Cyberlore Studios sold the rights to another company who developed Majesty 2. – That’s really nice! Oh, by the way, I have to ask: were you involved in anyway in the making of Majesty 2? I signed them, “from Jim DuBois, the creator of Majesty” and he was very happy. He bought a painting of mine and a copy of a board game I had published, Vampires vs Unicorns. And he had played and loved Majesty, so we had some fun conversations while he was here. I was talking with the manager, and said I used to make computer games.
#Majesty 2 parties professional#
There was soot everywhere, and we had to have a professional cleaning crew in to clean up. Last year at my house we had trouble with the boiler. It is very gratifying to have made something that people still enjoy and play, as well as to have had it influence their lives in an earlier time. Jim: Yes, a few times a year someone will send me a message saying, “Are you the Jim DuBois who worked on Majesty?” And I will have a brief yet good contact with them. Do you ever hear from Majesty fans still playing the game, except for me obviously? Other than that, I got good practice at designing and tweaking interesting levels. And automation helps you manage more complex simulations, such as Majesty. The computer is so good at automation it seemed like I should be able to take advantage of that. One thing that directly came about from playing so many games of Warcraft II was the great desire to not have to micro-manange all of my units. But it is really because I am an old AD&D player. Jim: In Beyond the Dark Portal, I decided we should put in the hero units, and that is sort of a predecessor to the heroes in Majesty. What did you learn while developing those titles that inspired you in the making of Majesty? – Moving on, Jim, you also worked on Heroes of Might and Magic 2, along with the Beyond the Dark Portal expansion for Wc2. I can’t recall details of them any more however. Jim: We continually passed over ideas we had because of time and technical constraints. – Was there anything you would have done differenly in the game or didn’t implement for time or technological costraints? Jim: If we had released the game earlier it wouldn’t have been as good or complex. – Yes, that’s also true, but do you think things would have gone differently had the game been released before 2000? So every time we lost a publisher it let us make the game better. And if we had more time it would have been more developed. We kept developing Majesty right until it got published. Jim: It is hard to say when a game is fully developed. – So it was a long road, but was there a point when Majesty was fully developed but you still had no publisher? Some who we didn’t end up working with included the guys who made Command and Conquer, and the company who made Age of Empires II. Iremember flying to different companies to try and sell Majesty to them. I think there was another one in there too. The only ones I remember were Ripcord, which went out of business, and Hasbro Interactive, which published it (and then went out of buisiness later). Jim: We worked on it for all those years, and had a variety of publishers along the way who bought it, then dropped it or went out of business, and we had to take our in-process version around to try to get it picked up by a new publisher. Were there some delays or problems that slowed down development? Care to share some stories about it?
On that topic, the same website states that the original idea for the game dated back to ’96 but we know Majesty came out only in 2000. Especially so in complex simulations, and games with lots of automation. The stories that you tell in your head about what happens in a game are interesting and as important as what actually happens in the game. It made me realize that part of what happens in complex games with automated parts is that the player makes up models in their own mind of what is happening behind the scenes, and that these aren’t necessarily accurate, but are a very interesting and complex part of playing. Jim: Yes, I was playing The Settlers, and watching one of the workers going fishing, and noticed that I started assigning thoughts and personality to them, even though I knew they had very simple algorithms behind them. – Hello Jim and thanks for being available for this short interview! I have read on a website that you got the mail idea for Majesty while playing The Settlers. This Interview with Jim DuBois on Majesty (Fantasy Kingdom Sim) is to go along with the main article on the game, which I recommend reading before diving into this.
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