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18/03/2002 Interview with Scott Corley of Red Mercury
When was Red Mercury founded and how many people work within the company?
Red Mercury was founded in November 1999. Prior to Red Mercury, I ran the software department at a console game development house. We were doing Playstation and Nintendo 64 games. That company released three of its biggest titles in August of 1999 - Playstation, N64 and Windows titles. Strangely, I realized that my Playstation and N64 were gathering dust at home. The only game I played regularly was Galax on my Palm III. I realized I didn't want to sit in my living room in front of the TV playing games. Maybe this is a symptom of getting older. I can't justify four hours in front of my TV, but if I'm on an airplane, or maybe if I can't sleep at night, I'll play a game on my Palm. So, now you know not only when Red Mercury was founded, but a bit of the why as well.
What was the reason for your early adoption of the Clie’s advanced features in your programs?
The choice to adopt the features of the Clie is very much rooted in my own history of console game development. On a video game console, you typically have a mediocre CPU surrounded by pretty good graphics and sound chips, and a pretty good display device (your TV). To get anything close to a great game, you have to max out every chip in the machine. When the Clie N710C came out in the US, it looked a bit like a game console to me. A mediocre CPU with an accelerated graphics chip and a high res display. Now, with the T615C, you've got the sound chip in there as well. So, it was kind of instinctual. Something in my brain is wired with this "max out every chip in the machine" idea. There is a funny part to this story. When I left the console game scene to work on Palm OS, I thought it would be easier to keep up with the Palm OS hardware. Traditional video game consoles (Playstation 2, GameCube, etc.) are radically different every 5 or 6 years, and when you have three major competitors in the game console market staggering their hardware releases, you end up with new hardware every other year pretty much. On the PC, you've got new 3D cards coming out every 6 months. That pace of hardware innovation is difficult to deal with on the software side. So, part of me thought the Palm OS hardware scene would be a bit more serene and tranquil. For a while I was right. Then Sony comes along. I'm sure your readers follow these things pretty closely... Sony has released new hardware at the rate of one new design each month since June of 2001. And it's not like they just changed the shape of the device or changed its model number. To the Palm hardware mix they've added high res color screens, high res grayscale screens, hardware graphics acceleration, FM and PCM audio, MP3 audio, and now in Japan they've got 320x480 screens with a built-in camera!! And jog dial, memory stick, high powered infra red, what else am I missing? Anyway, you can probably see the irony here for somebody who thought that the hardware would stay fairly tame. I don't need to point these things out to your readers, they already know what's going on with the hardware. It's the rapidity of the changes that is mind boggling here. The pace of change in the console game industry looks absolutely leisurely compared to this. But, to wrap that diversion back to the question at hand... It's a hell of a lot of fun to have all of these funky features to play around with.
Which PDA do you use and why?
I still use my Palm V. Not even a Vx. Now, of course Red Mercury has to own almost every model of Palm OS device, because people will write in to tech support with a peculiar bug, and they'll claim that it didn't happen on their old Palm, but their new NXVR192CV has problems. So, we have to go out and get the NXVR192CV, and usually it's not a problem with that particular device at all, it was a conflict with some hack the guy installed. So just before the NXVR192CV gets packed up to go back to the store, I'll think, hey, that's a pretty cool device. So it gets thrown on the pile. I use my Palm V because I used to have a wireless modem clipped on to it. I would check my email on the road, and respond using Graffiti. That got to be a huge pain, so I ditched the wireless modem. My next day to day unit will be a color high-res device that can handle my email needs, maybe with a keyboard of some sort. There may be a bluetooth / cell phone solution in my future. We'll see. To demo Red Mercury titles, I've been using the T615C lately. It's a physically better looking unit than the N7x0 series, and it's high resolution, has nice audio, etc. So it's about the best possible unit to demo Red Mercury games on right now.
Do you have new programs in development and can you give a hint as to what they may be?
Right now we are concentrating on AcidImage. There are some cool features in the works for AI that we need to get out the door. There are always new ideas in the works. Most of them are games. But, Red Mercury has a pretty conservative policy on releasing titles. You can see we've been in business for two and a half years and only have five pieces of software out. A lot of things never get released. We developed a game in 2000, a two-player game that can be played over infrared or a wireless connection (e.g. bluetooth). It is a really cool game, but you have to understand that 2000 was the year of wireless hype. I mean, I was convinced that everything including my dog would have wireless something on it by the end of 2000. And now it's 2002 and we're just starting to see bluetooth get rolling. So basically the game was shelved. This was before high-res screens. So now, to get the game out, it would take somewhat of an overhaul, and some game play balancing, etc. It could be done, but the point is, we can't talk about what is in the works, because it may never see the light of day. We'll have to follow Sony's lead on this one. It doesn't do much good to generate hype before something is released. The goal is to release something good enough that it will generate hype on its own when it is actually available to end users.
