Interview With Xin Zhao Of SavySoda, Developers of Pixel Starships

I recently had a chance to sit down with Xin Zhao of SavySoda to talk about their Kickstarter-funded starship management MMO, Pixel Starships. We talked about the Kickstarter, balance concerns, and more. We even talked a bit about some undecided features.

Me: I just wanted to clarify. Will the game be free-to-play at release or a one-time purchase?

Zhao: It’s going to be free-to-play, but we’re looking at a premium version as well. We’re still kind of changing things around. But I think the focus will be having optional purchases for in-game currency. That’s kind of the main monetization idea behind it.

Is it going to be the same on PC and on mobile?

The game will be the same. We will probably change the cost a bit once we get it onto Steam so it will probably be a little bit higher than the mobile version.

So it won’t be free-to-play?

No, the Steam version will probably cost about $5 or so.

How far off is the Steam version from being playable?

Well, we actually just completely focused on the iOS edition for now. Our initial timeline was that we will get the iOS version released this year and the Steam version released next year. Currently, we are kind of on track to meet the iOS deadline. Though we’re going to be a bit behind. But the alpha is going really well so, if all goes well, we should be ready on the App Store in December and we will aim for a late next year Steam release. So probably up to December next year, as well. Last quarter.

And people have been asking for an Android build as well, which we haven’t thought about yet. But I think if we can port it over we will probably do as many ports as we can.

How close is the alpha build to representing what you are looking to do with the game?

It’s still a little bit of the way off. I think that because we wanted to get feedback really early for this game. We kind of released the first alpha when the game was “just playable,” so it didn’t have any extended play features. It didn’t have a lot of core features—like chat was still missing; PvP ladders were still missing.

So some of the core mechanics for the multiplayer were missing and also the story mode, the single player missions. When we launched the first alpha version three weeks ago we only had one mission, which was kind of the tutorial mission. Since then, we’ve added about six missions into the game and we’ve got ladders coming up in the next release. And then hopefully chat in the release after that.

So basically, in the alpha, we’re just progressively building it as we test it.

Since there are six missions right now are they all replayable?

Yeah, the tutorial mission is a once-off. The other missions are basically set up so that you have a quota of how many times you can do each mission per day. Most missions we’ve set now, you can do up to eight times a day and the mission doesn’t end up having you attack the same opponent every time. There’s a few different outcomes for the missions. So most players try and finish their daily missions each day and then go into the PvP matches.

Is there any significance to the eight times you can do each mission per day?

Not really. I just kind of thought eight was a lucky number. It’s just a random number, I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea.

We initially set it to a ridiculously high number, like 400 or something. Then we just kept playing it and changing it around. So we might even reduce that a bit more if we get more missions in there.

The idea was, we want to make it seem like a bonus to play the daily missions. We don’t want the player to play it so much that they get bored of it and then they just stop playing. There’s kind of an incentive to log in every day and get some extra rewards.

And the way the game works, when you play single missions, you’re not really engaging in PvP. So you’re not at risk of losing your PvP trophies and resources to other players. That’s a safer approach, especially early on in the game.

You said “at risk of losing your PvP trophies.” Does it work kind of like an ELO system?

Yes. Kind of like a StarCraft ladder. I guess that’s the most similar example. Everyone in the game starts off with 1000 trophies. As you attack and defeat players of a higher level than you, you get a percentage of their trophy difference and they lose that difference. So the net number of trophies is 1000 times the number of players.

Is it possible to lose all of your trophies?

We haven’t tested this but mathematically, no. The lowest you could probably go would be one trophy because you would have to be attacking someone with zero trophies to get down to zero, but they would have not been able to get to zero in the first place. Because they would have had to attack someone with zero trophies to get to that position.

So probably not. Actually, when your trophies get really low you lose less trophies when you get defeated. If you’re on one trophy and you lose to another player you probably don’t lose any trophies because there’s no difference. There’s none to lose.

Is the game focused on PvP, then?

