Interview: Hi-Rez Studios’ Todd Harris on Smite

While at PAX Australia, Stevivor had the opportunity to sit down with Todd Harris, Chief Operating Officer at Hi-Rez Studios to discuss Smite. Below, we discuss the the premise of Smite, Esports, Australian servers and more.

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Leo Stevenson, Stevivor: So give me the spiel: tell me what Smite is. I’ve never played a MOBA before, so this could be for me?

Harris: This could be your first MOBA, man. It could be; it’s different. The short version is that it’s an online-action game. We call it the ‘Battleground of the Gods’ cause basically everyone who’s playing is assuming a God or Goddess from mythology all around the world in a big beat-em-up. Like other MOBAs all the characters have four abilities that are really unique, so all of the fun and replayability is battling with your friends, against other people all over the world and it’s this combination of Gods and abilities that keeps the game interesting over the long term.

The thing that really makes it different than some of the other MOBA games out there is that they’re all a 2D isometric view, so the camera is a bird’s eye view and you’re clicking on the map like a real-time strategy game. If I want to move forward, I click on the map and my character moves forward. If I want to target you, usually that’s auto-targeted and I’m just hitting the button. In Smite, the combat and the camera are more a 3^rd person shooter. I’m directly controlling my character with WASD+Mouse or you can plug in a controller on the PC and just move with the controller and map the abilities. So it really changes everything. For me to hit you with an arrow, with a ranged hunter, I actually have to aim and lead you a little bit cause there’s travel time, you can move out of the way. It really adds this player skill element and makes the combat feel in your face rather than very removed. It’s less clicky, clicky and more out and out combat.

Stevivor: Being that it’s Gods and Goddesses from a huge range of mythologies, what are the main one’s people will be familiar with?

Harris: The most recognisable ones to most western audience players are folks from Norse and Greek mythology. Thor for instance and Odin and Loki as well as Zeus or Hades and then we also go into Egyptian mythology with Anubis, the God of the dead or Ra, the Sun God. But we also delve into more obscure things for players to discover like we have a lot of interesting Mayan Gods. We have Chaac who’s a rain God or Kukulkan who’s this dragon whose ultimate move unleashes a badass dragon throughout the entire map. We have also touch Chinese mythology and Hinduism among the seven families, or pantheons, at this point and we currently have 59 Gods to choose from. We also release a new God every single month and that’s what keeps the game interesting because just when you think you’ve got them all, or the number that you like, there’s another one around the corner. We’ll probably keep that going into we have over 100 Gods.

Stevivor: Is Smite free-to-play and when you release a new God every month, do players pay for those and how does that work?

Harris: Yep, it’s free-to-play and the way it works in Smite is that you download the game for free from our website and as a free player there are five characters that are always available and are always the same five. They really let you play one of the five main play styles. Do you want to be up close and in the action, do you want to be far away and play ranged or do you want to be a tank with a lot of hit points? You can always pick one of those five for free and we also have another five that rotate. That might include a newer God or an older God, but as a free player you have access to 10 right at the very beginning that you can play with. As you play you earn favour, which is our experience system, then you can unlock new Gods either with your game time or if you want to do it faster you can use money. The nice thing about Smite which is really unique from other MOBAs is that you can for once price, the cost of a single purchase game, buy the Ultimate God Pack. That includes all 59 Gods and anything else that we come out with in the future. From a competitive standpoint it means you’re going to have all the Gods and all the gameplay elements and not have to worry about it. If you really enjoy it and want to spend more money with us we let you do that through cosmetic skins and voice packs, but nothing that actually makes you more powerful or locks you out from any content.

Stevivor: So in Smite you can’t pay to win?

Harris: Definitely not pay to win. Definitely not. We keep it fair, so all the Gods are balanced and the Ultimate God Pack really removes any concern that people might have when they think “Oh man am I going to have to spend a hundred bucks plus, just to get everything?” Well no, no you don’t. At least not to get things to affect the game.

Stevivor: Who are the most popular Gods in the game?

Harris: It’s a little bias because new players get comfortable with the free Gods and all the free ones are pretty good and fairly easy to use. Some of them are also used in the highest competitive level of play. The most popular at the competitive level is whoever players think is most OP. Characters that are really popular at the moment are Ra, he’s a mage who can also heal members of his team. Janus is quite popular and he’s also super unusual. He’s this Roman God of transitions and doors, so if you’ve ever played the game Portal he can basically make similar portals in the 3D world and let his team escape through them or make them in the floor and let the enemy fall through them. He’s very versatile and an example of a really cool God.

Stevivor: Which of the Gods do you use?

Harris: I’m kind of old school player so the ones that we had really early on, which include Ra and Zeus are the ones I play. I focus on playing the mages. My son, who’s only 11, plays probably more Smite than he should he plays a damage dealing/carry role. When I play with him I play more support so I use Ymir, who’s a frost giant. He’s big and bulky and has a lot of hit points so he can crowd control by using abilities like frost breath which freezes enemies and he has a 3D wall that can trap people. He’s a very versatile supporting character so I also like that.

