HOMM•V for OSX

–presents–

Freeverse Interview #1

January 25th, 2006

HOMM•V for OSX is proud to present the first published interview with Freeverse Software since their announcement of the HOMM•V Mac port. Although Freeverse itself can’t be sure about certain aspects of the port until the final source code arrives from Nival, they were more than happy to tell us how the port came about, who takes out the trash at Freeverse, and what true HOMM love really is. Here now, Bruce Morrison and Colin Smith from Freeverse.

Describe your respective roles at Freeverse, how long you have been with the company, and one of your proudest moments with Freeverse (other than getting HOMM•V).

Bruce Morrison: My name is Bruce Morrison and I am in charge of Tech Support at Freeverse, I also do game design (WingNuts 2). I have been with Freeverse for about a year and a half now. My proudest moment was probably being hired! Or just going to Macworld and meeting the “legends” of Mac gaming.

Colin Smith: I’m Colin Lynch Smith, Freeverse’s Vice President and I do business development, marketing, and sometimes I take out the trash when the can over-flows. I’ve been with Freeverse for nearly a decade. Proudest moment? SimStapler maybe, since it stars my index finger.

The history of HOMM on the Mac reads like a soap opera. How did each of you contribute to making the port a reality? What’s the story?! What were some of the roadblocks you had to overcome? What was it like to deal with Ubisoft / Nival / Fabrice Cambounet?

BM: I encountered Heroes of Might and Magic 3 late in the game, probably in 2001. I was immediately enthralled with it. It took me a few months to find a legal copy of it (as it was out of print). Before working wtih Freeverse I was (and still am) a videogame journalist for a small news magazine. My email inbox is always full of press releases, so when I got a “for immediate release Heroes of Might and Magic 5″ from Ubisoft I was ecstatic. I came into work the next day saying “Ubisoft is doing Heroes of Might and Magic 5, we should do the port!” And I was answered with “Find out who we need to talk to.” This went on for a few months. Then I went to E3 and visited with the guys at Nival about H5. I pushed for info about the Mac version and basically got the answer that they were not doing one, but there’s no reason someone else couldn’t. So after I got back I started sending emails, first to Nival who told me it was all up to Ubisoft. I started calling Ubisoft, but figuring out who to talk to was tricky and a few times a recptionist would send me to the wrong voicemail. I never got to speak to anyone directly and had pushed the idea out of my mind with newer projects to work on, when on a Friday evening they called us back. My job was done at this point as Colin Smith took over negotiating for the game.

CS: Once Bruce got us a contact, then we started working out a deal that would make sense for everyone.

Freeverse has ported other tactical/strategy titles like Legion, Northland and Spartan, and the genre in general continues to be one of the most vibrant in a contracting PC-gaming market. How well does this market segment perform on the Mac platform, and did past performance influence your decision to seek the HOMM•V port?

BM: This will actually be our first straight port. We were just the North American distributor for those other games. But this will be the first time we do everything ourselves. It wasn’t our previous relationship with strategy games that made us want to bring HOMMV to the mac as much as it was the game itself. We just love the game. Also, it helps that strategy games are one of the only genres that don’t work very well on a console.

CS: I do particularly like strategy games, I like a game that takes some smarts, as opposed to just quick reflexes and, you know, clickyclickyclicky. And the Heroes series was just beloved by everyone in our office, so it seemed like a great title to go after. We’re a creative company, and generally prefer to make our own games rather than just port someone else’s work… but we all wanted to play HOMMV so badly!

Freeverse has a long and proven track-record of supporting the Mac gaming scene, and has a number of innovative products. Many gamers tend to identify Freeverse with smaller shareware games, and were surprised that you got the HOMM•V port. Will HOMM be your most ambitious release to date? Do you hope to bring other A-list titles to OSX in the future?

BM: I wouldn’t say Heroes 5 is our most ambitions project, as a lot of the hard part is already done (the game exists, we just have to make it run on Macs). I think our most ambitious now is WingNuts 2, as it’s being developed completely in house, so everything from engine, to artwork, to voice acting is being done by us. Not to say Heroes 5 isn’t a big deal, but in some ways its easier. I’d like to bring some other A-List titles, but they have to be right, we are not going to crank out generic shooter after shooter. Heroes of Might and Magic is very special to us.

