At the Mouth of Madness

The US market for RPGs has been primarily dominated by Japanese-developed games. Developer and publisher Crave is out to change all that with Shadow Madness, an impressive looking game with a lot going for it. The development team is being headed by former Square USA team members, who have come a long way from the gameâs conception to its current status.

We spoke with Crave Production Evangelist Ted Woolsey about the companyâs complicated history and got the dirt on Shadow Madness, which is due out in September 1998.

PSMOnline: Tell us the whole story of Crave and Big Rain, starting with Square USA.

Ted Woolsey: Well, Square decided to move its facilities down to Southern California. I was asked to come down but my wife and I looked around down there and we just didnât want to do that. The idea came up to form a new company, buying some of the assets from the Redmond facility. Thatâs how Big Rain became an entity.

We then got a contract with Ascii to do a role-playing game, which was Shadow Madness. We worked on that for a couple of months and as a developer itâs tough, you just go from job to job. The cost of making games in the 1997 market is going up and up and up. Itâs no longer a half a million dollar proposition, itâs multi-million, and with all the acquisitions going on the industry, as with Good Times Interactive (GTI) buying SingleTrac, publishers arenât putting money into small developers anymore. Theyâre trying to feed the developers theyâve already gobbled up. The model was very difficult for us to put into place and get moved forward. We also had some financial vehicles in place that timing-wise just couldnât cut it for us so we had to dissolve the company.

Crave basically negotiated with Ascii for the rights to Shadow Madness on its own because it liked what it saw and bought the rights from Ascii. Thatâs how Crave came to be doing Shadow Madness.

PSM: Tell us about Shadow Madness.

TW: We believe in story-telling. We really think that if a game has a great idea and pulls you through, and makes sense, is consistent, it really allows you to enter the game. The whole idea of Shadow Madness is to tell a great story. Itâs a game that has prerendered backgrounds with polygon characters running through it. Itâs got a very photo-realistic look to it as youâre walking through the different areas, kind of like Final Fantasy or some of the other games coming online. That in combination with the quest is enough for a pretty compelling product.

All of the artists here are obviously using Alias and SGIs so the technology weâre using is right there with what everybody else is using. But what really sets the developers here apart is that the skill sets are all so diverse. Weâve got people here who are professional animators and clay modelers, and cartographers from the military.

PSM: What about the technology? Final Fantasy came out and upped the ante for all RPGs. Can Shadow Madness compete on that level?

TW: As a financial success, Final Fantasy VII is a star. Itâs gotten mega-support from Sony in terms of advertising dollars and the guys at Square are very brilliant when it comes to the product they make. Squareâs basically grown the market in a way that no oneâs done before, which is a huge upside to us. Itâs proven the point that all these really smart, young RPG players from the early Î90s have grown and matured, theyâre teenagers now, and they want entertainment thatâs not a bunch of guys jumping on mushrooms. Ours is a darker game than some of the Nintendo products that have been popular in the past. With the production values that weâre looking at and with the story, itâs not really our dream at this point to have a million seller. Itâs our dream to have a great game where all the loose sends are taken care of, the characters are strong and we like them. Itâs wonderful to look at Square and go, ãGreat, if we had 30 million bucks and 120 people putting together a game like this...ä but I donât think you have to have that. You have to look at Final Fantasy VII as a game that has set precedents but I think Shadow Madness is going to surprise some people because the visuals are every bit as stunning.

PSM: An important element of any RPG is the battle system. What kind of battle is Shadow Madness going to have?

TW: Itâs going to have that standard battle arena type style but itâs going to have a different focus and emphasis on it. There are different ways of tuning that -- you can have thousands of battles and all you have to do is hit the enter button to win most of them, unless itâs a boss-monster or something. Or you can put more thought into the battles, into what you have to do to defeat certain foes. So ours is going to have the basic command battle system where you switch from the game to the battle arena. Itâll have some surprises as well though.

PSM: Do you want it to be turn-based or more Alundra-like, that is to say action-based?

TW: Itâs not going to be action-based. But if you sit and think about things youâre going to be in trouble. One of the big criticisms of the past is that these kinds of battle arenas take you out of the game, and now youâre lined up one side and the monsters are lined up on the other side and one by one you whack each other. Weâre trying to play with that to make it a little more realistic.

PSM: Whatâs the story of the game in a nut shell?

TW: An RPG is not something you can summarize in a paragraph. Some of the major themes are themes that weâre living with now in the Î90s. One is the idea of contagion, or disease. Weâre all living with any manner of diseases that are terrifying. Another idea is rumor, what happens to the towns when people start hearing about the disease. Itâs about something thatâs smashing parts of your world and youâre not really sure why, itâs a matter of being thrown out there, unprepared, and trying to learn about the world around you and come up with some reason for whatâs happened to you.

PSM: Is it set in a fantasy world?

TW: Yes it is, itâs got a very diverse world, and there are various stories and mythologies about the areas that hopefully will be kind of fun side-quests that explore more about the world that youâre on.