Battlezone 1

While working at Activision, Brad Pickering was a lead programmer of Battlezone (1998). Today he's is a programmer and game developer at Pandemic Studios.

What got you interested in game programming?

I've always loved games of all kinds: chess, Stratego,rummycube, baseball, soccer, water polo, asteroids, missile command, hard hat Mac, etc. My mom was a computer programmer for Burroughs (now Unisys) and Iwas pretty good at Math, so I took to programmingpretty quickly when I finally got access to development tools late in high school. I dabbled in game programmingwith a simple artillery game and later with a snakebyte clone. Neither one was anywhere near commercial quality. I didn't get to do any real game programming until I was hired at Activision.

What was the first game you ever worked on?

I was hired on at Activision to work on shared technology for 'Spycraft - the Great game', 'Muppets Treasure Island', and 'Zork - The Grand Inqusitor'. Only 'Spycraft' ended up using the technology. Andrew Goldman was the Director on 'Spycraft' and when that project was finished he made me lead programmer on his next project, which started out as Spycraft 2 and ended up as Battlezone.

When Battlezone was presented to you what was your opinion about it?

The Battlezone game play was not really 'presented' to me, it grew out of the desires of Andrew Goldman, George Collins, and myself to make a game that mixed the strategy elements of Command and Conquer/Warcraft with an action game like Quake or Interstate
76/Mech Warrior II. This game play was refined over time by the whole team. The 'Battlezone' license came on fairly late in the process. I didn't think the Battlezone name would hurt so I was not opposed to it. In hindsight I am happy with where the Battlezone license lead our story and environment, but I suspect the association with a 20-year-old coin op arcade game hurt the game in the market.

What part of the game did you work on and program?

I mostly worked on AI: path planning, path following, target selection, weapon selection, aiming, firing, etc. The team was pretty small so I did other stuff too like audio and load/save.

What about Battlezone did you like the most?

I liked the 3D mini map, linked weapons, and first person interface for building stuff.

How long was Battlezone in development before the 1.0 release?

I think it was about 18 months.

How much did Battlezone cost to make?

I have no idea. I would guess 1 to 2 million.

How many copies were sold?

I don't know how many copies were sold but I do know we at least made our development money back. Many of the copies were sold through bundling with video card so the retail sales are probably much lower than the number of people who played the game. Activision must have made some money because they had us make a sequel.

Would you do anything differently if you were building the game today?

I would try to make the transition from quake play to BZ play a little more gradual. Maybe start with a more quake like soldier, then introduce vehicles, then purchasing, then base building, then resource collection. I think Tribes and Battlefield 1942 have done a good job at adding depth to the shooter genre without getting overwhelming.

Do you still sometimes play BZ? If not, when did you play it last?

I install it probably once a year and play a few missions then I get busy with other stuff. I also like to show my son his baby picture, which is an Easter egg in the game. He is 10 now but there is a picture of him as a 1 yr old. At the mission success screen type W, E, S, L, E, Y, <SPACE>, <SPACE>, <SPACE>, <SPACE>

Under which name, and are/were you good at it?

I didn't play online much. I thought I was pretty good, but I'm pretty sure that within a few days after release there were people much better than I. I usually play as 'Drone' or 'BZ-Drone' in most games.

Who is/was the best in playing BZ1?

I don't remember for sure but I think it was Will Stahl.

The storyline to Battlezone is among the most unique of Cold War style stories. Where did the idea of a secret war in space come from?

I wasn't involved very much in the design side so I'm not sure on the details of how we came up with Cold War in space. I know that the idea for Action RTS and "scrap" as a resource came well before the idea of the Cold War. I believe we were looking for factions that were easy to relate to without having to tell a lot of back-story.

Did you have any concerns with Battlezone?

Not at the time. I thought what we were doing was great, the Next Big Thing. I thought the basic RTS popularity was waning and that people would be looking for more action in their RTS or more strategy in their shooter. But StarCraft came out at the same time and is a great game and Quake / Unreal games kept doing well with not much change to the basic game play.

Even after nine years since the game hit the shelves, a small band of fans continue to hold on and play this game. Did you think that Battlezone would continue to live on after the "normal" life expectancy of a game?

I hoped that battlezone would have a shelf life similar to quake or command & conquer. We tried to give it re-playability with some mod tools and multiplayer support. I wasn't thinking 9 years into the future but I'm sure if I had I would not predict that people would still be playing bz1. I would probably hope they were playing bz5 though.

Summing up everything, what is your overall opinion on the whole Battlezone Series?

BZ was a great idea that didn't live up to its potential. The marketing, technical, and design mistakes kept it from becoming a massively successful series. I'd love to make BZ3 even now but I think publishers will stay away from this genre because neither BZ nor Uprising did well commercially.

Thanks for your time, Mr. Pickering. This has been fun!

Interview by Jonathan Snyder (May 2007).