CS: I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a more Apple-centric company than Freeverse. We’ve made games for the Mac for over a decade. We own an Apple 1.

Image courtesy Antique (lonesome) Computers
We made the iVase flower holders for the first iMacs, classic Mac toys like Jared: Butcher of Song, and we’ve won multiple Apple Design Awards… so we’ve done a little bit of everything in the Mac universe. Now an A-list game port is something we can check off our list. We’re not looking to compete with Aspyr, MacSoft or Feral, all those guys do a great job, and our hearts are really in original content, but if the right project comes along we might consider one or two A-List titles a year.

The deals structuring past ports have often come up short on long term support. For example, no OSX version was ever released of HOMM3 despite its continuing popularity (and which will make it unplayable on the new IntelMacs), and the final version of HOMM4 didn’t reflect the final PC code. How does the deal for HOMM5 structure ongoing and long-term support issues?

BM: I think a lot of it comes down to 2 main issues. 1. Money 2. Lawyers. Obviously if nobody buys HOMMV, the chances of the expansion packs will be slim to none (but nobody should be mad as they never bought it).

CS: Freeverse is committed to supporting HOMMV to the best of our ability. We wont ship a buggy port, or allow Mac issues to linger without timely patches. Beyond that, we’ll try to bring as many of the Heroes assets to the Mac as we can, given the economics of the business. The fact that we’ll want to play any expansion packs as much as you guys do, should help that equation.

Although you haven’t yet received the final PC source code, does the deal consider other issues related to cross-platform interaction such as networking, shared maps, mods or the mapping toolset? Or are you hoping that such features are going to be “yes, yes, yes and yes” depending on technical matters alone?

BM: I hate it when games come out that are not Mac/PC compatible, but there’s usually a good reason, money. I’m sure we will encounter the same problem, but I won’t give up on the idea of at-least direct IP connections between Mac and PC, but it’s just too soon to tell. The same goes for the editor, I want it badly, but we just don’t know what’s possible yet.

CS: Yup, it’s really too early to say.

Will the game be a universal binary for the new IntelMacs, and does this in anyway make the game easier to port or impact upon cross-platform technical matters?

BM: Of course the game will be Universal Binary, but we really want the game to run great on older hardware too if possible.

CS: We’ll make every attempt to have the game run on the widest range of machines. It’s in our own best interest after all to have the largest Mac market we can. So much depends on the PC engine though. Apple has done a great job with Universal Binary tools, so I don’t imagine the port will be much harder, but I don’t think it will be much easier either.

Some PC gamers are mad that Ubi has adopted the Starforce anti-piracy technology. Although Starforce doesn’t exist on the Mac, are you at liberty to determine your own anti-piracy measures? Do you foresee the use of Starforce on the PC-side excluding Mac users from extending the game in any way?

CS: It’s way too early to talk about anti-piracy schemes. We’ve always erred on the side of making things easy on the paying customer, (but that does, sadly, make things easy on the pirate as well). It’s a balancing act that rarely pleases everyone, but we’ll do our best.

We’re running a release-date pool contest at HOMM•V for OSX, and if you guys join in you could win a free copy of your own game! If I were to put you down for a release date, which would be your pool pick?

BM: Asking for release dates is like knowing what the monster is on the Lost island. But I’ll say December 2006, then when we beat that date by many months I’ll be a hero.

CS: It’s not like we’re withholding info, the fact is we honestly don’t know how long the port will take… or when the PC code will be GM’ed [golden mastered]. But we’ll port it as fast as we can… again, we’re dying to play it too!

The first open beta for the PC version was released yesterday. Have either of you had the chance to play at all, and if so, what were your impressions?

BM: Hopefully my beta key will be arriving any day now.

CS: We’re too busy to play games.

Anything else you would like to comment on at this point?

BM: So much of what I’ve said can change at any moment as the Port progresses. I just want people to know that there is a lot of love being put into this project and we really want this to be one of the best games anyone has ever played.

CS: Yup, what Bruce said. We didn’t start this process by saying “what A-List PC game should we go after?” - We’re here because we said, “man, I really want a Mac version of HOMMV!”

HOMM•V for OSX would like to thank Bruce and Colin for taking the time to answer our questions. We’ll be sure to check in with them regularly to keep tabs on the ups and downs of the porting process.