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Interview: Bill Roper talks about Flagship's early days, the break with Blizzard, and their design tools.
Date: November 4, 2003
Source: PixelRage

PixelRage Interview

PixelRage: First of all, why breaking-up with Blizzard? Wasn't there any alternative for achieving your goals or did you want to make Flagship a completely different experience?

Bill Roper: Our intention was never to leave Blizzard, but unfortunately, life does not always run according to plan. We wanted any level of participation and direct communication with Vivendi, to be able to offer some insight and some knowledge in what they were thinking about in terms of a possible sale of their games unit, particularly with the interests and importance of Blizzard in that equation. It was difficult to plan for our futures, and the futures of our co-workers, and with no long-term compensation or employment contracts in place, we wanted to be able to interact directly with the people making the key decisions that could drastically affect our lives and workplace. In the end, Vivendi chose not to make that opportunity available and accepted our resignations over the matter.

PixelRage: Will you maintain the contact with Blizzard? Any collaborations or co-projects in the air?

Bill Roper: We’re close friends with a lot of the people at Blizzard and Blizzard North, so we have definitely maintained contact since our departure. When you spend as many hours and years working on a project, you develop relationships that are much stronger than being just co-workers. As far as working with Blizzard in the future, we think they are a fantastic company and would certainly be excited to discuss any interest on their part in that regard. Currently, we have what we think is a super idea and are talking with numerous publishers about working with them to bring it to gamers around the world.

PixelRage: By leaving Blizzard you had many eye-brows rising with interest. This means many expect from you to prove yourselves better than the mother company, therefore work more. Do you consider it worthwhile?

Bill Roper: We have some very high expectations of ourselves, just as we believe the gamers who are familiar with our past work do. It is something that helps drive us to do absolutely the best job we can to make the best game possible. We’re honored to have sparked so much early interest from the industry and gaming community and you can bet are going to be doing everything we can to make something incredibly fun for us all to play together.

PixelRage: You're currently under-staffed, being only 9 and all. What are the requirements for the new recruits?

Bill Roper: While we don’t yet have enough people to complete a game within the window of time we have set for ourselves, we are excited to have put together such an amazing core team of developers and gamers. We are already well under way on developing our first game and hope to be expanding our roster within the next few months.

PixelRage: You're not the first ones to pull this stunt; many broke their necks. Except for quality of course, do you plan to try a new approach in order to avoid failure?

Bill Roper: A lot of companies start out in every industry there is each year, and only a handful survives, much less excel. We think that our combination of experience, drive, and passion for playing and making great games is an exceptionally solid foundation from which to build our company, and we are going into this with the knowledge that it is going to take a lot of hard work and dedication. We’re excited to be starting down the road all over again, but with a lot more knowledge and experience behind us.

PixelRage: What are you trying to achieve with your first game? Will it have the spirit of the Warcraft/Diablo series, or should we expect to a completely new style?

Bill Roper: Although I do believe that gamers who have played the past games we have worked on, we’re not looking to chase our past successes. We want to go in a new direction in many regards, but the core design philosophies that we tried to put into any of the games we ever worked on, whether at Blizzard or not, are still going to be there. I think we may surprise a lot of people with our game idea, but it is going to be a pleasant surprise.

PixelRage: Blizzard trademark meant excellent multiplayer, but many criticized the mediocrity of single player and even Blizzard (thus meaning you more or less) stated on several occasions that this part was only a developed tutorial for the game. Will you apply the same philosophy from now on?

Bill Roper: We never thought of the single player as merely a tutorial for the multiplayer experience. More accurately, many people use the single player game as a way to learn the mechanics of the game and hone their skills for competition in the online setting, and in that way, it serves as a tutorial. We do think that the single player experience is important, as is the online component, and we’re going to be working very hard to make both as fun as possible in our current project.

PixelRage: Can you give us any hints about the current progress? When do you want to have it done (year, quarter)?

Bill Roper: Things are moving along at a fantastic pace. I’m really blown away at how much the guys are getting done on a day-to-day basis, so even at this early stage of the game’s development, it is a lot of fun constantly seeing new things. In regards to a ship date, it’s just too early to talk about that.

PixelRage: We're not only a gaming site, we also try to give our readers a large in-sight over game development too. So can you tell us something about it, like tools or programming languages you're using?

Bill Roper: As we’re writing our own 3D engine, the code is written in both C and C++. There is a spectrum of use and functionality between these two languages, so we use both, depending on what we are trying to accomplish. We also use a wide array of Microsoft Developer Network tools, Direct X 9.0 and some assorted graphics toolsets. Our artists primarily use 3D Studio Max, Illustrator and PhotoShop, along with a few things we’ve cooked up ourselves to get the art into the game as easily as possible.

PixelRage: You have a huge experience in this domain. How would you describe this not-so-perfect industry and what are your opinions about its future?

Bill Roper: No industry is perfect, and at least ours is pretty darned fun to work in. There are a lot of great people who drive the games industry, and being part of such an amazingly creative process makes it easy to get up and come into the office day after day. We are still a relatively young industry that has massive amounts of energy from the creative minds that make the games, and the level of competition and professionalism amongst the publishing companies has really turned a lot of heads. People not so close to what we do have been taking notice, and it is safe to say that games have become a pretty serious industry. I expect continued growth and penetration into the minds and homes of people who have grown up playing games, as well as new games coming out that bring more people into the fold.