Q: Howard, how did you first become interested in games?

That’s a bit like asking me, “How did you first become interested in breathing?”

Games are a form of self entertainment. Sports are more of a social entertainment. Now they’re merging together, and social gaming is becoming popular.

As a child, I had severe asthma. So I became interested in self and social entertainment that didn’t require physical exertion. I started with Lego, and then grew interested in board games. For me the fun was in creating them as well as playing them. If I could convince a friend to play a game of my creation with me, I would feel great.

The computer game phenomenon came a few years after that.

Q: What video games interested you first?

I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum system in 1982. The first game that really captivated me was Sabre Wulf by Ultimate, who were the coolest people on the planet as far as I was concerned. There was a great lead character who did five stage sword fighting animation. He would wander around, pickup stuff and do different things. It was graphically good - for the time - and just as importantly, the UI was right for the game.

Of course, if you were to look at it now, you would think, “How simple it looks, how could anyone be immersed?” The game required a great deal of imagination. Now with graphics what they are, you don’t need much imagination to enjoy computer games. In some ways, you don’t commit as much of yourself to a game now - it seems a more mentally passive form of entertainment.

Another early favorite was Elite. It was the very first immersing game. It was a space trading game where you could be the bounty hunter or a trader. You didn’t call yourself that. It was just what you did. You would dock with space stations, travel, trade, fight, explore… Though the goal was to get to “Elite” combat status, the game was much more open ended.

Q: How did you get interested in developing software yourself?

I had my first computer - a Sinclair ZX81 at ten years old. I learned how to do simple things in BASIC like, PRINT “hello”. For me the computer was like Lego, just another open-ended play environment. I just created things out of what I was provided with.

Probably the first “complete” game I wrote was for the Atari ST (entirely as a hobby, back then), a Gladiator style game on a hexagon-based board. It was very much like a board game I had played at school years before. I added sound effects and graphics, and I wrote my own system for making it work. It was very simple, quite silly, full of stupid sounds, and great fun to play.

Meanwhile, David Oakley, the other Co-Founder of Astraware, was doing a higher level of programming. While I was doing this, he was creating a music editing program for writing music. When I was writing in BASIC, he was writing in C and Assembly.

My creativity was largely about ideas, because David was a better at implementing what we discussed into code. We knew each other from age eleven when we were in school together. We stayed in touch through University, and carried on creating shareware - helping to support our Pizza habits.

Q: How did you get started with the Palm OS?

Bzzz!, written in Visual Basic and released for Windows PC, was the first game that made reasonable money for us (meaning a few hundred dollars over a few months). I was a full time teacher and David was a full time web architect. We had reasonably paying jobs, and thought of development simply as a way to buy pizza and software, and flex our creative and intellectual muscles a little.

But in 1997, there was a real turn when David was sent by his company to New York City, where he saw one of the earliest Palm Pilots, the Professional. He bought one of the first ones available in the UK. He spent 300 Pounds on it (about $550)-a lot of money for something essentially for taking notes on and writing addresses. But he thought it was cool, and when he got it home, discovered that he might be able to program for it.

So he converted one of the games that I wrote for PC. Instead of using the buttons you use on the PC, he used the left and right hard buttons. It was playable, and the fact that you could walk around with the game made it fun as well.

Q: What were your first games for the Palm OS?

Our first couple of games were simple clones, but the first that was really properly developed was Zap!, and later Zap!2000 (released on 1st January, 2000). Zap was really our first professional quality game, and was a step between hobby and realizing we could make something out of it-perhaps even a living.

Q: So Zap was really your first professional game?

Yes. Zap was the first game for which we controlled the intellectual property (something that hobbyists don’t always think of!) that was very successful.

The beauty of Zap 2000 was that it took advantage of the developing handheld graphical capabilities at the time. The first of the grey scale Palms - the III, then the iconic Palm V, were available, and it was great to support them.

