From Hellgatewiki.com

An archived Hellgate: London feature. See the Hellgate Archives for more.

Interview: Bill Roper and Dave Brevik answer media questions at the Asian Launch Event in Korea.
Date: June 6, 2007
Source: Transcript compiled by Swordfish of PlayHGL.com. Part One and Part Two.

Asian Launch Day Press Conference

What elements of Hellgate: London is there that can be applicable to e-sports?

Bill: We definitely talked about what elements in Hellgate: London could be applied to e-sports. I think the fact that there is a wide variety of game modes, the action RPG setting, is pretty big. It allows to have different elements that may be applicable to e-sports. It is something that we talked with HanbitSoft about very early on, and we have some different ideas in there.

So I think as we go through and see how PVP evolves and how some of the other game modes we have in development right now pan out, I think we are very excited to have it be a part of e-sports.

I don’t know if it will ever replace Starcraft, but certainly having it there alongside it would be just great.

Dave: I could add to that. One of the reasons we were really excited about working with HanbitSoft and having such a large fan base, probably one of the foremost leaders in the world of e-sports when it comes to community in the country itself.

So we looked forward very much to getting feedback from the Korean players. We have a lot of ideas of how to pursue this in a match, whether it is Counter-Strike like matches, or more organized Unreal Tournament style like game play, so one of our plans in the beginning was to incorporate matches, thing that would be fun to spectate. That’s a big part of e-sports, is that it has to be fun to play and fun to watch. We’re looking forward to getting this game out into the market and seeing what aspects of it would really translate into that. And with ongoing content, we really want to iterate on that and design thing around what players are feeling and how we perceive the community to enjoy the competition.

Since Flagship Studios is working on Hellgate: London and Mythos, how do you find a balance between the two games?

Bill: The group of us, about 50 of us that are in San Francisco are all focused on Hellgate: London, and have been since the conception of the game. In terms of Mythos, the casual MMO that we are working on, that is actually driven predominantly out of the office in Seattle. So they have their own team out there with about 7 or 8 guys with them now, and they do the vast majority of the work right now. There is still some design oversight and some we are bouncing ideas off of each other with us in San Francisco, but that is the way that it works, we empower that team to go off and create Mythos.

What about the similarity between the demons in both games?

Bill: Oh yeah, yeah, with the demons. Phil Shenk who is our Character Art Director is also the Creative Director on that. Max Schafer, who is one of our founders of Flagship and works on Hellgate, is the Executive Producer. We have a lot of back and forth, we all interact with them. It is just by having that separation of the team, it allows them to operate on Mythos while we operate on Hellgate without us stealing the focus off of each other.

Dave: Another important aspect about the Mythos project was when we start that, the idea was to test our network infrastructure. And we needed something that was casual so that we could get a lot of testers, as it doesn’t help to get four people trying to test something when we need thousands. So the idea was that we originally brought on Travis Baldtree to lead a team up there, and he created a game called Fate that was very popular at a previous company. We knew that he was kind of like a one man show and we could trust him to build the game using our technology and engine, with some oversight from us and basic features and things like that and run with it.

And as that started to develop, we realised that we had a really great little game on our hands. So there was no reason not to feed it a little bit and build up a team around it. But we did not want to be distracted from Hellgate, so that is why we did the separation of Travis in Seattle and we built a small team around him. And we have a lot of direct oversight, but we don’t spend our day to day time doing that. We want Hellgate to be as big as possible and everything we want it to be. So the really important thing is we hired a team specifically to build a product and it kind of became its own little game after a while.

How will balancing be handled in Hellgate: London?

Bill: Well, the balancing across the classes, we really are striving to have the different factions and the classes in the factions to all play fairly differently. So that when you are making a choice to what class you are playing, you are getting a very different game play feel out of it.

Obviously, the hardest thing in an RPG is balancing, because you want to make sure that each character has its own flavour, has its own feel and it plays a certain way. But at the same time, you don’t want one to be actually be just a class fit, but I think we are doing very well in that aspect. The balancing process is ongoing and we will get a lot of balancing out from our alpha and beta test, as we see people come out with ideas we have never thought of, different ways to combine skills and armour and weapons.

Where did the idea of armour and shields come from?

Bill: In Hellgate, there are basically two types of defences against attacks, armour and shields. Armour works in a way that you are used to in an RPG, where it reduces the amount of damage you receive. Shields is different in that it actually goes back to Star Trek, where you put your shields up and it stops all the damage until your shields go down then everything gets through.

So it is really based off more of a science fiction type of idea, which has been around for quite a long time, the idea of having personal shields. It really depends, the Hunters are kind of leaning more towards shields, while the Cabalists kind of have a mix between armour and shields and the Templars tend to skew more towards just armour, but you can find items that give you both, that another way you can customize your characters, kind of how much you are using each of those for your protection.

Do you think Hellgate and Mythos shares characteristics with Diablo?

Bill: I think that Hellgate really shares a very kinship with Diablo, where there was a packaged product and then there was an online aspect to that. The thing we were never able to do with the Diablo series back then was continuing content. To sit there and really have a lot of resources on the game afterwards to constantly balance and tweak it, to mould new content on a regular schedule.

So that for us, Hellgate was kind of the evolution of the Diablo model. Mythos was definitely designed purely as an online experience and based very heavily out of what we see actually coming out from Asia. Like having games that are free to download and free to play and having a continuing model past that to support it. So for us, we really kind of just see Hellgate as being an extension of what we did before but then bringing in the MMO qualities. And then Mythos is kinda being our first online only purpose project.

