One of our favorite games from 2006 was Stardock’s outer space 4X strategy epic, Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords, and we recently had a chance to speak with producer Scott Tykoski regarding the game, as well as its upcoming expansion, Dark Avatar.In the march up to the end of the year, all of us here at eToychest are beginning to throw our weight behind various titles that we believe deserve the coveted A

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today about Cosmic Encounter Online. Could you tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and your current role with Cosmic Encounter Online.

I have been designing since the 1970’s. I have designed games, products, exhibits and experiences in virtually every form of media including: museum kiosk, computer, Internet, board, card, kit, large group experience, VCR, CD-ROM, laser disc, interactive cable, interactive movie, TV game show, and radio. I have consulted as game and exhibit designer for dozens of companies including AT&T, Disney, CBS, Children’s Television Workshop, Boston Museum of Science, National Inventor’s Hall of Fame, Discovery Networks, Electronic Arts, Ford, IBM, Lucas Arts, Scholastic, Sundance, WGBH TV and WNET TV. I have a BA in History from the University of Colorado and a Masters Degree from Emerson College in Mass Communications. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Marshall Islands in Micronesia in the 1960s.

My role in Cosmic Encounter Online is to keep it alive in its new home. I am President of Future Pastimes, LLC which has the non board game rights to Cosmic Encounter Online and President of Eon Products Inc., which has the boardgame rights to Cosmic Encounter.

In 20 words or less, could you describe Cosmic Encounter?

Use alien powers with strategy, cunning, and diplomacy to encounter opposing aliens. Millions of alien combinations make every game unique.

Taking as many more words as you want, what else would you say is integral to describe Cosmic Encounter?

When you play Cosmic Encounter you will become an alien with a special power. Your goal is to establish a colony on four planets outside your home system. Cosmic Encounter is a highly social experience. Players can win alone or share a win with others. Clever use of your special power, a judicious balance of diplomacy and
strength and a healthy dose of Cosmic luck are the keys to victory. Cosmic Online games take about 30 minutes, making it easy to stop by at any time for a quick dose of Cosmic Encounter. But beware! All of your games will rapidly blend together into a collection of surprising social experiences that you’ll savor for a lifetime. As a Cosmic Encounter Online member you get monthly, yearly and lifetime rank- based on how
well you’ve fared in every game that you’ve entered.

No online game has the diversity of the Cosmic Encounter Online
audience. Cosmic players are drawn from gamers of all classes: casual, serious, male, female, younger, older, newbies and veterans. You may not know who is behind any given alien. But one of the many surprises of Cosmic is that veteran and newbie players all have a chance to win on any given Sunday. And to sweeten the pot, our ranking system rewards you when you defeat someone ahead you in overall rank.

Cosmic Encounter has a substantial history, practically a mythological entry into the world of board games. How did it all begin?

Cosmic predates D&D and Magic: The Gathering. When we released it in 1977 under our Eon Products label there was no game like it. I took cartons of newly minted Cosmic games to the Sci Fi WorldCon in Miami and gave away free copies on the first day with the caveat that players had to play in the lobby. The next day we sold all I had brought.

Now thirty years later there is still no game like it. But there are a host of game designs that are derivative of Cosmic. The very first Cosmic Encounter game prototype was created on a beach in Truro on Cape Cod by me and my partner Bill Eberle. We just imagined what it would be like if there were these aliens finding each other in the
vast universe. Key to the design were a set of principles, like there would be no dice in the game, no one could be kicked out the game before it ended, you could always come from behind, it had to have compromise as well as attack as way of making progress, everyone would have to be different.

One thing that emerged from the design was that it created situations that WERE NOT FAIR. So I have added that to the list. It would not be fair.

FAIR IS BORING.
NOT FAIR IS FUNNY AND SURPRISING.

Bill still works on Cosmic Online as one of the three Future Pastimes partners. The third partner is my son Greg who is currently managing the NBA’s new FanVoice website. Greg had been working on Cosmic Encounter Online nonstop for a few years before leaving for the NBA job this month.

Cosmic Encounter is, to a large extent, very much about breaking the rules. How much trouble was it to design and play balance a game that is about rule breaking?

It was very hard in the early days with yellow legal pads and hours of cross checking. Recall that with 75 aliens and 4 players there are 1.4 million different alien combinations. Add FLARE effects and 6 players and its staggering and uncheckable. Play balance, is not an issue with us. We don’t try to balance (see being fair above). We don’t care if some of the 1.4 million games are unbalanced. The universe full of aliens must be unbalanced by definition. The fun part is to win a game where the odds were against you. The gloat factor is exponential.

How do you involve the Cosmic Encounter Online community in the evolution of the game?

We have a cosmic forum set up and run by the players, I post up in cosblog, and a Founder (lifetime member, TheDulester) runs blogmic encounter, we are linked to the board game forum which predatres Cosmic Encounter Online run by Cosmic Encounter Online player hadsil. And I am online nearly every day chatting and IMing with the cosmic masses.