Stevivor: You mentioned balance before. How do you maintain that with a new God every month? Are you constantly tweaking things behind the scenes as players discover exploits with certain characters? How much do you need to keep up with the way players are playing Smite?

Harris: It’s both. When we’re releasing a new God, that’s definitely the hardest. We do a few phases. Internally we test it as much as we can, then we put it on a public test server so the people who are really into the game can go on a separate server and give us feedback based on that. Then we put it into the live environment except that for at least two weeks we don’t allow it to be used in competitive events where people are taking things really seriously and there’s Esports money on the line, because we do a lot of that and really support that community. For the first two weeks it’s just in public play which allows us to get feedback from players and not just from the forums where people say it’s overpowered or underpowered, we actually collect stats. From every single match of Smite that’s played we collect stats. We know when we release a new God, how that it’s performing. What they’re kill/death ratio is. They’re win/loss ratio and what the split of that is. Is the new God always on the losing side, or are they always on the winning side? Maybe they’re being used by highly skilled players or is it across the board? We have mountains and mountains of data and by analysing that we can make changes, which typically occur in those first two weeks before competitive play.

Stevivor: It’s obvious that Hi-Rez Studios passionately support the Esports scene and community especially since all prize money from Smite tournaments is crowd sourced. Can you elaborate?

Harris: The way it worked in beta over two years ago, we started running tournaments every Saturday and Sunday and we’d put up a little prize money for them to see what kind of appetite there was. Players, teams and Esports organisations quickly got involved and there was even some bigger named teams who basically have a brand and gain sponsors and that was just phase one. Then we started a league two months ago and that is leading up to this world championship in January. As a developer we said for the world championship we wanted a decent prize pool and we started with a very respectable $600,000 and with the help of the community we’ve raised another $600,000 and there’s still two months to go before we know the final figure. We’re the fastest game franchise ever to exceed the $1 million event mark. At this point the groups to have done that are League of Legends, DOTA2, Call of Duty, all of which have been around for a while and Smite which was released in March.  It’s just been awesome to see and now that we have Australian servers maybe next season we can get some Aussies in the mix.

Stevivor: At this point do you know what the Australian player base is?

Harris: Before we launched the local servers and before we came down here on this trip it was probably about 5% which is what you’d expect to find based on other online games and population, but I think with the servers it’s going to grow. Aussies have been playing Smite with a ping of 250 plus and just dealing with it because they really like it and honestly it’s just what you guys are used to with a lot of online games. But we’re so glad that we could come relatively early in the life cycle of the game and provide servers because now players have reported having ping of less than 50 with some of the guys in Sydney having around 25.

Stevivor: What’s the general reception of Smite been like from Australia and Australian gamers?

Harris: It’s been really good. The booth is packed and it’s exciting to see folks line up and play the game. I think people really like the gameplay. Clearly online games, even with some of the internet challenges, are popular here and we expect that Smite will grow here.

Stevivor: It seems like you have big plans for the game and plenty of content lined up. How long will Hi-Rez support Smite before we might see a Smite 2?

Harris: Obviously, the developer support is dependent on the players and how long they stick around, but our intent and certainly our hope is that Smite will have a very long life and we’ll keep this once a month God releases until we’re 100+ and that it’s a multiyear game. We’d rather put more content into this game and grow it than do something like a Smite 2.

Stevivor: Where in the world is Smite most popular and where do the best players live?

Harris: Right now the game’s servers have been out the longest in North America and Europe so that has the most number of strong teams and I would say that those regions are the favoured ones going into the January event. We also have servers now in Spanish speaking Latin America and also in Brazil and in China as well, but only in beta. We expect to see teams from those regions qualify, but they’ve only had a few months with the game, so they’re likely going to have a harder time. Next season I would expect the Asian teams to come pretty hard with China probably being the favourite just because they have a reputation of putting in the time and having the discipline to get really good at games.

Stevivor: Are there any Australian teams in the league?

Harris: Because we only just launched Australian servers and it was relatively late in the season there aren’t any Aussie teams just yet. There are some that play more casually that we’ve met, but they’ll be on more of a season 2 timeframe which will kick off next year.

Stevivor: Is Smite playable only on PC?

Harris: For now it’s on Windows PC only, but one thing we announced a few months back was that we’re bringing Smite to consoles. Microsoft announced it at Gamescom with the quote “Finally a MOBA that wants to be played with a controller”, which is true and because of the camera angle it works really well. We’re going to be starting closed beta for the console version early next year and depending on how that goes we’ll see what happens with the release, but we’re expecting to release in the first half of next year. First on Xbox One but then other consoles after that.

Stevivor: Pleasure to meet you and best of luck.

Harris: Thanks for the questions and you should totally check Smite out.

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A special thanks to Todd and Hi-Rez Studios for their time. Smite is available now on Windows PC.