Yeah, definitely. The game revolves around the PvP and battles. It’s just more interesting to actually be competing against real players rather than some story we’ve pre-arranged. And that’s worked out really well because even when we didn’t have the single missions—the first alpha release—people were still really active.

We’ve got some stats as well, which have been mostly good. We had about 140-150 beta keys sent out. For the last two weeks or so we’ve been getting about 40 daily active players just from the alpha, out of 140-150. Which is a really good number.

And it hasn’t really dropped off. We haven’t done an update for the last nine days and I can see we’re still up to about 30-40 active players.

So are you planning to expand PvE content mostly through more missions?

Yeah, that’s the idea. And we are always adding more ships and more races of enemies, so I think that’s how we’re going to keep adding to the game and keep players interested. We want to release the game early and add content as we go along and rebalance the game.

Are there ever going to be any ships or races that are completely locked off to players?

Yes. Actually, there are a few ships that we have already shown in the Kickstarter. There are a few alien ships that are not player-controllable. They could be but we just want to have something that’s off-limits to make the single-player and the missions seem interesting for the players. To have something unfamiliar for them to encounter in the missions.

So there are going to be a few races of aliens which are only going to appear in the single-player. And they’re probably going to drop some unique form of loot for players to then research and upgrade their weapons.

But I think the ships are not going to be made available to players unless we get really high demand for that. Then we might change it.

But it’s looking like a fairly fun game as it is. We’re basically trying to get the next iterative alpha out. We launched the first alpha with only six levels of ships. And actually, a lot of the players already got to that level within the first week. So we’re just trying to add more weapons and ships.

It’s actually designed to take about two weeks to get to a level six ship in the game, but I think a few of the beta players have been online more than they expected so they got there really quick.

How many levels are planned for ships?

We planned for about twelve levels of ships in total. We’re about halfway there with the first alpha and by the time we get to beta, we want to get to about nine levels of ships.

So about two months to get to the highest level?

To get to the highest level, probably a bit longer. About three to six months, depending on how much you play. The levels get progressively harder to achieve once you get to about level six. We’re using an exponential type of chart on how much experience and minerals are required to upgrade your ships. As your level gets higher, it’s harder to reach that. And also, as you get attacked, you lose more minerals and gas. You’re required to be active a bit more once you’re higher leveled in order to retain your minerals.

Are you ever planning to add a team mode?

Yes. That’s on the to-do list. We wanted to do something kind of like Clash of Clans style group battles. So you can join a corporation, kind of like in EvE Online, and there’s a different set of goals you have to achieve by working with the people in your clan to defeat other clans.

So will there ever be, for example, 2v2 PvP modes?

Live games? We want to do that but right now it’s not really an easy thing; technically, because of the way we structured the game. So it will probably end up just being one ship versus another ship.

I think if we come up with something genius we might be able to fit multiple ships into a single battle. But right now it’s a bit hard. I haven’t thought of a great way to do that yet.

Is it also a little bit hard to figure out game design-wise how to make it interesting with two people versus two people, other than just two simultaneous one versus one battles?

Yeah, I can imagine it being quite fun to have two ships, or a bunch of ships, attacking a different bunch of ships on the same screen. But it would actually be really hard to control. Even right now, when you get to a higher level ship there’s so much you have to do in a battle. It’s a bit daunting. And if you have a partner in another ship and you can attack each other, that would be fun but it would be hard.

I saw on the Kickstarter that you were planning to put in carriers for $25k. Because the Kickstarter ended only $3000 away from that goal, depending on how Early Access sales go, are you still planning to implement that at a later time?

Yeah, we want to do that. I think that carriers are something that people expect in a large starship-style game. Homeworld had it and that made it more fun because you have a lot more stuff happening during a battle. So we want to add that.

We’re more focused right now on getting a stable and balanced base release and then we’ll probably build on top of that. We’ll probably have to add the carrier as an extension after we’ve released the initial game because it will probably be a higher level system for the ship. We expect it to be a room you can add to your ship once your ship is above level six, for example.