David kept his Palm V for years - he gave his Palm Professional to my wife as a wedding present. I have a great picture of her in her wedding dress that day, playing games on her new Palm.

Zap 2000 was also the first color game for Palm OS, released when the first color Palm, the IIIc, was available. It showed off the hardware for the Palm IIIc so well that we were noticed by Palm management. When we attended PalmSource conferences, we received a lot of encouragement from their staff, which was fantastic for us!

Q: What was your next big success after Zap?

Bejeweled was the next big one. Like many others, I was addicted to the web version. When David was away doing some contract work, I created a first version over just one weekend, and even though the graphics were very rough back then, and I hadn’t added any sounds the game was brilliant! Over the next few weeks, I sought and received permission from the PopCap, the original developers, to sell it for Palm.

That was the start of a good business - many of their games are really well suited to handhelds and stylus play, being especially fun and simple to learn and play.

Q: Can you give us a sense of how many people played Bejeweled?

A couple of years ago, I worked out an estimate of how long people had spent just playing the handheld version of Bejeweled, based on those who had downloaded and played, and those who had purchased the game.

By my calculation, it has been responsible for wasting two man-lifetimes of time! I expect it is considerably more by now, which is incredible. Most people only manage to waste one lifetime… I’ve already managed this and more!

Of course, games are hardly a complete waste of time - the value in relaxation and enjoyment can be enormously worthwhile - we do get a lot of feedback about how people use Bejeweled to unwind on their commute home, so that they can enjoy their home life properly.

Q: How did Bejeweled become so successful?

The web version was everywhere - a craze being played by half of the world, it seemed. It wasn’t hard for us to get the handheld version noticed!

We got a lot of exposure on the web, and also a lot of interest from manufacturers.

Bejeweled was one we pushed to Sony as something that really worked for their audience for their CLIÉ range. Sony added the game to ROM on the SJ33 - one of their consumer aimed range. That was really a breakthrough for us because it made us successful in markets outside of the United States, including Japan and elsewhere too.

Since then we’ve had lots of games with devices, from Palm and others, Zap!2000 with the Treo 600 and 650, Cubis with the 700w, and the most recent Treo 700p has Bejeweled bundled!

Q: What about Bejeweled 2?

We released Bejeweled 2 at a time when only half the devices on the market could support it. It required High Res, OS5 (and a hefty processor), and a lot of memory. So we knew when it was developed that it potentially excluded much of the existing market. That was a difficult decision to make, but I didn’t want to compromise on the quality of Bejeweled 2. So we continued to give people a choice between Bejeweled and Bejeweled 2.

Even now, when there are very few users of OS4 or earlier devices left, we still get a lot of downloads and sales of the original Bejeweled - definitely that’s one down to personal preference!

Q: After you and David quit your jobs to do this full time, what was your strategy? What is it today?

Initially we didn’t have a written business plan. It was all in our head. We just did what seemed sensible at the time. Since we were hooked into the industry, and attending a lot of Palm and PalmSource events, we were able to make some good decisions. Much of that was down to luck, in hindsight.

I think a business plan would have been helpful to us early on. Occasionally I give talks at a local university on how to create and build a company. I am upfront that we didn’t have a plan, and I talk about how things might have been better had we had one. Clearly it would have helped in some ways.

When we started formulating a more formal strategy around 2002 or 2003. We started looking further ahead. (”There were two paths that you can go down,” as Led Zep wrote - LOL.) In addition to Palm developing, we were tempted to head towards Java for low end handsets, and Symbian for high end devices.

Symbian was touted as the next big thing, and Windows Mobile (or Pocket PC at that time) was not as well developed. We decided to make an effort for Windows Mobile because we felt that, even if Microsoft didn’t get it right immediately, they would not give up and eventually would get it right. We wanted to establish ourselves in that market early.

