For more information on this game, read our Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates review.

GamersInfo.net: Why Puzzle Pirates? What was the inspiration? You have to admit that it's quite a unique concept.

Daniel James: The origin of Puzzle Pirates the game... I've been making MUDs and MMOs for a long time but I wanted to make a pirate game because I was bored to tears particularly after trying for about 7 years to make Lord of the Rings Online in various incarnations. I wanted to do something different - not men in tights whacking goblins with swords.

I looked around at the various genres that were out there and it became immediately obvious that this is something that would be fun. The outfits would be cool, which is tremendously important, I believe. It has a fairly gender neutral appeal, men and women like them - it's not solely the segment of "nerdy gamers" who think pirates are interesting. And the vocabulary is great - everyone knows how to talk like a pirate.

One of the problems with playing MMORPGs is if you're in a fantasy setting how do you speak to other players? It's very difficult to role play in many settings, but in the case of Puzzle Pirates is pretty easy to role play. "Ahoy! And Ye!" It's pretty transparent when any person who shows up in the game immediately gets it. That's a huge huge win.

Then you've got social groups that make sense right away - you have a crew that sails a ship. And that's a concept that's immediately graspable. It's not "why am I in a guild and what does this mean?" It's, "I'm on a crew with other pirates".

GamersInfo.net: You immediately know that "I have a job, a responsibility to others."

Daniel James: That gets into the next level of it which is what you actually do.

I had all of these reason as to why I wanted to make a pirate game, but when it came to the core of what do you do I was still a bit flummoxed - what do you actually do? You sail on a ship, fire on other pirates, earn some money, but what is the actual core experience of this game?

Around that time the whole Bejeweled phenomena came upon the web and my girlfriend at the time and I became horribly addicted to Bejeweled and some other games. One day I left her in bed with the laptop and when I came home that night she was still in bed playing Bejeweled - so there was something going on there!

Playing puzzle games is really fun. I don't consider myself a good puzzle player; I'm not innately attracted to them and they're not something I used to do a tremendous amount. One of the problems is that people will spend several hours playing a puzzle game and then at the end, what have you got? Most people feel like "Oh, I've just spent hours, doing what?" So, the marriage became immediately apparent.

We would design our puzzle games so people would contribute to the success of their crew and get better outfits and so on and so forth. The two became blended in one and really is a marriage made in heaven.

GamersInfo.net: How did you make the jump from "I'm going to sail the seas" to this very intricate and involved commerce and governmental system?

Daniel James: That's how you make a fun MMORPG. The player driven commerce and the player society aspects have been a part of game designs that I've advocated for a very long time. Even back when we were making Armada we had many of these features and that was in 1990.

No one's really implemented something on the scale of Puzzle Pirates with a mostly player driven economy.

GamersInfo.net: How did you decide that this was not going to be a 3D game using the latest advanced graphics and engines?

Daniel James: Not 3D because one of the design decisions early on that we made was that we didn't want to compete with a certain type of game. And the sandpit that the big companies play in is graphics: step one. It's far too often "our graphics are the best" and they're comparing themselves to others and talking about the next generation of graphics. Because of this, too many players get caught up in the "graphics aren't cutting edge so I don't want to play that game".

I decided I'm going to take my game and go and play in this sandpit over here where people don't mind that the graphics aren't cutting edge. It's a question of what's your audience? In our case we think we have some core game players because it's fun. And what we've gone out to achieve is fun. Frankly, I think the other has been overdone, costs way too much money, and doesn't have any connection with fun.

I look at the comparison, and find it more controversial. There's a lot of emphasis on the single and multiplayer games in that we need a lot of stuff. "We need a lot of content - thousands of quests and tons of area to play in." Again, I don't agree, what you need is fun. It's not fun - it can be fun - but, it's an unnecessary connection between the amount of artwork and content and a fun game. You can have a game with broken up content by level with lots and lots of content but it's not much fun. And you can also have games that have very small amounts of content and simple rules of gameplay and make the gameplay compelling. When you look at those options from the point of view as a small developer, or any kind of developer, what are you trying to do?

We came to the table trying to make a fun game that will run for many, many years and appeal to a broad range of people without having to throw it away with, "Puzzle Pirates 2! Now it's slightly better with bump mapping!" These sorts of things when considered immediately helped make the decision that we don't need to be 3D. There's no connection between the game being fun and being 3D for nearly all of our potential audience. There are a number of people who will discount the product simply because it doesn't fit into certain "boxes" and that was a learning experience for us - it was perhaps a substantial number.

There's a question of good graphics and "good graphics" - some people think Puzzle Pirates has great graphics.

GamersInfo.net: Everything you need to see is there in detail. You can have 35 people standing in an area and they will all be individual.

Daniel James: It was a bit of a gamble but essentially it's a question of what do you want to achieve? And for us to achieve what we wanted to, 3D wasn't necessary.

One of the other things we try whenever we do anything is to make it as simplistic as possible because, over-complexity doesn't have any connection with fun. But it does have a connection to un-achievability and by making it simple in 2D we made something that could actually be done with 6 people in 18 months, with 1 more additional year of testing.

To get to a game that was in alpha testing after 18 months with 3 people and then up to 6 is not just because we're brilliant, it's because (they're brilliant, I just wave my hands around) we pick the right battles.

Jon Demos: I'm one of the artists, Rick Keagy is the other. In Daniel's absence, I'm the community manager/forum moderator. I go by Nemo.

GamersInfo.net: For the fish or for the Captain?

Jon Demos: The Captain! There are now 8 of us on staff but we're still rather small so there's actually a lot of creative input from everybody. We all contribute pretty evenly to the creation of the game.

For example when you asked who designed the distillery puzzle, we all sat together one afternoon and designed the distillery together.

GamersInfo.net: Every island is different. Do you design the islands, the buildings? You've got an incredible amount of variety for what honestly, looks like a cartoon?

Jon Demos: We do because many things are very modular: The ships are all made out of pieces. The buildings are individual renders. Every plant is an individual sprite. So each island has a pretty good amount of variation there.

For the new ocean, we had a contest where we gave the scene creating tools to the players and had them design a small set of islands. Then all of the winners of the contest - and those that were good but eeked out during voting - those are all player created and named islands.

GamersInfo.net: How many islands total?

Jon Demos: In Midnight or the new island?

GamersInfo.net: Midnight is the only one I've played on.

Jon Demos: Well, it varies a little from ocean to ocean. These aren't separate shards. A shard has the same landmasses just duplicated. These are completely different oceans with different land masses but basically the same rules. And since the players made all the new islands it's really a cool new place with about 60 new islands.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow!