In OfficeAttacks! towers are made of parts and which can be upgraded, or you can build custom towers by combining parts of different towers to form up to 100,000 unique towers. For the completionist players, will there be some sort of checklist or encyclopedia within the app that will allow players to all the existing parts in the OfficeAttacks! universe? Including, which ones are common or rare and allow them to keep an inventory of those that they have and those which they still need to collect?
Eli: As part of the game menu, players will be able to access a “bestiary” of all the office workers they’ve discovered so far, with a rundown on stats., backstories, and weaknesses. As part of the first or second update, a natural addition for completionists will absolutely be a system in which to keep track of the parts you have and the parts you don’t, including the ability to create wishlists etc.
For now, however, we want our playerbase to go out and discover all the pieces that exist, talk with each other on the forums (we’re creating) about what they’ve found, and generally get excited about content they never knew existed. Part of this game becoming an expandable platform has to do with generating a real sense of excitement amongst the userbase. And we feel the “not knowing” will be great to generate conversation in the outset.
It sounds like you guys have put a lot of time and research into the free to play model and you mentioned your currency will be called “ChaChing”. However, on your website you list an upcoming app ALSO named “ChaChing” which sounds more like a social game than an app for tracking your in-game currency. Is this just a completely separate game, or are you planning on utilizing the “ChaChing” currency system across multiple titles?
Eli: Good eye! ChaChing is in fact a fully separate game still under construction here at Arctic Empire; it’s a much larger project (if you can believe it) that we’re not fully ready to lift the lid on, but I can tell you that it’s a sim. game with a strong focus on branching choice, entrepreneurial advancement, and personal branding. The world of ChaChing will (naturally) revolve around net worth, and ChaChings will be the premium currency in that game. In deciding how to style premium currency in OfficeAttacks! – our first game bound for release that will be using it – we agreed that this was a great way to get people used to the coin (which looks mighty attractive IMHO), and maybe even lay the ground for some interaction with the two games (hint hint).
That leads me to one of the other more unique and interesting aspects of OfficeAttacks!, the in-game marketplace and trading system for tower parts that connects you to players from around the world. As soon as you start interacting with other players, some people start having privacy concerns.
As a parent I was wondering what kind steps are you taking to protect the privacy and identity of the player? A Facebook account will be required to access the marketplace, so will players see the real names of the other players they are interacting with in the marketplace, or is there some abstraction layer (like a username) in place to keep a player’s real name private when participating in the game?
Eli: Very good question. The long and short of it is that at release, OfficeAttacks! will require Facebook Connect for the trading system, as this was the best way to handle a large, networked social interface that could be activated at the touch of a button. We’re often highly critical of Facebook’s privacy issues ourself, and of games that require always-on connections (which this game does not, as trading is completely asynchronous). However, the only information being revealed is the information already publicly available via a google search, and even at that level, only a name. We feel very strongly about the importance of parents taking an active hand in the games their kids play, and for us, if a child is actively using Facebook, then this is a feature in which there is little to no risk in engaging. If they are not on Facebook, we recommend that a parent or guardian with Facebook sync their account, allowing them to access the trading system in a way that protects the child’s identity.
As user activity increases however, we are eager to explore the idea of a home-grown solution to handle trading, and welcome any and all discussion of privacy concerns.
Subatomic Studios is currently hard at work on a sequel to their amazingly popular Tower Defense game, Fieldrunners, which is set to release very soon. If you had a single 140 character tweet to try to get people to ‘buy’ your game instead of this game or any other tower defense game on the App Store (other than it’s free to play), what would it be?
Eli: Way to put me on the spot! First and foremost, Subatomic is another dev. we should have included on the list, as we have nothing but admiration for Fieldrunners, and can’t wait for Fieldrunners 2. With that said, a gauntlet is a gauntlet, so without further adieu, your “tweet pitch:”
In OfficeAttacks, you can shoot lazer beams from a floating Mr. Freeze water cooler at your bosse’s face. And then do 99,999 other things.
