the Internet.
Answer. TT was actually a series: “Tiny Trails”, “Tommy Tiger” and “Tommy Tiger 2”. I still love them. The “Chip's Challenge” concept has evolved into lush comic 3D.
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Question. During the development of Colony Wars 2492, were you primarily involved in writing and producing, or did you also do other work, such as the fictional novel that came with the game, or the game's graphics?
Answer. I was a producer. I ordered the script and formed the main outlines of the plot. I also had to seriously work on the graphics to make them look better.
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Question. Are Colony Wars 2492 and Akte Europa related to each other in terms of world, lore and story?
Answer. Yes, AE should have been CW2. But while AE was in development, there was another game with the same name, and Eidos were too shy to approach Sony and ask them to change the name.
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Question. Why, despite the fact that “Akte Europa” was published by Eidos, the game was not released in English?
Answer. I have no idea. Even the film's cut scenes were filmed in English. One rumor I heard was that they were developing another strategy game that was published at the same time. The reviews for it were very bad, but apparently it cost them a lot more than our work. So maybe they were trying to protect their investment this way. But I really don't know.
Reviews for AE were good and the game had a lot of new and cool features such as the fuel system, topography, you could destroy just about everything, so the terrain was completely interactive. You can even set wood on fire to stop the enemy. There are hundreds of tiny infantry available to storm the fortress. In this regard, the concept is very similar to “Settles”. There is a resource system, transportation on ships and even trains…
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Question. Have you tried to work on any other games since Tiny Tiger and Tiny Trails (1999)?
Answer. Yes, a little more. I switched sides in 2004 and am now a games scientist.
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Question. Are you familiar with the various fan-made works over the years? “ASC: Advanced Strategic Command“, “Battle Worlds: Kronos“, “Battle Isle 2020“? In particular, there have been rumors that the first two also involved some of the original developers. What do you think of them and similar works in general? Do they add real value or perhaps rather ruin the status of the original games, which have now become classic?
Answer. I talked to some. Great guys. Great games and a great attempt to recreate the original spirit. But I didn't play them much.
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Question. “Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty” (1992), “WarCraft: Orcs & Humans” (1994) and several other games. At one time, they together formed the RTS genre, which today seems more dead than alive, which cannot be said about TBS. Its elements can be seen here and there in different combinations, the same goes for hexagons. What is your opinion on this matter? What do you think went wrong?
Answer. Can not say. Perhaps more such games will appear in the future.
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Question. Any final words you would like to say to our readers?
Answer. Not now. Oh, read CWT! Haha.
