In the beautiful city Moscow in Russia a small studio named Snowball Interactive is working as an independent developer on an RPG named Fatherdale. A game with an interesting concept and a studio with an interesting philosophy. This means that there is a lot to talk about and so it happened that we contacted Sergei Klimov himself and asked him a boot load of questions. As the interview will get to big to bring in one time, we decided to split things up and give you all of the interview in parts.
This time it's part 1, in which we discuss Snowball, the team, and gameplay (of which we will have more in a later issue).

About Snowball and the team
RPGDot: Can you tell us a bit about Snowball and when the company was founded?

Sergei: Snowball is good -- other than that, there's not much to tell :o). Seriously though, we are one of the oldest game developers in Russia and we are working together since late '96. We incorporated the studio back in '97, about the time we started working on the first prototypes for Fatherdale universe, and we launched our own publishing arm a year after that, in late '98.

Financially, the team itself owns the company and the localisation and publishing side of the studio is our major source of revenue, all of which we spend on the development -- and it's also the source of very interesting experience of seeing the games business from the other side of the table.

For us, bringing other games to Russia is like becoming a stepfather to each of them, and we take it very creatively. We discovered that if you care, if you really stand behind the product, then the sky is the limit -- and we expect the same attitude from Fatherdale's international publishers. You know how there are publishers and publishers -- sales culture versus games culture. In the end, games culture always wins.

RPGDot: How many employees does Snowball have and how many are working on Fatherdale?

Sergei: We are roughly a dozen and a half split all over the different directions. A good number because you can rent all six lanes in the bowling club and no one will tell you not to sip beer on the lane ;))). Over the time, everyone in the studio became involved with Fatherdale in a certain sense, but the major team is ten people with some external developers contributing items like character art and music.

RPGDot: Please tell us something about yourself and the team working on Fatherdale.

Sergei: The major thing to tell is that we are very focused on Fatherdale and we are working on it for almost 5 years by now, which makes it a damn expensive project :))). But the real beauty of funding the development ourselves is that we can allow ourselves to never compromise on the quality. All of us here in the studio love RPGs and Adventures, and we know that while we can live without another $100.000 (as stupid as that sounds ;))), we won't live with a mediocre title bearing our name -- and so we will spend as much time and resources on the game as it is necessary to make it a thoroughly balanced and enjoyable game for all the players out there.

In the beginning, there was a time when we were desperate to find a publisher as soon as possible and agree to compromises like "let's ship the first as a B-title and then improve with the sequel", but we were lucky in that instead we've set up a very efficient publishing operation here and shifted the financial pressure. Among others I'd like to thank Gary Kussman of Monolith and Susanne Kiel of TopWare and Bjorn Larsson of Iridon for helping us along when we were just starting, their support and the support of other friends in the industry helped us to dare to take the independent road.

Now, after all these years of research, we have such a great amount of good content on both research and design that we're certain the game will be a jewel -- it's just a matter of how much time it takes to polish it and make it balanced. Oh yeah, and throughout these five years not a single person has left the team -- I think it tells something about the spirit, doesn't it? :-)

About Gameplay

RPGDot: Could you tell us something of the background story of Fatherdale.

Sergei: The main thing to understand is how two concepts come together: immortal heroes and authentic medieval environment.

As the game universe, Fatherdale is based around the quests of immortal heroes who were once the helping hand of gods (the supernatural beings which are understood only partially even by the heroes themselves), but were left alone when the gods have departed from this plane of existence. They have the knowledge, they have the talents, they can lead nations and conquer the world, but they are limited -- having served higher purpose for such a long time, they desperately need a certain cause to guide them and give meaning to their existence.

And so they make up several unions, each with its own goals -- and the quests that these unions try to achieve, unfold across the history of mankind, from the early medieval times to the era of space colonisation. When Columbus sailed to America, he already had several heroes on board -- looking for a way to use the discovery to the good of their own union. When the first rebel space ship stopped communication with Luna-2 and broke away from the fleet to run away and establish its own hidden space oasis, the mutiny was also lead by one of such heroes. There are not so many of them, but they influence the history. They start wars, they sail to new lands... They create and they destroy, they are the true moving force of the new world.

