3/17/2000

Makegames.com

Interviews

Scott Le Grande and Stephanie Wukowitz


Scott Le Grande and Stephanie Wukowitz are members of the team that recently released the game Battlesphere for the Jaguar. They decided to donate all the profits of the game to charity. The first copy, signed by the authors, sold on ebay for $1,575.00. In this interview, Scott and Stephanie talk about their game.

 

Makegames: Who are the members of your team, and how long have you been working together?

Stephanie: There are three of us:

Scott Le Grand Lead coder, game designer
Doug Engel Artist, network coder
Stephanie Wukovitz Musician, coder

We all assumed many additional roles in promoting and producing the game, of course, as with any small team.

Scott and Doug met in middle school where they competed with other friends to see who could write the coolest videogames.

Scott and I met on Usenet when we were both at Penn State in 1990 -- on psu.flame, though I'd answered his math questions online too, before.

Scott: Scatologic is a triad composed of myself, (Scott Le Grand), Doug Engel, and Stephanie Wukovitz. Doug and I have been writing games together for over 20 years and I co-opted Stephanie into the creative process about 7 years ago.

Makegames: What kind of game is BattleSphere, and what platforms does it support?

Scott: BattleSphere is a cross between 3D space sims like Wing Commander and Freespace and the old mainframe Star Trek games of the 1960s and 1970s. It currently only runs on the Atari Jaguar, but we've made tentative steps towards a platform-independent OpenGL-based edition.

Stephanie: In addition, it networks up to 16 consoles and 32 players with a variety of play modes. All three of us would love to bring the game to a modern platform!

Makegames: What kind of market did you perceive for this game?
Has the market changed since you started working on it?

Scott: Back in 1993, we thought there was a huge hole in the market for this sort of game. A lot of gamers and game magazine editors agreed with us. Interactive Magic tried to plug it with _Star Rangers_, but that was a very disappointing product and I think it may have scared anyone else off from trying. More recently, I think the release of _HomeWorld_ might spur another mainstream attempt. The hole's still there. Unfortunately, since this game is not an example of a recently successful genre, it's hard to convince a suit to take a chance with it.

Stephanie: We do know a lot of people who'd otherwise given up on the Jaguar who have kept one or two in anticipation of this game -- which probably does say a lot about this hole in the market.

Makegames: What prompted your decision to give the profits of this game to charity?

Stephanie: Don Thomas (http://www.icwhen.com) has a real love for classic games and good gameplay in general, and he's always been supportive of our efforts. At one point he suggested we give away our profits, and we thought it was a great idea. I've been diabetic from the age of 4, so donating the profits to support diabetes research seemed perfect.

Scott: In the wake of Columbine, we were wondering how to negate some of the scapegoating of video games that arose from the aftermath. Don's suggestion fit nicely with this, and the rest is history.

Makegames: What do you plan to do next?

Scott: We have a lot of choices. We're working on a few stealth technology projects and we also have the option of porting BattleSphere to modern hardware or completing a puzzle game we designed a few years ago that made Nolan Bushnell's eyes bug out when he first saw it. We're also working with a really cool new technology at our day jobs. Time will tell what comes from us next.

Stephanie: As Scott mentioned, there are a number of things we could do next, all of them incredibly interesting and not even all game-related. In addition, I spend a lot of time on music and audio, and plan to continue doing so since I'd like to score films (as well as videogames).

Makegames: What is it like being a female game developer?

Stephanie: As far as Battle Sphere was concerned, Scott and I had been dating for almost four years (married in 1997) when it began and I was the closest available musically- and technically- inclined person -- in that respect, being female DID matter. Aside from that, I can't think of a time when it made a difference as we worked together. Neither Scott nor Doug lets ego get in the way of listening to an expert opinion (on math, for instance) just because it happened to come from me.

As far as trade shows and conferences go, I've seen a *real* change in attitude over the past few years, mostly in others' body language. I'll admit that it's REALLY funny the first few times you shock someone who's clearly pegged you as an oddly dressed "booth bunny" (until you opened your mouth!) but it gets old quickly. I'm glad that's changing in general! It still feels odd to mingle with the game music crowd but I'm sure that this, too, will change in time.

People have commented that my composing style is "very different" but I don't think that's a "female thing" so much as a "left-handed thing" or maybe even a "spent too long getting math degrees thing." :-)

 

To learn more about BattleSphere, visit these websites:
http://www.battlesphere.com
http://www.scatologic.com

Doug Engel's web page is here

You can contact Scott and Stephanie by email:
Stephanie Wukovitz
Scott LeGrand

Thank you, Scott and Stephanie, for your good work on behalf of charity, and for granting this interview with Makegames.com!

Screenshot from BattleSphere

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