Mr. Collins! It is indeed an honor to finally get to interview you! I'm sure you're one of those guys that needs no introduction.. however, corporate politics and red tape dictate that each and every member of the Activision team have an introduction. So could you please offer us yours? Otherwise I will have to file a form detailing your denial to cooperate as outlined by policy 3-4325-345-bn234.

Well, to start with my name is George. I've been at Activision for three years now. About half of that time it has been my pleasure to work on Battlezone.

I'm originally from Northern California (San Francisco), but I came to Los Angeles to go to graduate school. Activision was recruiting at my school and I was just shocked: "You mean I can do this for a living?"

I have loved video games most of my life. I also enjoy programming which I began on a Texas Instruments 99 long ago. I also like cars - buy more Battlezone so that I can get a better one!

Ok, Battlezone has been receiving so much sweet love from the entire world, what do you think of the phenomenal response the gaming community has given to Battlezone?

Of course it is very flattering. Sometimes it is surprising. I was interviewed by a German TV show and they just seemed strange to me. "How does it feel to have made the big new game.." etc. I guess Battlezone made a big impression over there.

There are still so many gamers who don't know much about Battlezone. It seems like people who have tried it like it, but the word still hasn't gotten out to everyone.

Tell us a little about the design process that went into Battlezone.

We started with the physics for the vehicles. The first thing was for it to feel good driving around. We also wanted our vehicles to feel different then any other game. At Activision we had made Mech and I-76 on a similar engine and I knew I wanted a different feel. (And at the time I was playing a lot of Wipeout!)

Once we had a good combat feel we worked on missions and the higher level AI. Making missions was weird because we weren't sure what would work and look good until the game was almost done. So we tried a lot of different things hoping that if something didn't work we would still have a game. I think that's how we ended up with a variety of missions.

Describe to us fans what an "average" design meeting would be like. Let's say if I was to sit in on one, what would I expect to see?

First I put on my kevlar vest..

In most meetings there would be a general idea of the direction we were heading but there is always the possibility for everyone to change their minds about things. Battlezone was a completely collaborative effort with artists, programmers and designers pulling in different directions. Some designers hate that - they go into production with a big design document and expect everybody to follow it. I figure the guys on the team are going to come up with better ideas so I usually let them run with them.

What design issues are you most proud of that made it into Battlezone?

I'm very proud of our physics. It's a subtle thing, but that's design at its best: when you do something so well people don't notice. It feels like there is a real model of an object when a real model would probably would be too tough to control from a first person point of view. I think it's got a nice balance of being controllable yet also requiring some skill.

I'm also really proud of how our reticle works. That's another thing that seems really simple but actually was a very complicated process to get right.

Ok, I'm dying to know... "Cowboy"? Where'd that nickname come from? I'm just curious...

I was born in San Francisco. What are you talking about? What cowboy?

The interface in Battlezone is awesome! Tell us a little about what the original goals were behind the creation of the interface, and also do you think that you achieved these design goals?

Well, Andrew's original concept was action plus strategy. I was tending toward having two interfaces, one for each type of action. That would have made the game more like Uprising I guess.

But a lot of the feedback from the company was that a really new game would keep you on the ground at all times. I had trouble getting my mind around that until I started thinking of the player as the cursor. That's where having fast units helped.

I think Battlezone generally achieved its interface goals.

I know Battlezone went through quite a few incarnations throughout its development. Did it ever feel like you were 'starting over from scratch' or was the development cycle a continual evolution?

Of course.. when we started out we were making a commando game. Then for a bunch of business reasons the game had to be a sim. "Well I guess it will be a hovercraft game", I said. But the reality was that I was so depressed that I didn't bother doing a lot of redesign. It's like that whenever anybody throws out your ideas, you hate to lose them so you go into a funk.

So when we started making the game, some of the internal feedback was asking, "is this a sim or an action game?" People couldn't accept that a sim would have power ups or a on/off throttle. I didn't plan it. It was more that I was thinking Quake and working with I76. I think it is one of the things that made Battlezone an unusual game.

Now, taking a classic game like Battlezone and giving it a fresh coat of paint is not something that many companies would take lightly. Did you feel like you always had something to 'live up to' when making Battlezone?

No. I thought the originalBattlezone was boring to play. What I liked about Battlezone was that the name was cool and that everyone associated it with tanks.

Also, keeping along the same lines, what classic games do you think would be great remakes?

I would do a 3D Joust for free. I also would love to do "Rip Off", an old vector graphics game. Actually, you will probably see some of Rip Off in the next Battlezone... Oops, I'm not supposed to talk about that.

Finally, George, thanks for doing the interview and thanks for making such a great game. In closing, throughout the entire Battlezone experience, what do you think has been the most valuable thing that you have learned?

Oh, that's a toughie..

Maybe that "structures of arrays are faster then arrays of structures." Someone at Intel said that.

Or, when someone wants to change your design say, "That's great, let me think about that." Unless it's the director in which case you let yourself have a nervous breakdown in hopes that he'll end up wishing he'd never made the suggestion.

Or.. when you don't know what you want from someone say, "can you punch this up a little?"