Michael Cranford Interview

Some of my earliest video game memories include an excessive amount of time in front of Interplay’s The Bard’s Tale series, so it’s with much nostalgic glee that I read through this interview with veteran CRPG designer Michael Cranford over at RPG Codex regarding the development of the classic series, his business relationship with Brian Fargo in the early days, where he’d be today if he had stayed in video game development, and more. Great stuff, all around:

How did your idea to, as you put it elsewhere, “blow Wizardry away” originate? In what ways did you intend your games to be different from Wizardry from a design standpoint?

I loved the game, and spent many long hours playing it in my apartment in Berkeley. As a programmer, the limitations of the game were obvious to me (largely a result of the fact that it was programmed in Pascal on a computer with 48K of memory). I had already begun to develop videos games in assembly language, and it struck me that I could provide a much bigger, more graphical, memory-efficient, and detailed game than Wizardry. While I couldn’t then play and enjoy it myself, I knew that I would reach and enthrall tens or hundreds of thousands of people like me, if I did build something better.

I’ve also been an artist and writer most of my life, and an avid reader of fantasy fiction, and I had previously created and illustrated numerous D&D dungeons (for friends, nothing that was ever published). I knew that I could develop a plot for the game that was going to be more interesting than simply locating and finding a sword with a higher hit and damage rating.

I had a vision for abandoning Wizardry’s wireframe corridors and introducing framed animation of textured walls that moved toward you (a pseudo-3D effect). I wanted a world that looked more real than Wizardry’s. That was my primary design departure. I also wanted more magic involved in the game; hack and slash wasn’t as interesting to me.

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When entering the stables in Bard’s Tale I, we are told that the horses have been eaten by monsters. Was it intended at any time during the development of BT1 to implement the purchasing of horses to perhaps exit the city of Skara Brae after Mangar’s spell of eternal winter was destroyed? Or was there ever to be any plot or additional dungeons or secret passages involving the stables?

I don’t remember this, no. Everything was pretty much a closed box at the time, the platform was so limited, and there wasn’t an internet, to speak of. BT2 wasn’t a thought in my mind yet, and there wasn’t an obvious way to extend the game (as there would be now, in an online RPG). My guess is that this was just a plot twist or a shortcut so that we didn’t have to come up with a horse animation. BT1 was almost entirely my plot. We had a consultant but his ideas were pretty silly, and we abandoned almost all of them. On BT2 there was some input, as a result of my dungeon editor.’‹

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There is a story (I don’t know to what extent it is true) told by (Burger) Heineman as well as by Brian Fargo about how you held the Bard’s Tale floppy disk hostage in order to make Fargo change the terms of the deal between you and Interplay. Could you tell us your side of that story, if you feel like talking about it?

Well, first off, Heineman wouldn’t know anything about it, except perhaps what Brian might have told him. He was a quirky guy who sat in the corner of the office and had no role in the business operation of the company. Everything that happened was between me and Brian; there was no one else ever present.

When I first came to work at Interplay, I already had a game concept and a working prototype that looked like Wizardry. I built it when I was at Berkeley. I was debating if I should even show it to Brian, rather than just going to Brøderbund or EA or Activision on my own. Brian was a high school friend, so I decided to trust him with it, and I showed it to him. He said he could sell it, and we had a vague verbal understanding of what I would receive. I threw out some numbers and he was positive and agreeable. There were no written terms of any kind. I was a young guy without business experience, and Brian was my friend. It never occurred to me that I might be making a mistake.

Late in the development, I realized I had made one. I had a couple nights where I couldn’t get to sleep, I was so anxious. I was not in a position to enforce our verbal understanding, and I realized that I could have easily brought this to EA on my own. It was sold based on the prototype. I had built every part of the game single handedly, with the exception of composing the music. (My friend Larry Holland did that.)

When the game was nearly done (or maybe entirely done, actually; hard to remember now), Brian produced a contract. I do remember asking for it a number of times and feeling like I was being stalled. I had no idea what he was going to put in it. My memory is not spot-on from 28 years ago, so I am only speaking in general terms. If I am getting any part of this out of order, it’s not intentional. The rest of it is accurate.

The contract (in its initial version) offered me a fraction of what I was expecting, and there were some conditions that would limit my earnings. I talked it through with my friend’s dad, who was the CEO of a large civil engineering firm; he thought it was unacceptable, and urged me to hire an attorney. We ended up spending a significant amount of time negotiating, and in the final equation, I think both of us thought the resulting deal was unfair. I have no doubt that Brian was doing what he thought was right, and that he felt that what he offered me was reasonable. There was a lot of emotion at the time, on my part, but he is a good guy and a smart businessman. I have no resentment against him; I’m just frustrated I wasn’t smarter about all this. I heard his rationale in this very clearly at the time, and I understood where he was coming from. If the deal that we agreed on was presented at the beginning of the process, however, I would not have brought this to him at all.

Now, this story that I held a disk hostage to extort someone that didn’t happen, I would never do that. Sitting on the source code until the deal I was promised was finally put in writing and honored that is possible. I honestly can’t remember. But again, there was no pressure to change any terms. The deal I ended up accepting was not what I understood I would get, and not what I would have agreed to if I had. I am a person of my word. I didn’t make very much money from these games.’‹’‹