[HON] Interview the Dev: [S2]Idejder

I was very lucky to interview Idejder, one of developers of S2 Games.  I actually have a bit of personal relation to him because at one point, he was my guild leader.  Some of our Gameriot readers would have heard of Clan TAO, one of most fearsome guild back in vanilla days. They were the most dominant Horde guild during the first BG9 generation when cross-BGs were first introduced.  Needless to say, I am more than happy to see my former guild leader now employed by one of my favourite game developers.
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Hello, Idejder.  Thank you for doing this interview.  Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Now now, Arirang, you know me from way back in the day.  No need for formalities.  For those of you who have not been gaming with me for years, my name is Alan and I am 25. Right now I live near San Francisco, California and spend probably a good 14 hours a day at work.  When your work is making video games, though, it's not that bad!  I went to school for quite a few years studying everything from Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and then Game Design.  You know that guy who couldn't decide what he wanted to do for the rest of his life? That was me.


I still actively game a lot.  Playing through Borderlands, Torchlight, probably Dragon Age, and then of course HoN and smaller things on the side like Left 4 Dead and TF2.  When I have the time I like exploring around the town I am in and near a lot.  Since I just moved here recently, it's a whole new world to explore.  So far, it's been fun.



I always thought your name was odd.  Where does it come from?  Oh and, how do you
pronounce that?

Ive had it said everywhere from “Eyed Jeeder” to “I De Jader” haha.  I respond to “Jeeder” in the office since a few people call me that.  I came up with it back when I started to play MMOs online: The release of Star Wars Galaxies.  Read my name backwards, it should make sense.



One thing cool I find about S2 is that they hire talents within the community.  I believe one ocassion is where S2Mercenary was employed for his contribution to Savage 2.  Can you tell us about your experience of getting hired by S2?

General process was I got into the beta way back when it was smaller and networked myself with Maliken and Fielding, expressing my interest in working for them as I was a Game Design
student at the time.  I ended up doing some work for them to prove myself, beat them in the game quite a few times, and after (a longtime) there was an opening and Fielding got ahold of me to tell me they wanted to hire me.

Needless to say I was quite happy and ended up driving 12 hours to get here 3 days later.  No time to waste!



What title do you have within the company, and what is it that you exactly do?

My official title for right now is a Junior Developer, but Fielding and I are the only two devs on the project anyway, so the 'standard roles' of someone who is the boss don't really exist. In the end though, Fielding gets the final call.

I do everything from making new heroes, coding them with scripting, editing the map, balance changes, forum correspondence (a lot of it), writing change logs, writing voice scripts, and some server-maintenance based stuff when they need more people to help with it. The general idea is I do a little bit (or alot of bit) of everything.  Everyone helps with everything when there is a need. =]



What are the biggest challenges of your job?

I am sure this will change since it is still new and shiny to me, but getting my mind OFF of work is actually difficult right now.  I go out and enjoy myself on weekends sometimes, but I end up getting some great idea or having a desire and find myself in the office a few hours later working on something.  Beyond that, coming up with the 'good ideas' or sorting through all the hundreds of suggestions to get some good inspiration or ideas from it can be taxing and very time consuming.  We do a good job at it if I may say so myself. =]



How is it working for S2?  Do you work at home or office?  Did you have to move to accomodate this job?  Do you meet and interact with other developers on regular basis?

The short answer: It's great. I work at the office and I did have to move (see above!) to get here.  At this office are Fielding, Ikkyo, and Jason along with the entire Art team.  The other
office we have has the more administrator side of things.  There is constant communication between both offices, so I interact with everyone daily.



You mentioned in Q&A at S2 forums about the energy drink consumption at S2.  You made an elaborate description of these "empty can decoration" on desks and I thought it was pretty funny.  Can you get us a picture of this?





Related to the energy drink consumption.  One of the things I am most impressed with S2 is how fast they update.  It's not surprising to find HoN update within a day of new DotA release.  You guys do it so fast that it looks easy.  I assume it's not a nine to five job.  Can you give us a rough estimate of how many hours you work?

Completely depends on the week.  Weekdays I come into work anywhere from 8 AM to Noon and then work here until 8-Midnight, then play games here for a few hours.  Weekends vary wildly and sometimes, like last weekend, I was up all Saturday night working on the server with Ikkyo.  So let's just say a lot.



One of the indisputable issues of HoN is its lack of heroes.  And despite how fast
S2 updates, I always feel that heroes aren't added fast enough.  I feel this way towards DotA ports since everything about the character design is done.  And therefore S2 is only addressing its unique visual design and implementation to HoN (well, other than the necessary coding of course).  So it puzzles me when heroes aren't added in weekly basis.  Can you
shed some light on to why the heroes aren't added in faster pace?

I think they are added really fast.  We average 1 hero a week and will probably be somewhat close to that as time goes forward for a while.  Even if the hero 'design' is done for us already, it takes the exactly same time to make a hero as one of our own unique ones.  There is no difference between them at all.  A hero is a hero, be it new or old.  The scripting and code part of a hero is done quickly compared to the time it takes to do the concept, model it, texture it, animate it, do effects, and tweak it to make it just right.

There is no cut and paste, we make all of the heroes from scratch every time, so all of them take the same rough timeframe.



What three DotA heroes will never see the light of day in HoN (reasons being other than that their skills are already in the game) *Robert0's question

Haha, I am not going to 'remove' any hero by sweeping them off the board.  We don't have all of the upcoming heroes planned out or anything, so any hero port is possible in time.



Will the final hero pool be of comparable size to DotA's current hero pool (95)? 
*Xndr's question. 

Yes it will. We will keep adding heroes until we are happy with the pool size, which will probably be in the 100 ball-pack, give or take.



I love the community involvement of S2.  Not just forum stuff.  But actually playing
the game with community.  You know, getting in there and really just rolling in the mud with us.  Do all employees of S2 play HoN?  Any intense S2 in-house battles to tell?  Am I not far off when I picture two guys by water cooler talking about how they pwned in their previous match?

Everyone plays HoN, from the interns to the CEO.  In the office here, we have anywhere from 1 to 3 games of HoN played daily.  We have had epic 90 minute games where it's very even up until the last fight.  Awesome to watch when everyone is in the same room.

And that picture in your head is not far off, no.  It happens.  Often.  Okay... it happens daily.



Who's the best HoN player of all S2 devs?

That depends who you ask, haha!



S2Maliken seems to be quite a character.  Is there any cool story about him?

Haha.  Maliken is an awesome guy.  Plenty of stories, but none I am going to share here. Maybe another time. =]



Icefrog has recently announced about his involvement with Valve.  This was a huge news to the community.  How does S2 feel about this?

I know we think it's awesome because he really deserves it.  We are not upset or worried or anything of that sort, we just think it's really “About damn time” and will be good for gamers in the end.  That's what matters.



Thank you again Idejder for doing this interview.  I hope you continue to have fun doing what you are doing, and try not to work too hard.

Thanks for the great questions, Arirang.  Look forward to talking to you more in the future as we develop the game and make it better every day.  Feel free to hit me up anytime if you get more questions.

Off to build a patch!