As the first game from the series, Guardians of Asgard is a tale of one of such quests which happens in AD 1072, at the time when three major cultures crossed their paths near River Don, in the valley that has been known as Fatherdale even before people have settled there. There are Viking Warriors, Nomad Riders and Slav Guardians, and behind them are the heroes using the time of trouble and unrest to fight for their own goals. The barbarian tribes are simple but strong, in a situation like this one man -- even though he would be an immortal hero with vast knowledge of past battles -- wouldn't mean a thing unless he can raise an army of his own. And so they raise. And plot. And burn.

In the game, you play Reinar -- a hero who belongs to the union of Keepers, the conservative and secret association that prefers to study the new world and accumulate the knowledge without executing its influence on the mortal nations. They believe in keeping quiet, they prefer to observe and they wouldn't interfere unless the situation is absolutely critical.

For many lives Reinar served as a mercenary as he likes to travel. He is also sceptical about rhetoric's and would rather trust his sword than his advisors -- he doesn't believe in Good and Evil, but he believes in reason, honour and valour. He doesn't trust any allies, but he relies on his friends -- and unlike other heroes from his union, he really loves the new world and is an integral part of it. He's here, he loves, he feels, he's not afraid to get too close to these mortals, and where other heroes see dirty uneducated barbarians, he sees brave and loyal brothers in arms.

The whole story starts when Reinar receives a call of help from his friend and prince of Fatherdale: the warlord of the valley is killed, a military advisor mysteriously disappears and the Nomads seem too agitated to write that off as a usual turbulence. Moreover, all kinds of vermin fill the roads to the valley and simple folk talks about nothing but bad omens -- and so Reinar sets to travel to Fatherdale and assumes the position of warlord until the trouble passes away. But only once he's there, he starts to understand the scope of the approaching evil and the shadows that stand behind these seemingly accidental problems and conflicts...

RPGDot: Fatherdale takes place in the year 1072 in Northern Europe. Is Fatherdale historically "correct" or did you deviate from that every now and then?

Sergei: The game is absolutely correct to the year of 1072 where it concerns inventory -- balance, RPG stats, types, looks, materials, sizes, where it concerns characters -- names, appearance, occupations, and where it concerns the world -- locations, forests, houses, etc.

We have one of the directors of the National Historical Museum as our chief consultant, and we have done a lot of research to create a game which players could trust -- there are no "magically enchanted dragon swords", but there are narrow battle axes to break through chain mails, wide Viking axes that slash leather armour and so on. The best thing for me is that the RPG stats flow naturally out of the appearance because everything is based on reason, logic -- just a few hours into the game you start to understand the value of new weapons just by the look of it, and there's *a lot* of beauty in the designs of real weapons. Just check out the pictures in our inventory.

But of course you can't base the relationships or dialogues on the research as we can only access the material evidences, and so we did our part of reading though sagas and tales and social research of the tribes and nations of that time.

It's a pure wonder when you start to dig through the layers of pop culture to understand what the Viking movement was really about, and where the word came from originally, and how -- and why -- these nordlings set to sail from their home lands to seek new challenges. There's a lot of genuine bravery in them, the bravery that I personally miss a lot from the modern entertainment. Same for Nomads -- the noble riders, the free roamers, the independent spirits. They have left a unique culture, a culture where women warriors, for example, were highly regarded and where people spoke to their ancestors who had huge stone statues erected in the steppes, statues that are still a mystery to the historians.

And then the Slav Guardians -- people who have chosen war as their ultimate profession, people who made it a tradition, who set the standards to follow. All these rules of fight, all these charismatic leaders... When you first read about a certain prince who was ambushed and killed and then his enemies made a cup out of his skull to drink mead from it, it sounds strange and barbarian. But when you know what it meant for them, when you get into the atmosphere, then you can really appreciate the honour they have given by this gesture.

In our modern society, everything is toned down, everything is political, the line of good and bad, of brave and cowardly is blurred -- but in Guardians of Asgard we bring the real world alive, a place where you hold the ultimate responsibility for yourself and your actions, a place full of contrasts. Reinar has got his own attitude, and so while the game environment is "historical", what unfolds in it is nevertheless very real.

To be continued…