What Red Mercury program are you most proud of and why? How long did it take to develop from start to finish?
I'll take the second question first. All of the Red Mercury titles share quite a bit of code. So, for each release, we are able to do something a bit more complex, because we're standing on the shoulders of the previous releases. You can see some of this in AcidSolitaire and AcidImage. A lot of the technology for dealing with full screen images was developed in AcidSolitaire. The entire AcidImage product (our first non-game product) evolved out of the fact that AcidSolitaire essentially had an image viewer built in to it. So, the thought was, "Hey, we could turn this into an image viewer over a weekend!" Of course, it took many months to turn AcidImage in to a real competitor. It might be better to just look at the overall rate of releases. Five titles in 30 months, six months per app? Something like that. The reality is a bit more skewed. Also, almost every app has undergone a major overhaul to add new features, support high-res, etc. and that takes time. These major overhauls have always been free upgrades. I kind of like that. As for which Red Mercury app I am most proud of... I think it would have to come down to AcidFreecell. This was Red Mercury's first release, and if it weren't for the positive response of the first AcidFreecell fans, Red Mercury would not exist. Version 1.0 was grayscale only (this was pre-Palm IIIc), it had tiny numbers on the cards that only I could read, and it didn't even have drag and drop capability - you had to tap a card, and then tap its destination. But it struck a chord with a lot of users, and they all started feeding back their suggestions. "Love the game, but make the numbers larger, I am getting a headache." etc. That was my first introduction to the Palm user community as well. It was quite pleasant. So, to pick one app out of them all, AcidFreecell would be it, because without AcidFreecell, there would be nothing else.
Which Red Mercury program has been the most successful? Why do you think it was so popular?
Well I can't really talk about what is the most popular or successful product, because then a certain US based company will go fund another developer to create a directly competetive product and promote the hell out of it, leaving me broke and homeless. But judging from the response of our users, all of our products are pretty well received. There is a reason for this. Red Mercury takes a methodical approach to developing software. First of all, these are commercial products. I consider them to be shrink-wrap quality. What I mean by that is if you go download version 1.0, it should meet your expectations and be worth the money, just as if you had grabbed a shrink-wrapped box of software off the shelf of a store. The way we get to that level is by doing intensive beta testing. Our testing lasts for a minimum of four weeks on a product and often goes to two months. That is probably longer than the entire development cycle of some Palm OS titles. But like I said in Question 5, I have had a great experience with the Palm user community. The beta testers have been exceptional. At the start of the beta test, we say "Tell us what you think - WE CAN TAKE IT". And so they do. Usually, the first week of the beta test is horrible. We'll have 80 or more people testing a product, and 60 of them will email back a list of complaints, missing features, bugs, etc. At first it is demoralizing. But, it always happens. I have to constantly remind myself, "the first beta version of product X also sucked." With the first beta release, the product is 95% there. But that last 5 percent is what separates the good products from the bad. The beta test goes on until the beta testers really have nothing else to complain about. You can tell when it's over, beta testers start sending in really off the wall feature ideas, or else they just say "release it already!!!" And at that point we know we have a good product.
Who will become dominant in your opinion- Palm OS or MS Pocket PC and why?
