Interviews

Artix’s Adam Bohn talks about the world of browser-based gaming
By Michael Lafferty

“Words cannot express the feeling that you get after a successful release”

The gaming industry is much more than merely what one sees released on the next-generation consoles, or even on a disc you pop into your desktop. There is a whole genre out there that is browser based and offers players solid entertainment value without having to worry about system upgrades.  

Browser-based gaming usually requires the latest Flash plug-in but enables players to leap in and enjoy with minimal effort. Artix Entertainment is a company that specializes on this type of game. The company currently has three titles in release – AdventureQuest, DragonFable and MechQuest. Each week the games are expanded with new quests, weapons, spells, monsters, mechs (where applicable), storylines and special events tied to the season. And the dev team listens to its community and is not above making changes to the games to deliver experiences the player base wants.

GameZone wanted to know a little more about the company and its titles and Adam Bohn (the founder of Artix) was kind enough to take some time to chat with GZ.

Question: Artix is a family-owned business. How did it get started and which members of the family are involved? How many total employees does Artix have?

Adam: Great question! I wrote the first version of AdventureQuest in my spare time. It has always been my dream to make a game.... after many, many, many, many, many failed attempts....

I made this one in 7th grade:

and I made this one ...

with Warlic in 9th Grade... a good while later we made much better looking ones... AQ almost ended up looking like this: 

and then if not for bandwidth problems it would have looked like this ...

... there are a few thousand game corpses haunting a old rotting box in my garage. It was the one thing that I really wanted to accomplish in my life, no matter how simple a game it was. It turned out even simple games are very complex! Art, animation, programming, databases, server side code, legal-stuff, and the occasional cyborg mutant ninja ... but <reads up> whoops, you were asking how big the company is!

When AdventureQuest was first uploaded to the Web, a lot of great people came to play it. It was a small community so it was easy to turn ideas into reality. We were completely unprepared for the game growing at the speed it did. We had 10,000 players and hourly server crashes before we could blink.

(Note: We have over 50,000,000 registered accounts now) We played hot-ISP-potato as our bandwidth bills skyrocketed and we were forced to get a dedicated server and ask the players to help us pay to keep the game online. One server became two ... three ... 10 .... 20 .... 30 (This is where the muppet vampire goes, "Thirty servers *thunder* HAHAHAHA!") My father and mother were the best kept secret to our growth and staying-power of the games. Both of them ran successful businesses and brought their skills and knowledge to show us how to make this work. Galanoth, who was my best friend and fellow RA from college came to help me develop AdventureQuest, and a whole bunch of very talented creative people that we met through the game itself came together to form ... THE TEAM!

(But, um ... yes ... Mom is the accountant. If asking for allowance was rough when I was a kid imagine now! "<Older and supposedly more mature Artix> "Mother, may I allocate some funds to purchase a new server rack to federate the database?" <moment of silence> "Ask your father, dear.")

I should note that my Mother does not talk like that at all. They are both very serious, black suit, New-York style business elites. When I was little playing with my friends around the dining room table my Father would come home and ask what we were doing. Then he would ask if we wanted to start a business and would suggest an appropriate business model in his ever-serious tone. 

Our staff is made up of the 18 of us here in the ########### (known as the secret underground lab to the players) and 15 team members who are equally important but work remotely. Every member of the team does multiple jobs and not even our financial controller is above plunging the secret underground potty. In addition to creating and running the three main games, mini-games, ezone, newsletters and our upcoming 4th (super secret) project ... we also started a rock band (Warlic, Zhoom, Cysero, Safiria and myself) which has left one of our rooms looking like a music store exploded in there. We also got a green-screen and hope to make a zombie movie within the next three years. More important than all of the above, is our amazing volunteer community staff that has risen up to make our forums a fun and safe place to spend time. 

Q: With the competitive world of making games, how did the company decide to concentrate on browser-based titles?

Adam: Games are really competitive now. But back then, the goal was simply to make a game. My girlfriend at the time would not let me play any MMOs (she was wise beyond her years) and I was using Flash to create Web sites at the time. That was the catalyst. Galanoth learned how to draw and animate in flash within two weeks when he began helping expand AdventureQuest. Then we found creative powerhouses like Arklen, J6, Hollow, Ghost, Thyton, Miltonius (I wish I had to time list everyone!) who really brought the games to life with their original art and animation. Not to mention the extremely talented programmers ... notably Captain Rhubarb and Zhoom who built everything from scratch. We know a lot of our competitors are translating games from other countries and importing them. It is tough to compete with huge budget projects but we are very proud of our work. and everyone is deeply emotionally invested in the games they work on. The browser has been a good place for us because we are able to update the game instantly and build things quickly! 

