UO Stratics Published Another Developer Interview

[UO Herald]

Originally posted 2 Dec 2011 12:28:55 EST by Kai Schober on the UO Herald:

Are you following the QA5 series of mini interviews with the UO Developers and Event Moderators on Stratics (http://uo2.stratics.com)? Today the questions and answers with Michael "Phoenix" Moore were published.

For those of us who don’t know, what has your “career track” been with the gaming industry?

I am what is known as a game systems designer. That means I am primarily concerned with game mechanics and not game content. I don’t normally write quests or populate dungeons with monsters or lay out game maps. I occasionally do those things, but mostly I work with things like combat balance, monster AI, monster and player abilities, crafting, trading, and other such features. My job requires a broad skillset that includes software engineering, spreadsheets, databases, technical and creative writing, and user interface design. I often implement the designs I create.


What project that you were involved in are you the proudest of?

I had a hand in bringing customizable housing to UO with Age of Shadows. The idea was one that the team often talked about but largely considered a pipe dream.

What I did, the thing I am proud of, was to build a prototype. It was a proof-of-concept that took about four days to construct. That prototype wasn’t very much like the final product at all, and was scrapped after use. But what it did was to show the possibilities in a way that people could interact with. Rapidly prototyping gameplay is the thing I love
most about my job. I did later work closely with client and server engineers to bring the final custom housing to fruition.

Another thing I’m really happy about is my recent work with the itemization system released in conjunction with the revamp of Dungeon Shame.

I have long felt that UO’s random loot drops had one particularly bad problem: the randomness was dialed up to 11. Now, I love randomness in game systems up to a point. I just don’t think that finding a needle in a haystack is enjoyable gameplay. So I got the chance to address that issue, along with a number of other important problems with UO’s random item generation. I think the result is a huge improvement and will significantly change UO for the better.


When it comes to the current team, who is the practical joker of the bunch and have they gotten you? OR What was your best retaliatory strike against “the joker”?

Hmm. The current UO team is pretty tame. They could take some lessons from those who came before.

When I was working on Tabula Rasa, one of the producers broke the build over an important weekend, when a pre-alpha version of the game was to be demonstrated live. This is one of the reasons why producers generally don’t get to touch the engineers’ shiny dials. But anyway, when he returned the following week, the bosses had literally erased his office door. They removed the door and the door frame, covered it with drywall, painted it to match the corridor, and removed his nameplate. Eventually they let him bust in with a hatchet.

Then there was the time they tinfoiled the lead designer’s office. They went so far as to remove aspirin from a bottle, individually wrap them in foil, and put them back in the bottle (after, of course, tinfoiling the bottle). Every surface and every object in the office was wrapped in aluminum.


When you are not chained to the desk working, what do you enjoy doing?

I enjoy spending time with my wife of 15 years. We game together, watch movies and TV. We enjoy good food. Currently, we are fostering kittens with an animal rescue organization.