I would rephrase the question - what will become dominant, Palm OS, Pocket PC, or something else? I get asked this question a lot, and I give a lot of different answers. That's a good indication that I just don't have any idea. But "I don't know" isn't a very interesting answer, so let's see what my response sounds like today. I usually say something like, "well, we'll support whatever platform becomes dominant." This is true of all software developers. If one platform falls off in popularity to the point that software developers can't make money developing for it, the developers will go elsewhere. That's not rocket science. But it's a vastly simplified answer. It assumes that if one platform loses popularity, only one platform will take its place as the dominant platform. So, what happens if two platforms take over? Or five? The thing about PDAs is that most normal people probably upgrade every few years. Like I said, I'm still using my Palm V. But people upgrade cell phones like mad. They typically get the phone for free or very inexpensively due to subsidies, then they get annoyed with their service provider or get a better offer, and they switch service. Now, here in the US, as you probably know, the cell phone system is crazy. If you switch carriers, you have to switch phones physically. If I take my Sprint PCS phone in to a Cingular shop and say "Give me service", they'll throw my Sprint phone in the trash. There is a similar thing going on with GSM phones, where the phone hardware is physically locked for a time period, so that the phone company can make back its subsidy. But the point is, people are pouring monthly fees in to these phones, those fees are purchasing new phone hardware all the time via subsidies, and people don't really have a problem with this setup. Now, cell phones get more complex as time goes on. They get better screens, more memory, and better CPUs. Right now, I have a bunch of phone numbers stored on my cell phone. In fact my cell phone number list is more up to date than my Palm V phone number list. Note that I didn't consciously choose to do this. It just happened. One day, I looked at the two devices, and realized that the phone had usurped one of the functions of my Palm. The next time I change phone service, I may find myself with a more complicated phone that I can take little notes on, and make little to do lists on, or schedule my appointments on. At this point, the PIM functionality is entirely on the phone. Not because I chose to throw out my PDA, but just simply due to convenience and the fact that I magically get better phone hardware on a regular basis due to subsidies, changing service providers, etc. I can't really speak authoritatively on the phone vs. pda vs. convergence device thing. Who knows what will happen. It just seems to me that the phone will silently take over responsibilities one by one, and the PDA will have to fight harder for its pocket space. But if this happens, we are no longer talking Palm OS vs. Pocket PC. We throw in Symbian EPOC of course, but more importantly, you have a slew of different J2ME implementations with their own crazy OS, and some crazy things like Quallcom's BREW. On top of that, every phone manufacturer wants to differentiate themselves, and in the US, you've already got the expectation that phones don't work well with each other, so you could have an explosion of little operating systems. I mean, this has already happened, and it is happening. And people will find more of these devices in their pockets, and perhaps not carry two devices all the time. So then what platform do you support? All of them? I don't know. But yeah, probably our answer would initiall be "all of them", if such a thing is possible.
Are you able to give details of upgrades we can expect to the current Red Mercury products?
AcidImage is the app most ripe for upgrades. In fact, the current US$10 price on our website is half of the actual price of US$19.95. We're going to raise the price a bit as we put out significant upgrades, until it gets up to its real $19.95 price. Of course, current users will be able to upgrade free, so it works out fair for everybody. We want to make AcidImage the dominant image viewer on Palm OS, and we've got a good start. We get a lot of requests for features in AI, and by now, the requests are all starting to repeat. So if you want to know what we're adding to AI, load up version 1.1 and think "What feature would I add?" It's probably on our list already, and in the works. As far as other upgrades, you can expect us to follow the hardware and follow our users. When a product has been out as long as something like AcidSolitaire, the hardware kind of leads the innovation, because the core feature set is very well filled out. If there is a new sound chip, or new screen size, or whatever, we'll add support for it if it makes sense. We listen to our users. People send in suggestions all the time that make us do the old "why didn't I think of that". So we add it in, the product gets better, and everyone is happy.
What is you favourite non-Red Mercury PDA program and why?
I mentioned Galax earlier. That was a pretty inspirational app. It is a very addictive game. I mean, it is a Galaxian clone, but the game play mechanics implemented in Galax are very good, very impressive, and very addictive. It is that kind of addiction that a Palm OS game has to have to work. I have to admit that in daily use, I use three of the four built-in apps (datebook, address, and notepad). I will typically have one game on there that I'm currently playing, a Red Mercury app that I'm using and testing, and that's about it.
What feature would you most like to see in a next generation PDA?
From the game development point of view, all you really need is a graphics chip, sound chip, good speaker, good display, and good control input. That last one has taken a beating lately. There have been some pretty nasty button configurations on a certain licensee's (ahem) devices. But, I don't think a Gameboy d-pad would fly on a PDA, and I don't think it should be attempted. I'd have to say the old promise of an always on, packet-based wireless internet connection is the thing that I miss most. In order for something like that to have a big impact, it has to be standard on all devices, or at least on most of them. You can get a connection like this now, but it is either inconvenient (e.g. you have to have your phone nearby) or it is not widespread, that is, only a few tens of thousands of people will have such a connection, so it's not a market that can support really serious development. It's an engineering challenge, and a standards challenge... it's really quite a mess. But hopefully these things will get sorted out over time. Until then, just give me a screen and the power to draw cool shit on it.
Thanks to Scott for his detailed answers- if you want to try our some Red Mercury application click here. I can very highly recommend Acid Image and Acid Solitaire (have not had time to check the others yet)