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 Features
Postmortem: Blue Fang's Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania
 My Publisher, My Friend…
What can I say… we have a great relationship with Microsoft. We communicated regularly with the Microsoft project team assigned to the Zoo Tycoon 2 franchise and they’d travel out to see us every few months. When they came out to visit us, we’d spend a couple of days together covering a lot of ground. From reviewing the current build to going over design plans to looking ahead to upcoming milestones to reassessing our priorities, the time we spent with them both in person and in dialoging via phone and email really paid off with both parties being on the same page about product decisions.
Through our relationship with Microsoft, we were able to participate in some early usability testing on some of the new features. The first test was done on features that were incredibly rough, missing almost the entire context and player feedback that was planned in the final feature. But the information that we learned from observing that test not only helped reaffirm that the things we were planning to do were going to be critical to the success of the feature, it also helped us identify new ideas to help make things more appealing to our end users and deliver them an even higher level of polish.
Sunken pirate ship concept art
Throughout Marine we felt like we were working with a helpful partner. We received timely feedback from the MS project team and we were able to discuss our thoughts and ideas with them openly and freely. After all, we all had the same goals for Marine… to become recognized and respected as the best marine-themed builder/tycoon game released to date!
Cool Results!
We made a lot of technical improvements during Marine and introduced some significantly new features into the Zoo Tycoon 2 engine. And it wasn’t always (ever?) easy. After all, we were building on a code base that was started in 2002 and that had continued to grow with the addition of two expansion packs prior to Marine. In many cases we encountered challenges that we hadn’t quite anticipated…similar to what you might experience when you take on a home renovation.
But the efforts paid off. We added dramatic real-time shadows, new glitzy water and cool water effects, awesome new audio (both FX and music) and of course a whole host of new gameplay features.
So why is this part of what went right? It was fantastic motivation and inspiration for us every time some new feature became live. Everything from the look of the game to the feel of the game just kept getting better and even our skeptics got more and more pumped as things came together.
The ship, as it appears in-game
The… <drumroll please>… TEAM
OK, this is sort of obvious. No team, no product. But the Marine team really stepped up to achieve a lot of game over a relatively quick development cycle.
They communicated well with each other, and with me and the leads, and ultimately played a huge role in every process and product refinement that was made along the way. Their feedback and input let us make better decisions, their attitudes were helpful and positive, team members went above and beyond to help out in as many areas as possible and they persevered through any of the tough challenges we encountered.
For many years now I’ve been a huge proponent for importance of the team itself to the success of any development experience and Marine just adds more fuel to my fire for how true that is. Teamwork is an essential part of game development and a team’s performance often means the difference between a project’s success and failure. I consider Marine a resounding success!
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