Do you have any plans to bring Cosmic Encounter Online to another format? Xbox Live Arcade, or the PS3 or Nintendo equiavlent?

As I am writing this I am working on an XBLA proposal submission that was requested by us of a developer.

Will we ever see a tabletop version of Cosmic Encounter in print again?

As I am writing this I am responding to a publisher (FunAgainGames) who is interested in republishing Cosmic Encounter and perhaps the whole Eon line under the Eagle brand, which they acquired.

Valve Software has always had a keen interest in bridging the gap between the mod community and the larger world of game development. One could even argue that they first legitimized the practice by taking the Half-Life mod Counter-Strike into the retail space, a first for a fan-created mod. Further mod incorporations like Day of Defeat cemented Valve’s reputation as a company willing to pull directly from the community with a frequency unheard of elsewhere in the industry.

Valve’s latest acquisition seems to the be the team behind Narbacular Drop, an Independent Games Festival entry that came courtesy the DigiPen Institute of Technology, located right in Valve’s backyard. From that background comes the eagerly anticipated Portal, shipping alongside Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 early next year. Today we had a chance to sit down with the Portal team’s Dave Kircher and talk a little bit about this unique action-puzzle game they’re developing.

First of all, how does it feel to go pretty much straight from the classrooms at DigiPen to the offices of Valve? Did you ever in a million years imagine this is how it would turn out when you were filling out your application forms?

We all set our sights fairly high before we went to DigiPen, it’s a school that requires determination. I had actually set my sights specifically on getting a job at Valve, but I never actually believed it could happen right out of the gate.

Being here is really as awesome as you can imagine. They’ve given us access to great people and resources, shown us how they make their games, and then turned us loose to put it together by ourselves. It’s a great feeling of complete design freedom that most of us feared we’d
lose when we were ramping up to leave school and get jobs.

According to Doug Lombardi’s Game Informer interview, you guys hadn’t even finished your Narbacular Drop presentation when Gabe Newell stopped the presentation and offered the entire group jobs on the spot. Give us the first sentence to pop in your head when you heard that.

It’s not even really quantifiable as a sentence. It’s more closely represented as dumbfoundedness. We spent a good half-hour outside the building asking each other, “What just happened?”

Does this, unfortunately, mean your withdrawal from the IGF? There’s
always the weekends, you know…

For the time being it does. But the IGF is really about creative freedom, and everyone in the team already has an outlet for that with Portal. We rarely receive any sort of solid requirements from anyone that could be considered a boss figure.

On to Portal: Was the decision to set the game inside the Half-Life universe a conscious goal all along, or was it more of “We’ve got to set it somewhere, and we can make it fit in the HL story, so why not?”

We haven’t really revealed too much about the story yet. But what I can say is that you play a new character in the Half-Life universe and the connection to that universe is revealed during the game.

How hard is it to develop puzzles for a game that makes use of such bizarre and irrational tools? When you can go from any surface to any other surface, fly through the air sideways and upside-down, how do you design puzzles that will still make sense? At what point do you stop and say “You know what, no one is ever gonna figure this out”?

We worked for nearly a year on Narbacular Drop, so as a team we had a firm grasp on how to make interesting levels. But it has been a real challenge to present the levels in such a way that the entire gamut of players from newbie to haxx0r can follow what’s going on. The game makes use of spatial thinking that people never encounter in their daily life, so it’s a real tossup how quickly someone can assimilate the gameplay elements. Thankfully Valve has shown us a trick or two about how to work out the kinks through constant playtesting and providing us the freedom to iterate on our designs until we’re succeeding with players of all skills.

You’ve got Chet Faliszek and Erik Wolpaw, formerly of Old Man Murray fame, writing the narrative for Portal. First of all, isn’t having a narrative for a puzzle game sort of unusual, and secondly, how will Portal best put their dry, irreverent wit to work?

The game has puzzle elements, but it’s not truly in the puzzle genre. We tend to think of games as being closer to experiences than computer applications. Chet and Erik’s work breathes life into the experience making everything seem just a bit more real. That and it gives our players a good chuckle every now and then.

Is the Apertue Science website actually germane to the game, or is it just a neat piece of viral marketing? What’s the point of it all- the video feed, the birthday cake, the whole bit?

The robots have taken me. Please send help.

Will Portal be moddable? There’s a kind of recursive justice in a mod team’s game becoming moddable itself, but does the technology lend itself to the practice?

Most definitely. We want to get the community into Portal gameplay design as easily as possible. There are so many gameplay ideas to explore with Portal technology – we’re dying to see what other designers will do with this.

