Neptune's Pride is a free multiplayer strategy game about conquering a galaxy in realtime. Running in your browser, completing even a single game takes weeks of careful planning, alliances and subterfuge. We spoke to Jay about why he left Irrational, his future plans, and why backstabbing is good for the world.
You started as lead artist at Irrational. How did you move over to designing games?
I've always been interested in game mechanics. I'm a nerd from way back, and like my boardgames and my videogames. I guess being very opinionated and not too shy, I just expressed my opinion a lot about how the [Irrational] games should work and how we could make improvements. I started getting invited to the design meetings and I was given more responsibilities in that area. It was a natural progression, because that's what I'm interested in.
What made you want to leave Irrational and create your own company?
Irrational was acquired by 2K several years ago now, and it's just not the same place anymore. It's an international organisation now. When we were partnered with Boston, it felt like a really close relationship. We'd get on the phone and talk to those guys every day, and we really felt like part of the family. Since they started working with other 2K studios, it got a little impersonal. It's just not a very fun way to work. I wanted to focus on small games as well. I've been working on Neptune's Pride for only a few months, and already it's up and playable and people are enjoying it.
What was the inspiration behind Neptune's Pride?
It's all those classic 4X strategy games that we played over the years. I was trying to get together with a bunch of friends to start up a game of [turn-based space strategy] Stars!. You can't really buy it any more and its old and it doesn't work on a bunch of systems. There was just no easy way to do it, so I wanted a web version.
Neptune's Pride players are able to see all their competitors' stats: their economy levels, how many ships they have, and so on. It means the game's about what you don't know - what's going on the other player's heads. Did you design for that?
That was quite deliberate. We provide a lot of information because there's nothing worse in those classic games of playing for two or three weeks, and then a huge player comes from the top of the board and crushes you. You had no idea. You don't even know that you've lost. I think it's really important to know where you are in relation to other players, to start the diplomacy. I think it's really important that you can see that other stuff so that you can talk about it.
A lot of the game is communication with other players. How do you design a game where so much of the experience is what people bring to it?
One of the first features I wrote for the website was being able to have multiple aliases, because what I found with these games is that you start to develop a reputation, and I wanted it to be okay to backstab. In the classic Diplomacy boardgame, that's what creates the tension and the excitement. It's trust. You've got to trust the other player that they'll send the trade back. You've got to trust what they're saying about things outside your scanning range. We put it right at the front when we started designing and made sure that the other design decisions supported that.