How Sega drafted Demiurge for the frontlines of the match-3 mobile war

Like many other publishers, Sega has been attempting to strengthen its presence in the mobile gaming market. As part of that plan, the house of the blue hedgehog wrapped its arms around longtime support developer, Demiurge Studios, and brought them into the Sega mobile fold.

The majority of Demiurge Studios’ experience comes from working on specific chunks of triple-A projects. The group’s first major splash as primary developer, other than Shoot Many Robots, was Marvel Puzzle Quest. Now, Sega wants to see the studio repeat some of that match-3 success with Puzzle & Glory for iOS and Android devices (which launched yesterday).

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I got a chance to shoot a few questions at Tom Lin, creative director at Demiurge Studios. Together we explore the developer’s past, its transition from a support role to the first string, and the challenge of designing for the overpopulated match-3 genre.

GamesBeat: Demiurge Studios has quite a bit of history. I see your name popping up on a lot of interesting projects: Advent Rising, Aliens: Colonial Marines, BioShock, Mass Effect, Borderlands. …

The studios’ role seems to shift from major porting jobs to adding DLC content. What was Demiurge Studios’ primary focus before the Sega acquisition?

Tom Lin: Demiurge got its start supporting other studios, but we always dreamed of making our own games. When we merged with Sega, we’d shifted firmly into make-our-own games mode and had made the scary decision to stop working on games in a support role. That was a big deal for us — working on projects like BioSshock, Borderlands, and Rock Band is really fun. You learn a ton from super-smart people! But we decided to chase the dream.

GamesBeat: 2012’s Shoot Many Robots appears to be the first fully original IP out of Demiurge Studios. How was that experience versus working on those other projects? Were there any valuable lessons learned?

Lin: Shoot Many Robots was created entirely at Demiurge, and it was a wild ride. The experience was great, but it had plenty of rocky patches. The lessons learned were really valuable.

Often they were things we knew intellectually, but deadlines and budgets make them more real. Probably the biggest lesson was that you can’t schedule when “fun” happens … you need to iterate on it constantly and keep working at it.

Fun is found in the delicate balance of tiny tweaks and changes. It’s fragile.

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GamesBeat: What about Demiurge Studios do you feel has changed after becoming a part of the Sega mobile family?

Lin: When we made Shoot Many Robots, we had to do all this hard stuff that wasn’t really part of making games: dealing with platform holders, making trailers, trying to maintain our Facebook presence, going to PAX. … All of that takes a lot of energy and focus away from making a game great.

Being part of Sega has been an amazing experience. They have talented folks who love doing those parts of the job we’re not great at, so that we can focus in on the stuff that we’re passionate about. It helps that they share our attitude and development philosophies.

GamesBeat: In 2013 the studio took on developing a chapter in the Puzzle Quest series, Marvel Puzzle Quest. How was that experience?

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Lin: Working on Marvel Puzzle Quest was one of my favorite times at Demiurge. For the first time in a long time, the entire studio was working on the same project, and it really showed in how fast the game came together, and how much fun we had in the process. We continue to pour lots of love into that game — the second anniversary is coming up! — and we think it shows.

GamesBeat: Now we have Puzzle & Glory, which looks incredibly similar to the Puzzle Quest series. Is this a part of the Puzzle Quest franchise or is it its own thing?

Lin: Puzzle & Glory is its own thing. We look at Puzzle & Glory like you might compare Halo to Call of Duty. Sure, they’re both FPSes [first-person shooters]. But the pace is different. The theme is different. The leveling system is different. How the game makes you feel … powerful, weak, scared … your sense of place in the world … the writing … do I need to go on?

GamesBeat: I’m going to be brutally honest here, as opposed to just honest: If there is one thing the world isn’t short of, it’s match-3 games. Especially the Tetris Attack model of match-3, where the player is fishing for combos based off of how the field drops vertically. I take it these games in this subgenre do well, otherwise you guys wouldn’t be working on them in 2015, right?

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Lin: There are plenty of match-3 games, yep! We view match-3 as the activity for the game, like shooting is the activity in Call of Duty. We think there are plenty of unique games and experiences that can be built around this activity.

GamesBeat: When a designer looks at a genre and tells me, “Well, it’s all been done! There’s only so much someone can do with ‘X’!” My first reaction is that I’m hearing a creative person that isn’t willing to be, well, creative. I think there is always room to innovate. So as designers, Demiurge Studios walks into Marvel Puzzle Quest and Puzzle & Glory, and there has to be this moment of, “Well, shit! What do we do here that hasn’t been done before?” What was that moment like on these match-3 projects?

Lin: What you’re describing is actually an incredibly rare opportunity: doing something new is what designers got in the business to do! Designers will cage fight each other for that opportunity.

Our new twist on the match-3 concept was a big departure from the original Puzzle Quest’s combat formula. Where that game had 1-on-1 matches, you versus a baddie, we changed it to 3-on-3. This gave us a huge, huge amount of strategic depth and tons of new design challenges to solve. For example, the simple question of, “Who should take damage when a match is made?” One guy, or the whole team? Should the team split the damage? Should I get to pick which enemy takes damage? Should it depend on who’s fighting? Maybe on whether you combo match?

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We love those challenges. We hope we found the right answer, and if you haven’t even considered the question, that means we did our job right.