Once we release the public build, it will probably take people a few weeks to get to that level. It gives us a little bit of time to add it in and not affect the release date.

But it’s something we really want to add in. We just didn’t have the resources to do it right up front.

What made you decide to open up alpha testing for a lower price than you had it up for during the Kickstarter?

The Kickstarter pack is actually a little higher in price if you want a few more features. But we had some people request alpha only access and they didn’t want any of the perks. When we did the Kickstarter, we gave away a lot of exclusive content like special characters that weren’t available in the public release of the game.

But after Kickstarter, I guess it’s a bit of a different audience. They just wanted to play the game and didn’t really want to get any of the backer rewards. So we made an option that you can still play the game for a lower price but you won’t get any of the Kickstarter’s in-game content.

But I think by far, the Kickstarter package is most popular. I think the in-game content is what people want anyways. No one’s really taking us up on the “just the alpha access.”

One thing that stuck out to me is that you have your budget breakdown for the “extra money.” It says 5% for marketing. Do you guys have a system that’s less expensive that you have developed over the time that your studio has been open?

Not really. We’re an indie game studio and our marketing people, they don’t get paid. They’re volunteer. That makes it cheaper. Because they don’t get paid anything.

But the Kickstarter, the money’s not really a core part of what goes into building the game. It cost a lot more to actually build the game and also to push it out. But it definitely helps.

I think more important than all the money we raised was all the interest from the community because a lot of the beta players have been active on our forums and posting feedback that they want to have added into the game. We got more value out of that from the Kickstarter campaign than the money.

I think if we wanted to get enough to develop the game we actually needed over $100k to cover all development. Most of it is a bonus for us to get extra content added, rather than the core marketing or game development. It’s still out of pocket on that end.

So if you needed $100k, was the $20k more of a backup or...?

We wanted to get as much as we could. If it went higher, it would be better. For $20k, we have the minimum for us to make it a worthwhile Kickstarter project. At the time we launched our Kickstarter the game was already getting close to the alpha. So we’ve already done a lot of the development. But we definitely needed more to get the game, and the extra content, ready and to get the game polished.

A lot of people really liked the idea of controlling the internals of their starship in an MMO. I think

the Kickstarter kind of validated the game for the idea we had, as well. So the $20,000 was an amount that I thought would make the Kickstarter, at a minimum, worthwhile for us.

Because there’s a lot of work involved in running a Kickstarter, as you’ve probably heard from a lot of people. Way more than I expected. It’s like a month without sleep. But it was really fun so I’ll probably do it again for the next game. If we get there.

After testing are you planning any server wipes?

We’re trying to avoid it because I think that when players level up their alpha and beta characters, they want to keep it running. Some people would want to keep it for the live game. So we might be able to make that an option. Initially, I had thought we would have to do a server wipe because there might be imbalances and incompatibility issues, but as we went along with the alpha we found out that we probably don’t have to force an account wipe for existing players if they didn’t want it.

I think players would be okay with it if you had to do it. Going from alpha to beta, typically a server wipe is in the cards. Especially if there are big changes.

So you’re not worried about the potential consequences of rebalancing to make it take longer to get to a certain place? You’re going to let them keep your progress?

Yeah, I think we are okay with that. The only thing is if we make a weapon that was overpowered and we decide to remove that from the game. Then we probably wouldn’t want the players that had access to that to keep it because it might make it unfair for the new players. Currently, I don’t think we’ll run into that situation just yet.

What kind of weapons and variable utility parts to ships are you planning?

Working with our release timeline, we started off with all the core weapons and things you would expect from a game like this: lasers, missiles, shields, engines, tractors. As we get these basic weapons balanced we will start to add new features. The thing we added in Alpha 2, I think, was the teleport room, where you can get your crew members to teleport to another ship. And that kind of opened up a lot of interesting play but a lot of balance issues for us. I think we need to get the basics right first before we go crazy.

We want to add a huge ion cannon kind of thing but that probably wouldn’t work in favor of getting the bugs resolved right now.