Q: What titles do you have out and to whom do you think they will cater?

Adam: We have three games:

AdventureQuest which is a battle-focused RPG full of monsters, magic, weapons, armors and an ongoing storyline. Players can create a free account and then make characters to adventure with. The game contains a lot of our history... some VERY old art lives side by side with the new cutting edge art we have created. It is an anything goes crazy game that has grown rapidly with over 1,000 unique monsters and an uncountable number of weapons (Some of the more rare ones have specials that can cause them to fly out of your hand and do special attacks or even summon other monsters to come aid you.)

DragonFable takes place 5 years before AdventureQuest. It is also a RPG, but features more involved gameplay (3vs3 battles, walk-around and explore, mini-games) with a focus on obtaining your own Dragon in the main storyline where you race to collect elemental orbs before the evil DeathKnight Sepulchure does. The engine was one of the most complicated things we have ever created and at the time, was a pretty bold move for a flash project. We were scared that DragonFable would cannibalize AdventureQuest ... but we were shocked to find out how much people liked and play both games!

MechQuest takes place 5,000 years BEFORE AdventureQuest (or 4,995 years before DragonFable). It is a fantasy giant armed to the teeth Mecha game were you pilot giant robots and soon will be able to explore the vast reaches of the universe. For a Mecha game it is very bizarre.... delivering pizza, catching ghosts, helping the police bust the notorious were-wolf biker gang. You can earn and customize many models of Mecha and take classes at GEARS University (12% survival rate guaranteed!). 

Our games are suitable for players of all ages (You must be 13 or older, or have a parent sign up for you, to create an account.) We do not have any bad words or anything inappropriate in the games (Well, we did use the word dingleberry once... is the word dingleberry inappropriate?) and strive to create a fun and safe place to play. 

Q: What determining factors do you consider when starting a project to decide if it would be viable? How long, typically, does it take to create a game?

Adam: That is a very interesting question! We do not have any investors nor bosses (except the players) so we are free to build anything we think is fun or cool. We are starting to get more organized now, but DragonFable was built off a design document (at least that is what we called it) that was a sketch on a torn page from my notebook. We did build MechQuest in three months (We told the players we were going to release in October because I think it is good to set a time goal or you do not know how long you have to procrastinate.) But releasing a game does not mean it is done for us. In fact, we release the games as a "starting point" and develop from there.

When a player upgrades their account they are literally funding the team to continue working on the game and make it better every week. So far, all three games have been hits and the teams have grown to handle the growth ... although, the holidays are CRAZY! We did over 5 releases every week for two weeks during the December of last year. The most difficult challenge is that we want to build so many new things but there are only so many hours in the week to accomplish them. 

Q: What do you think you bring to the industry and what sets your games apart from others? What do you think makes for compelling or entertaining games and how do your titles fit that bill?

Adam: The players say a lot of things about our games ... our PG ratings prevent us from saying those here, but the ones who like it enjoy the completely random humor and bizarreness mixed with new things we add each week. It is a casual game and does not require the time investment that major MMOs do. Our art is very distinct and our file sizes are small making it easy to play and battle monsters. Our team has an open ear to the forums and we create and change things often based on player reaction. Actually ... each week on Monday we ask, "What are we building this week." The answer normally comes from a forum suggestion. I think AdventureQuest has been online and strong with continual growth for the past five years because the weekly releases keep the game fresh, new, and exciting. The major MMOs release a major content expansion every couple of months and the players go through that pretty quickly. We deliver more bite sizes fun! (Especially when Vampires are involved)

Q: What has been the biggest joy from this experience thus far?

Adam: Every morning when I get out of bed I am grateful that we have so many incredible players who have allowed the team and I to continue building the games for them. Words cannot express the feeling that you get after a successful release when the forums light up with awe and excitement. For us, it is like working hard on a present all week, and getting to see everyone's faces when they open it up to look inside!