The decision is starting to pay off. But a few years ago it was quite a difficult one to make. Today Astraware Cubis bundled with the Treo 700w. That would never have happened had we not been planning ahead.

Q: Give us a snap shot of where you are now.

We have just taken on another 3 people - another two developers and an artist. That brings us to 20 people. In terms of pure development, about half the company does that. We also do a lot of publishing for other developers as well.

We have an entire division devoted to customer support. One of the things that I believe really sets us apart is that we always try to treat people right. We have a tremendous amount of repeat customers as a result.

There will always be some people who run into problems with products, and sometimes spam filters will interfere with support communications, so perhaps it’s not possible to be 100% perfect. But in my view the quality of customer support is arguably just as important as the quality of the product itself.

When I was a child, my family’s business was growing and selling flowers and plants in a market store. We would see the same people every week. My father taught me a lot of lessons about how to talk to people, and other “simple things” about running a business. The people who come in and spend 20 pounds at once are not necessarily your real customers. It’s about the people who come every single week, and spend 2 pounds. If you make them happy, you will do well.

I see a lot of similarities between the flower business and my own. Selling flowers and computer games are both ultimately about customer service and cheering people up. About “want” rather than “need”.

Q: What are the new developers you’ve hired going to be doing?

We’re going to be doing more of our own creations, as well as some PC games. We are working on a PC version of Sudoku, which has been very successful for us. People really love the hints we have implemented in the game, and like learning how to find answers and to improve their game.

Lots of companies in the casual games and PC industries are still approaching us to do conversions of their products. We have been doing as many as possible, but we’ve also been working with other teams who work on the development, though we still manage the testing and quality of the game!

Games take a long time to develop these days. With the changes from just having to support one resolution to many, and multiple platforms too, there’s a lot more work that has to go in. In addition to this is the serious testing, which can take a long time, even with our infrastructure. Windows Mobile is adding more resolutions and the combinations we have to test can really stack up!

Q: What are a couple of your favorite Treo games?

I have three games in RAM in my Treo 650 (more on a card, of course) but I can only reveal one of them at this stage: Astraware Sudoku. I play Sudoku a lot.

When people told me in late 2004 that Sudoku was getting popular, they described it to me in a very bleak way. They told me, “Its a grid where you would write in numbers.” That really didn’t sell it to me as a great game concept.

But when you learn what the game is really about, the grid description doesn’t really cover it. In fact, you can get great satisfaction from the deduction involved. I played it on paper for weeks before we started on design. I wanted not just to “implement” it, but to create a version that would really get it right, and allow people to use a handheld to enjoy Sudoku more. And I think we did - the feedback we get is great!

Now my enjoyment is more about learning techniques involved in Sudoku than actually playing. Perhaps this is because we have a feature that allows you to submit your best scores to our website, and so I’ve seen that there are a lot of people out there who are a lot faster than me. I have definitely given up on beating the high scores! But I love contributing on various forums about the algorithms behind it - or about calculating the difficulty of a puzzle. It’s not just about how many of the numbers you are given, but about the number of different techniques you need to employ to win. Some of the higher techniques take quite some brainwork to learn and apply!

Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t use any techniques and simply manage to solve it at great speeds. Naturals :)

I do play a lot of our own titles - Bejeweled 2 and Tradewinds perhaps the most, but since I have them all on an SD card in my 650, I can jump between them.

Q: Are there any games that you didn’t write or publish that you recommend?

I really enjoyed LDW’s Plant Tycoon - simple and fun, and it “hooked” me with coming back to it to tend the plants, and to try to make money as quickly as possible.

As for card games, Red Mercury’s Acid Solitaire is probably the best solitaire on the market. Solitaire fans can be very particular about what they like and don’t like in their Solitaire games, but most tend to find Acid Solitaire good. I’d certainly recommend it (though my colleagues at Astraware will all mention several others with hundreds of variants…)

Q: What characteristics are important in a game?