So you really do want to start adding interesting things like the teleport room but you’re worried about how it will affect the game?

Yeah, but I think we will get to it. I think balance is the most important. And the feedback, even with the current weapons—which are limited—suggests it’s already fine.

And also, all of the weapons and characters, there’s an AI sort of scripting in the game. So you can actually script all of your crew members and weapons to do things automatically whether you’re battling an opponent or you’re just offline and someone attacks you. So the people in the ship will actually carry out a set of commands you issue to them—situational commands.

So that made the game quite interesting. Again, that kind of required a lot of balancing and checking. Because if people find a loophole they will really maximize the damage it does.

We saw a few higher level alpha ships that figured out, with the teleport we added last release, if they just teleport all of their attacking crew into the enemy’s reactor room they can disable their ship before they really have a chance to do anything. We still haven’t found a good counter for that.

So that’s one of the focuses for the next release balance-wise. Maybe reduce the speed of the teleportation or something so it doesn’t all happen so quick.

And you can’t just tell them, “you can’t just go over there and disable their reactors.”

I think that if you were in the battle and you saw it was happening, by the time you react it is probably too late. That is the issue we are running into right now by adding all of this AI scripting on top of the game.

If you find a strategy you can script it out and it’s pretty deadly.

Basically the only counter to that would be to set up your guys in advance to plan for your opponent to do that but that would be risky in other ways.

Yeah, a few players figured that out. Just get a bunch of tough guys and put them into the reactor room before the battle starts. So you see a few higher level ships just full of characters in their reactors.

So after launch, the new content is primarily going to be new ships, new parts, and new missions?

Yeah, that’s right. And the adding of the clan battles. So that’s something on a distant to-do list for us. We want to add clans in there. Probably three or four months after release.

How are clans going to work?

You can get a bunch of friends and create an entity of sorts that everyone joins. Kind of like a group chat. Everyone in this group can opt to attack another group. So instead of attacking one by one you’re attacking as a group. But basically, each person on the team takes out one person on the other team. Then you add up all of the scores at the end and kind of do a tally.

It’s not really live 2v2 or 3v3, but you still get the feel of a co-op team because all of the scores are added up at the end.

It would be interesting if you did that and visually, you could see your clan mates, but mechanically you could only attack your opponent.

If we can’t do real 2v2 or 3v3, I think that would be the next thing. Maybe after you finish the battle, we can render out like a movie or cutscene of what happened with all the ships in there.

Will these battles provide specific rewards for the clans or will they still have more of an individual reward system?

So you can level up your ships. I think, in the long run, we want you to be able to level up your clans and get special perks for your group. But again, that’s something we will work towards at a later stage once the core game is more balanced and more complete.

Is there anything you can share about how player designed characters and ships are coming along? Have you started on that yet?

Yeah, we have. We’ve got almost all of the custom crew designs out. Except for one, because he submitted the requirements late last week. The custom ship designs: we’re still working on it, but that will get there sometime before the final release, I think. So that will be there sometime during the beta.

And they’re all going to be available to everyone?

Yeah, I think it would be really wasted if only one person gets to use it and no one else gets to see what they’ve come up with. And I think that’s what the player wants.

So they’re coming out well then?

Yeah, I think everyone’s really happy with the designs. We’ve got some really great artists.

Do you think it’s something you would do again in a future project?

Yeah, I think so. I think it would have to be a really...there’s a lot of work involved in doing the Kickstarter. This game, we really believe in the idea. It’s unique and something that hasn’t been done before.

I’ve noticed there are a lot of space games but most of them focus on 3D shooting and some people want to see that aside for the internal management of the ship. I think FTL was great. I really enjoyed FTL when I played that a few years ago.

So I think there’s more room for improvement in this area.

I forgot to ask. How long has the game been in development?

It’s been in development for over a year. It’s coming up on one and a half years, almost, from initial conception. We’ve kind of picked up the speed of development a bit in the last few months since we’ve done the Kickstarter.

