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Interview: Bill Roper on RPG preferences, visiting China, MMO interest, mistaken HGL influences.
Date: February 25, 2004
Source: NGACN.com (Dead link: Chinese gaming site.)

FS.NGAcn.com Interview

NGA: If there is only one choice, what kind of game do you want to make the most? A story-driven RPG just like Baldur's Gate, or a fast paced ARPG just like Diablo, or RTS, or....

BR: If I was forced to make one choice, I would want to have a game that had a quicker pace with a lot of replay in the way that it was made. I love deep, story-driven games, but once you have completed the game, there is usually little reason to go back and play it again. In a game that is centered around more action, constant reward and an almost infinite amount of paths and items for players to choose from, I feel you just get so much more out of the game. Certainly, you also want to create an interesting and compelling world for the game to be set within, regardless of the genre, but I always look to how the game plays first.

NGA: Do you have the confidence to keep your group a top develop group just like in Blizzard North, and keep your game as funny as Diablo, and even better than that?

BR: We have been fortunate enough to put together an amazing core group of developers at Flagship Studios. We have all worked together for many years on numerous games, including all of the Diablo titles, and we’re excited to be starting out on a new project. We have high expectations for our game, and we know that is shared by the gamers who have played the other games we have worked on. We will be working very hard to create something that fun, exciting, easy to learn but with a deep amount of strategy that can be mastered over time. We also want to be a big part of the growing online community in China, and we will be doing a lot to make the game an exciting part of that experience.

NGA: Mr. Roper came to visit China in 2003, and now since you are in Flagship Studios, do you have any words to we Chinese players, or have some Chinese-style element in your new games?

BR: It was an honor to visit with such a fantastic community of gamers last year, and we are looking forward to creating a lasting relationship with the players all across China. We know that the Chinese market is an exceptionally important one that is growing every day, and we will be working with partners in Asia to do what we can to make the game appealing to the tastes and interests of Chinese gamers.

NGA: What's your thought about the more and more popular MMO games? Will Flagship Studios develop MMO games someday in the future?

BR: We have always supported the concept of online play, and that will never change in our development. We do intend to create an online destination for our community and build a network there they can play with each other, both cooperatively and competitively. We play a lot of MMO games and enjoy them greatly, so nothing is outside the realm of possibility.

NGA: Let's talk about your unknown new game, we've all seen the script on the concept, "Book of Nine Gates", does it mean that the game have something related to the movie "The Ninth Gate"(directed by Roman Polanski) and John Brown's novel "El Club Dumas"? Whether it is or it isn't, would you just release more information about it?

BR: We are creating our own world and intellectual property with our new game. The quote on the concept artwork is not from either source you mentioned, and we do not have an association with those works. As always, we draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources, so some elements can be reminiscent of other games or books or movies or even music. Sometimes this is done intentionally as a tribute to that work (such as quoting lines from movies in the character responses in the StarCraft and Warcraft series) but many times it is just how our past experiences and research has seeped into our design.