Interview With a Heroes Of Newerth Developer

Q: What is your name?
A: James Fielding

Q: What role do you play in the development process of Heroes of Newerth? What is your job title?

A: My official title is Lead Designer / Producer.
As the Lead Designer, I'm responsible for any design decisions that need to be made as they pertain to gameplay, and general game balance, new hero additions, maps etc. I spend a lot of my time gathering feedback from the player base, reviewing play statistics (such as the performance and usage of various heroes) and examining the meta game and needs of HoN, then taking that knowledge and applying it to improving the game. I also spend time fixing bugs and setting up the XML scripting for items and heroes.
As Producer, I help with general production of the game. For example, I may facilitate communication between the programmers and artists to make sure everyone's on the same page, and that everyone's getting what they need from eachother to do their job's effectively.

Q: What are some things that your game has done to the world of strategy gaming, and what do you hope to accomplish that the previous creators of similar games have failed to do?

A: HoN's gameplay is based on a popular warcraft III mod, Defense of the Ancients. With that in mind, our goal hasn't been so much to reinvent the wheel, but reinvent the car that's sitting on the wheels. We've focused on keeping the same gameplay that DotA is famous for, and making it a much more enjoyable experience. Stats tracking, the ability to have “leaver protected” matches, being able to reconnect to a game after disconnecting, new maps, vastly improved netcode, rebindable hotkeys, VoIP, and built in league support are just examples of the types of improvements HoN brings to the table.
With HoN, we're aiming to set the bar high for quality. We may not be creating a revolutionary game that changes the way people see online gaming, but we like to think we're offering a solid game with great gameplay that feels incredibly polished and feature rich. There have been a lot of really neat games over recent years that couldn't gain any traction due to a lack of polish or buggy play – with HoN, we wanted to make sure we were offering a really solid experience.

Q: Will this game offer a single player mode or simply multiplayer?

A: HoN is definitely a multiplayer game, and will only have multiplayer at release, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities that we eventually add single player AI-controlled bots to play against.

Q: Do you have an anticipated public release date as of now? Any idea on how much longer closed beta testing may commence?

A: It's hard to give an estimated release date. Simply put, we're working hard to get it ready for release as soon as possible, but we won't compromise the quality of what we're working on to do so. We're taking the time to make sure we deliver a polished, quality product, with all the features we want it to have for release. That said, we'll be patching in more features and content for a long time after release, too.


Q: Where is Heroes of Newerth going to go from here? How do you hope to compete with upcoming releases such as Diablo 3, and Starcraft 2?

A: HoN's definitely a title we're supporting for the long term. DotA players are used to frequent updates with plenty of content, and we aim to bring an even higher level of support to HoN. More heroes, maps, and items can certainly be expected. As for competing with Diablo III and Starcraft 2 – we're going to deliver the best experience we can. The release of those titles won't really change our strategy. The more high quality, polished titles out there, the better for gamers – and at S2, we're all gamers too

Q: Has there been talk of expansions for Heroes of Newerth in the future?

A: There hasn't bee much internal discussion about it, but anything's possible.

Q: Who would you consider to be your actual competition?

A: Well, I guess technically every other game out there is competing for gamer's time and attention. We feel like HoN offers a pretty unique experience, though (even unique to other titles of the same genre). HoN appeals to a pretty specific crowd, and to my knowledge there isn't another title out there that will offer the same kind of experience.

Q: Do you find it difficult to design for multiplayer online environments? In the sense of constructing a world so that people are really going to latch onto it.

A: Hm, no more difficult than other aspects of creating a game. Admittedly, attention to our lore has taken a backseat in HoN. HoN's definitely all about the multiplayer, and we've got a bit of an arcade-like theme with certain aspects of online play, and that kind of breaks the immersion – so it really hasn't been our goal to make a rich, deep world that players get lost in. I'd be interested to explore our lore in more depth in future titles (ones that contain a single player element, anyway), but it's really not the focus of HoN. The gameplay has definitely come first.

Q: From a development standpoint, what are some of the major obstacles that you have overcome in the creation of Heroes of Newerth?

A: Well, we learned a lot from developing Savage 1 and 2 - being able to bring that experience to HoN's development has really minimized the obstacles we've encountered. Savage 2's development yielded a custom engine with all the bells and whistles we needed for a strong foundation, and we are used to multi-platform support (mac, linux, and PC).
I guess the biggest unseen obstacle has actually been our popularity – we've had to take certain measures to deal with a larger player base that we're not used to having to do (and this is only the closed beta). We did expect a very high turnout of players, though, and thankfully our infrastructure and systems have all been engineered with large scale deployment in mind, so it's very easy for us to scale things up and support as large a player base as we need

Q: How far do you think the Heroes of Newerth market can expand? Subscriber-wise, is the sky the limit? And on that note will this be a free to play game, or will there be a monthly subscription?

A: Heroes of Newerth will require a one time fee to purchase your account. There will be no monthly subscription fees. As far as how far it can expand? Well, who knows! Here's hoping it's pretty far


Well James, I want to thank you For your time on behalf of MMowned. We hope to be able to play Heroes Of Newerth very soon, and many of us are big supporters of the game!

-7itanium
MMOwned Newsteam