The project has now reached its final stages, and at eGames this year we had the chance to play the game and speak with Zac Duff. The game is essentially one of micromanagement: viewed from a top-down perspective, players answer the phone to receive tasks from higher-ups and move around the office space to complete them in time. This is all while keeping an eye on your bladder, levels of sleep deprivation and technical breakdowns in the office. Combine this with the need to earn a certain amount of money within a time limit and Office Wars becomes very hectic very quickly. The game has a certain charm not present in many big-budget blockbusters: it might not be perfect, but it has a wonderfully cheeky tone about it and surprisingly manages to poke fun at office-work while somehow making it fun at the same time.
Duff is enthusiastic about his time at Infinite Interactive, and notes the freedom he and Randall were given with Office Wars. "It’s been an awesome three months. Basically we were given licenses to pretty much to do as we pleased for the whole time because Infinite didn’t have enough staff to put on to it, so Tim and myself, the other intern, basically were thrown in the deep end and we had to work on it, and it’s been the best experience."
The 'deep end' approach isn’t one that many would expect to provide results, but Duff and Randall quickly learnt to swim rather than sink. "I think Tim and I both came in knowing what we could do, but not really sure how it would hold up. Just seeing after the first month we realised that we could actually do a really good job with it and in terms of presenting it really nicely we could do that. That gave us a big incentive to do well with it, so it looks a lot better than I thought it would."
A still from the Office Wars trailer, available at the ABC Good Game website.
Of course, Office Wars isn’t your average game, and Duff and Randall aren’t your average interns. The time-span for the creation of the game, for one thing, was minute compared to other A-list videogames, and that had practical effects on the outcome: "We had three months to do it. We wanted to give it more RPG aspects, we planned on having leveling up, and we’ve got leveling up music in there, but it’s in the credits scene! We had plans for it to have a bit more happening after you play it, and your actions could be rewarded with skill points and things like that, but in the end we really just didn’t have the time. We were developing this up until Friday morning [this interview was conducted on Saturday], so it’s hot off the press."
Creative control was something that Duff and Randall seemingly had to grapple with throughout development. Despite being given huge responsibilities over the game, the two were initially cautious in their dealings with the ideas put forth by the Good Game community: "At first Tim and I were a touch hesitant at the idea of the office environment, we didn’t know how we’d work making it fun, and making it look like it would be fun, because offices can be pretty drab places. So in the end we started out originally having very sterile looking and realistic looking things. I was doing the concept work at the start and I’m just drawing all these boring chairs and stuff, and I thought it was pretty crap. Then we sat down and we decided we were going to we thought the basement level should look like a dungeon, like it should be this kind of lair feeling to it, and we really went out there with all the things. I mean, we’ve got a brick for a pillow on the bed, and basically just the stupidest thing we could think of we put in it, so that visually it didn’t feel like it was just a sterile office."
The pair of interns, having survived their baptism of fire in the videogame industry, now have bright futures awaiting them (to be revealed in an upcoming episode of Good Game - we wouldn’t want to completely spoil this plot for ardent viewers of the program). Only one thing now remains: the reviews. At the suggestion that Bajo and Junglist of Good Game will review it with their trademark uncompromising style, Duff suddenly turns nervous for the first time in our conversation. "It's nice seeing other people’s reactions but I’ve got to the stage where I don’t know if it’s a good game or not, I’m just so used to it. So seeing other people play it, and it being looked at critically is a bit daunting, but it’s kind of exciting!"
Office Wars will be released as a downloadable title on the ABC website within the next two weeks.
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