Interviews were conducted one on one, during the early afternoon of August 24, 2007. At that time the Hellgate Alpha test was nearing completion. I talked to Ivan for a while about storytelling in computer games, as part of a university project. Those questions may turn up online eventually, but they are not specifically about HGL. The follow questions are the ones all about Hellgate that were approved to be posted by Flagship. 

Ivan Sulic Interview

Flux: There were early quest concepts in HGL with faction quests. You're a Templar, the Cabalists don't like you and you have to do quests for them to get faction points and improve your standing with them. None of those exist in the alpha?

Ivan: Faction is not going to be present for launch. A lot of our faction stuff got scrapped because every time I wrote a faction dialogue, I had to do it 3 times. So there's got to be 3 different dialogues, and 3 different localization processes, and we also didn't have the tech worked out to give rewards like we wanted to. It was all just perks from a vendor. So, instead we focused on station faction. As players earn faction points they get access to a better vendor. Even that might go the way of the dodo, since it's just not interesting.

Ideally, it would have been awesome to have 3 dialogues and 3 incompletes and 3 reward dialogues for every single character based on which faction players chose. But then we took into account the long term integration of more factions and increasing that number of base dialogues. That seemed implausible. So, it's just something that got put on the back burner.


Flux: There was talk in early previews about time-sensitive quests. If you brought an NPC some number of ________ within a set time you'd get a special reward. Six fuel mods, or something like that. Are those quests out or is it just an Alpha thing without the world clock running?

Ivan: That tech is still in there. "Time to complete quests." We don't use it. I don't know exactly why, actually. It's not any sort of world clock, it's all on a per quest basis. You'd set a flag for a quest when it began and have 5 minutes, or 500 seconds, until it expired. I should ask Dave Brevik about it.

Flux: There were early mentions of Animal Crossing, with world wide events on set days and dates and times?

Ivan: Yeah, Bill Roper likes that game a lot. I never played Animal Crossing as much as I should have, and I know that Bill used to mention that a lot. Um... We're going to have events in the game, but it's not like Animal Crossing where it's all pre-scripted. I think they went through a calendar and marked all these special days. We just do it as we go.

Things like... A day of mourning where everyone wears black. Fire Tuesday, where everything's on fire. Or Halloween, where everyone wears a mask.

Flux: Why Tuesday?

Ivan: I don't know. It's just Tuesday. Probably smarter to call it the Week of Fire. I think that's what it actually is. Anyway, these are supposed to be exact examples. We'll be doing things like that but we didn't look at a calendar and set them all beforehand. That's the point. As they come we can make these changes pretty easily. Those changes should only be applicable to online gamers, however.

Flux: The NPCs your character speaks with sometimes have animations worth viewing during the conversation, but it's possible to not see them if you click on the NPC while looking off to the side. Is there a tool that could snap the player's view forward so they wouldn't miss such elements?

Ivan: We have the technology to do a fixed camera view, but we don't use it in the game. That was a design decision that goes along with no non-interactive cut scenes.

Flux: That's too bad, because you can miss things without knowing you're missing them. Especially playing through the first time.

Ivan: I tend to agree, in general.


Flux: Have you guys thought about allowing modding for UI improvements like World of Warcraft allows?

Ivan: We don't natively support mods. We didn't build our systems for that kind of thing, but it's something that will inevitably happen, I'm sure.

Flux: The online HGL details have been leaking out in dribs and drabs over the months, causing an occasional scandal or outrage through miscommunication. Why haven't the facts been presented in a more coherent, concrete fashion?
 
Ivan: I don't know. I'm not in those meetings with the directors when these things are decided.  I do know that we call them subscribers now. Not "elite." I guess a lot of people didn't like that name. It's a little haughty.

Flux: During the game development and alpha testing, do you personally look at the overall balance of things? Characters and monsters and spells and level up speed, etc?

Ivan: That's more Erich Schaefer. He and the assistant designer Alan Hu, Peter's brother, they do a lot of the balancing things. Tyler Thompson does, too; he loves balancing skills and weapons.  That started before my time here. I play with all the spreadsheets when I enter my own stuff in, but I never, ever change their work.

Flux: Everyone gets input into everything though? Character's being overpowered or too weak or what have you.

Ivan: Yes. And it's very, very important to those three that things are balanced as they should be. But input is just input. It's not decision making.

Flux: It's curious because we've had several rebalance patches during the alpha and they've all been big boosts to everything for the Templars and mostly nerfs for Cabalists and Hunters.  People have been wondering in the alpha forums why you guys did 3 years of testing and the minute the alpha began the Templars were immediately seen to be way too weak and the ranged characters way too strong?

Ivan: 3 years of testing is not at all accurate. You can't test something until it's built and people can play with it. We did not have a finished game three years ago. We put skills and items and weapons in all the time, and we always knew going forward that we developed everything to be data-driven. Once we had input from players we'd figure out where the balance needed to be. That is where the testing comes into play.

Flux: Any comment on respeccing?

Ivan: Not my decision. I think respeccing isn't good because it devalues your in-game decisions, however.

Flux: Do you think it's desirable to balance everything? Do you want all six characters to be equivalent overall?

Ivan: *laughs* I don't care. The balance is something that happens outside of my purview. I trust the people who are doing that because they've been doing it for ten years and if they say it can happen, God bless 'em. It's not something I'm particularly interested in. As a gamer, I've never been huge on mechanics. I don't care about stat rolls or that kind of thing. I'm not a min/maxer. I don't care about any of that. When I play RPGs I pick skills and items on the way they look and feel.

Flux: You're such a girl!

Ivan: *laughs* When I play any other RPG I create my character in my head almost to the point where I'm a role-player. I'll then pick skills and weapons that match my alternate persona.

I always pick my skills for fun. If I decide my Guardian would be the type to use this skill, I'm going to take it. I don't care about the ratings or stats.

Flux: But do you care if it's 1% worse than....

Ivan: Nope. Not even a little bit. I'm no "completionist," either. I don't feel compelled to explore every last bit of every environment to get all the loot drops or whatever. I'm a feel gamer.


Flux: Well you guys announced roleplaying in HGL now, but no one knows what that means.

Ivan: Yeah, there's going to be a role player's setup. The same as any other MMO, I guess. If you want to pretend you're in the world all the time and not be bothered, I suppose that'll be the place for you to go.

Flux: So who's your favorite character to play in HGL?

Ivan: I like the Marksman class because I like shooting things. It's just more my style. I like shooting games. And, I like playing from the first-person.

Flux: So you just find a gun you like a lot? You're not comparing the stats of every single item?

Ivan: Nope. I just find a gun I like. Don't really care about character builds and making sure mine is the perfect one or if I have all these rare or unique or mutant items.

Flux: Never use calculators or build planners?

Ivan: Nope, never. I pick them based on looks and feel.

Flux: That's cool. I wish there were a few more people like that in my site's forums.

Ivan: So many of the forum users are very avid – more power to 'em. That's the kind of game they want to play. But not me. I don't care. I'm probably not going to PvP with any of those people because I'll lose immediately, but...

Flux: But you'll look good doing it.

Ivan: Exactly. Stylin'.

Matt Householder

I spoke with Matt for over an hour, but the bulk of our conversation was about storytelling in computer and video games, in relation to a project I'm working on at my university. Some of that material may be posted eventually. For now, here are the Hellgate-related questions Matt answered and Flagship cleared for publication.

Thanks to Matt and Ivan for their time.

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