Modding aside, how do you see the Portal technology being used in other applications? A theoretical first-person shooter utilizing a grander scale of the Portal tech could really be something- hallways that go on forever, an entire match in freefall, even perhaps M.C. Escher’s House of Stairs made into a CTF map?

There are too many possibilities to even mention here. We’re breaking Euclidean space, which adds a brand new tool to the toolbox of every existing idea out there.

Finally, what’s next for the Portal team? After Portal is done and shipped, where do you see your team moving to within Valve?

We’ll be exploring Portal gameplay for the foreseeable; either integrating the technology towards traditional FPS gameplay or branching off in a whole new direction is yet to be determined. Where we focus our attention will rely heavily on how the community responds to Portal.

When Ubisoft captured the flag from the annals of computer gaming history to bring strategy enthusiasts the latest chapter in the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise, many were skeptical. After all, the series had already been in a slump prior to the company taking up the reigns, and would-be developer Nival Interactive’s back catalog up until that time read like an exercise in inconsistency. Even so, few could argue against Ubisoft’s track record at delivering steller game experiences, though most of that success was resigned to the console market. Could the same company that gave us Splinter Cell and resurrected Prince of Persia work that same magic on a series that traced its roots all the way back to the Apple II with 1990’s King’s Bounty?

Some would say yes, though as expected the critics were conflicted. While those of us at eToychest enjoyed the new spin on the franchise, others, such as 1UP’s Matt Peckham, were not as impressed. However, both of us, as well the lion’s share of reviewers, agreed that the game was flawed. It was just an argument as to what degree.

However, sales don’t lie, and Ubisoft and Nival soon announced an expansion. Subtitled Hammers of Fate, the expansion will broaden the scope of the original game, introducing a new faction, dwarves, which are made up of heroic warriors and rune magic adepts who stalk Ashan’s deepest mountains and most hostile regions. Hammers will also boast fifteen new missions, new heroes, improved cut-scenes, and the new campaign. All of this adds up to an array of new spells and abilities, as well as five new single-player maps, ten new multiplayer maps, new buildings, new artifacts, and new neutral creatures. Nival is introducing a lot of new meat to the game, but even with improved gameplay mechanics such as caravans and a random map generator, will it still just be more of the same?

To find out more on this, Heroes of Might and Magic V producer Fabrice Cambounet has offered up his insight into what players can expect from Hammers of Fate when it ships this November.

Of all the possible factions to add, why did you decide to add the dwarves in this expansion?

First, I think the dwarves are a race that was eagerly expected. I hope they will fulfill these expectations! They are a tradition in fantasy worlds and they couldn’t shy away from fame in Ashan. We indeed have other factions in mind but the dwarves were the logical next step in terms of history and game balance.

What are the main abilities of this new faction?

Dwarves will have a specific magic school, the rune magic. They are the only ones who can access and use it. They have runes on themselves or on their equipment. The rune mage (the dwarven hero) commanding the army can activate these runes by spending resources (not mana). So you will have to be careful of choosing the right moment to activate them and not waste resources! Runes will have various effects such as allowing a unit to attack twice or to dispel any negative spell effects.

What kinds of units will be available to the dwarven faction? Can you give us more details on 1 or 2 creatures?

Here are a few details on one nice unit, the Berserker. It’s basically a storm of flesh and armour and pointy bits. It may be a dwarf storm, but not one you would like to encounter! It’s a melee fighter with very powerful offence and immunity to mind control. They can also charge the enemy for improved damage, but at the expense of all defence.

It seems some of the dwarves will look like gigantic dwarves, is it due to gameplay or design?

One of the dwarf units is a giant dwarf indeed – ending up as quite a normal height. We are talking about the Thane, who is a clan elder, a warrior imbued with magical abilities. They actually need to be quite big if they want to be able to wield the huge axe they carry around. This axe is imbued with magical runes of thunder and his allows them to add a chain lightning effect to each of their strike or to cast once per battle a Storm Bolt attack.

Where does the add-on take place in Ashan? Will we have new environments?

Yes, from the screenshots released you see that the dwarves there are situated in a new, snowy environment. They mostly live in the mountains north of the Griffin Empire, a fact that was already guessed by the people who looked closely at the Ashan map provided in some game editions. The add-on scenario will bring you there and also underground to settle a few accounts the dwarves have with some of their neighbours.

What is the background of the dwarves? Why did they remain silent and hidden in Heroes of Might and Magic V? Who is the main opponent of the dwarves? Who is their leader?

The dwarves are led by their king, Tholgar. He was once a brave warrior but has grown complacent and is now relying on counsellors. One of them, Hangvul, leads the belief that dwarves should only care about their own problems, and thus led them to isolationism. This is also helped by the fact that they have lost contact with their god, since the death of the Haven king Alexey. Perhaps the fact that they didn’t help at the time is being punished? The ravaging civil war in the human kingdom will awaken the dwarves and also their hatred of the dark elves, which they fought in the A