There are different games for different audiences, but we’ve made a business out of creating and selling games to a PDA audience - perhaps a little more mature than the average PC or console gamer, and almost certainly with less free time to devote to gaming.

Generally I would rather play a game that works brilliantly and feels fun than I would something that is tries to look and behave like reality.

I would say that people want a fun game that they can easily get into and get a sense of enjoyment from, and not a technical demonstration that takes a 200 page manual to understand!

Fundamentally, first person 3D games - like Quake - on handheld devices will always be less immersive than on personal computers. You can’t have a truly immersive experience on a screen that only forms a few percent of your total vision. A reasonable PC display can fill 40% or more of your entire vision and give you an immersive experience that a handheld can’t.

So we don’t focus on the providing the same kind of immersive experiences on handheld devices. We focus on things that make sense for the devices - good UI (best use of stylus and 5-way) - good use of the screen and resources, and of course making it play nicely with the system. When a phone call comes in, for instance, you don’t want to worry about losing your game, so it just saves automatically and exits.

Q: Why do you use a Treo 650?

The text messaging on the Treo is so good that it hurts. I probably have 2 or 3 voice calls on the Treo on two or three days per week. But I trade text messages with my wife many, many times a day. The text messaging just works.

I only recently realized that in the USA you must pay on your data plan to receive text messages… now I realize why texting is unpopular there! In Europe we only pay to send messages - and very little too. People here buy plans with very few voice minutes but many SMS messages per month.

I love the keyboard on this device. The keys are the right shape for me to press with my thumbs. When I press a key I’m pressing just that key but I feel the other ones next to it.

Also, the 650 just works for me. The volume is loud enough. It’s got an SD Card slot. It’s a fantastic product for my needs.

It wasn’t until I deliberately became a Treo user that I understood quite how important five way navigator is. You generally don’t get the stylus out to use the device. You may use it occasionally if you’re a power user. But basically you don’t need it.

This was a fundamental aspect designing Sudoku, that you could navigate the menus and the screen without ever touching the screen.

Treo users expect things to be wirelessly connected. Submit your high score. See where you rank against everyone else on our website. See if there’s a product update available. Purchase it online. It’s a communication device more than a data device.

Q: How do you spend your time outside of work?

I spend a lot of time with my family, some time on games, and a lot of time on music. I’m learning the guitar, and I play the piano. I also love archery. I spend as much time as I can out in the field with my long bow, and now that summer is here that means every weekend and some evenings too.

My left hand has finger tips that are like wood from the strings on guitar, and my right hand finger tips are tough from the string on my bow… And what do I do all day with these leathery fingertips? Type!

Sometimes work and family overlap more directly than just being a reason for working hard! My daughter loves playing games on my Treo. One of the games that will be coming out shortly is designed with her in mind - something intended to keep kids happy on long car journeys, for instance.

Q: What is your favorite music?

I like classical, rock, jazz, and a bit of folk. Mostly my musical influences are classical, favorites being Beethoven and Mahler, but I’ve got quite a varied taste in music. I picked up guitar abut a year ago because I wanted to play “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas (I’m getting there!). I’ve played piano since about age 6, though, so I’m a bit more accomplished there.

Q: Any pets?

No pets at the moment, I’m pretty allergic to animal fur it seems. We used to keep fancy rats for a while - lovely animals, intelligent and affectionate. Now we have children instead, and they’re much harder work…

Related Links

Download Bejeweled 2 for Palm OS / Bejeweled 2 for Windws Mobile

Download Sudoku for Palm OS / Sudoku for Windows Mobile

Download Big Box of Blox for Palm OS / Big Box of Blox for Windows Mobile

Download Chuzzle for Palm OS / Chuzzle for Windows Mobile

Download My Little Tank for Palm OS / My Little Tank for Windows Mobile

Download Super Slyder for Palm OS / Super Slyder for Pocket PC

Browse the Treo accessory store.