A lot of the game mechanics were very new, like having the programmable AI and offline battles. All of those required work on the server and the client. The game takes a bit more work than it looks like on the surface. It’s 8-bit and people think it will be faster to develop but there’s a lot of backend stuff that’s a lot harder than in a, say, 3D shooter. Because we have to run all the AI and the calculations on the server.

How are diplomacy and exploration going to work?

Diplomacy is going to play in when we add the chat. So, the chat will not only be player-to-player and public chat. It will also be where you form clans once we get to that part of it. So, diplomacy will be kind of essential to the game where it’s between different clans. We’re going to call them “corporations” in the spirit of EvE. That made them sound really fun.

So once you’ve built up your corporation and you have members, you’re going to have to try and develop out your corporation and make it more powerful. Then you get to attack or not attack other corporations just by chat. We’re not building a Civilization-style diplomacy where there’s points assigned to who’s on which person’s friends list. It’s basically a social driven system. You talk with people, you make friends with people, you create a team with different players and attack other teams.

The exploration aspect: initially we were planning on doing a starmap, as many games have done. We kind of had to scale that back a little bit because the game, even in alpha, was getting very complicated with a lot of features. So rather than going down the “exploring space on a map” kind of thing, we decided to integrate it back into the missions.

We’ll probably end up adding more missions that are only playable at certain times, like event-driven missions or once-off missions where you get a story in which you are exploring part of space. But not really have an extra map overlaid on top. Because you get almost as much value out of a well-designed story. You don’t necessarily have to see where your ship is in the universe. At least not for now.

What is the story going to revolve around?

So currently it is a pretty linear, traditional story; humans versus a breed of aliens. Which we still haven’t added yet. It’s still being changed a little bit.

You start out the story when you’re just a level one or level two ship. You’re exploring asteroids and the nearby planets. Then later, you will start to see these weird-looking alien people and they’re sent to destroy everyone.

On the single-player end that’s going to be the main focus. As you progress you encounter more powerful aliens of that species and you have to attack them and learn from them.

Once you destroy one of their ships you end up getting some information about their weapon systems and then you can use your research facility to research new weapons and build new weapons that represent the alien technology. Kind of like XCOM, I guess. Now that I explain it I’m thinking “that sounds like XCOM.”

So PvE missions will be necessary to get certain designs?

I haven’t really finalized this but where we’re going currently is, when you play certain PvE missions you get certain loot that’s not available in the multiplayer missions. I think most players would be encouraged to do most of the PvE missions. Otherwise, they won’t have all of the rooms available to them.

So it’s not going to work in a way that when you destroy an enemy’s ship you take a part of it?

Yeah, you can take a part of it but you probably can’t use that part right now. So you can take a “damaged alien laser.” Probably in the next update, we’re going to add a research room so that you can take those damaged items you scavenge and develop new room designs using those. We haven’t added this feature yet but it will be available in beta. Probably in about two months or so.

Does taking items work for PvP, too?

We could do it, but we haven’t thought of a great way to balance it. So probably not. It’s a balance issue if you drop things and how that’s going to play into the long term balance of the game. It might make it meaningless to go on single-player missions if you can just take drops from PvP missions that can do the same thing.

Are epic weapons going to be more powerful or just different?

One example would be the Kickstarter weapons. We offered a few unique weapons and characters for the Kickstarter. I think initially when you start out in the game, they’re going to be a little more powerful than the standard characters you get. But as you level up, everyone in the game can get to the same, or a similar, level as you progress.

The special Kickstarter weapons won’t be the most powerful at the endgame. The stats will probably be a bit higher than the normal weapons in the early and mid games. By the mid and late endgame, the weapons you research and collect during single and multiplayer battles you will have to level up. They will still ultimately be the most powerful ones.

And then, if we have time, we wanted to add some weapons and rooms that are specific to certain races. The systems are in there to support this but we haven’t finished balancing the base level mechanics yet, so we’ll focus on that first.

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Those interested can buy into the alpha of Pixel Starships via the official site.