Going forward, I think it will just really depend on what the interest of the team and company are. We’ve always been very good about that, is making games that we really want to make and not being too concerned about whatever else.

Will Hellgate be ready for Windows Vista?

Bill: That’s a good question. We work very closely with Microsoft on the Vista part of the game and it is definitely our goal to ship with Vista support. We have Vista builds now. It is mostly programmatic, but we actually kind of pushed both ways, where we have a lot of Vista and DX10 support, then we also do low poly versions of everything in the game, art wise for lower end and older systems. So supporting both ways is important to us.

Whether we will put that into close beta I’m not really sure. We don’t really have a timeline set for how Vista interacts with beta, but I am sure some point when they are both happening, we will do a beta for the Vista version.

Western games against Asian games and Western gamers against Asian gamers, what are your views on the differences?

Bill: I’ll start. I think that a key component that we had in our early days of Blizzard and what Flagship Studios has now was maintaining a very strong partnership with Asian publishers. I think that is a key that many Western companies do not spend enough time on, on interacting with the Asian gaming community, or making sure that they are working with distribution publishing partners here directly. I think that is the way that helps us reach out to the community here and become very integrated into getting games here.

Another important component, we did this three years ago, all the core members of Flagship came over, we spent about a week here, did a lot of cultural events. We spent a lot of time at PC Baangs, we interviewed the gamers, we’ve always taken the time spent in Korea specifically, we’ve done a lot of traveling across Asia, to be very important to us, to be able to try and get a sense of what gamers here want. And try to reflect that in different ways in our game.

Kaiser is going to take a run in the difference in gamers.

Kaiser: I think that there has been the perception between Asian and Western gamers that they are probably very distinct. Whether it is from the US to Japan or US to Korea, I think especially as technology has improved, and more people are online, you kind of see that line kind of disappearing. I think that Hellgate is one of those games where it is hitting a lot of markets and it has thing that appeal to everybody and it is a very immersive game.

Before that, there were things like art style or general concepts behind the games that were very tailored to certain markets, but I think that everyone is seeing this industry become more global and universal in general. Absolutely something that we think about as our first game coming out as a very universal product, from art design to game play, being very Diablo influence, that game was popular all over the world, from Europe and Asia and the United States. So taking it from there, I think that Hellgate is just going to appeal to everybody just because inherently it does and the technology is there to kind of unite everyone, especially online.

Dave: So to kind of reiterate a little bit of what Kaiser was talking about, two of the big thing we had going into this that gave us an advantage of appealing to a lot of market segments is our history with Diablo II. It wasn’t predicted that it would do so well internationally with all the different types of markets, but it did, so we are hoping that we brought some of that magic with us, that we inherently know how to make a compelling, fun game that appeal to action gamers.

And still, our game play style is still pretty unique in the game industry. That is one of the reasons that we wanted to make Hellgate, is to kind of fill the void that Diablo II has just left. There have been some games that tried to mimic the play, but the market has this empty space of game play that is missing out there and we want to play our own game as much as anybody.

Secondly, one of the core founding philosophies we had was to partner with HanbitSoft again. We’ve worked with them for years, we knew the influence we had on the Asian market and their success here and we wanted to be able to recreate that because it was one of those companies that has that extra piece to really give us the feedback. Especially when you create a community in the Asian market in general, finding out what Asian gamers like about games, specifically what they liked about the Diablo series. And to help us continue to teach us what it is we can do to make an experience to appeal to them.

Kaiser: At its core, you know the PC platform is sort of the most universal, so again, the emphasis to support a wide variety of hardware. From the most cutting edge graphic card, to ones that are a bit older. Almost everyone in the world owns a computer, so you know, again, that makes it that much universal.

There have been rumours that there will be extra classes in the factions, is that true?

Bill: Well one of the things that is exciting for us, we wanted to build the factions first of all to show not only the diversity of storyline and the philosophies of them all, but also to show the different game play archetypes. So the Templar is kind of the hack and slash melee fighter, the Cabalist being the spell casters and the Hunters using that first person mechanic. And then within that being able to create diversity in those game play types with different character classes. Certainly one of the thing that we look forward to being able to do is to expand the number of character classes that are there within the different factions. That is certainly something that is a possibility for us.

Are you studying your competitors or opposing games that are coming out around the same time?

Bill: In terms of competitive products, I don’t really know if there is a directly competitive product. There is really not a game that is coming out that is like Hellgate: London. So I think that if there is anything competitive, there just going to be other fun games for players to play.

It is one thing that we have never worried about, even from the Blizzard days till Flagship, we’ve never really sat and looked at what other games are coming out and then being too concerned about them being competitive. And certainly, we know what is coming out as we get excited as gamers over what is coming out. But I don’t really believe that there is anything that we are going to be watching that is coming to the marketplace that is going to be like Hellgate. So we are in a very unique place for it.

Is Hellgate: London coming for the Xbox 360?

Bill: For the 360, certainly with having publishing partners in the US and Europe like Namco and EA who are strong in the console marketplace. Something we are always looking at is whether we can take our game play experience and move it to different platforms. It is nothing that we have been focused on, but something certainly that I am sure worthy of continued discussion. But we don’t have plans for consoles, we are very focussed on shipping Hellgate for the PC.

Blizzard announced Starcraft 2 recently, are you excited?

Bill: Sure. I’m excited about Starcraft 2. I love Starcraft, it was probably one of the favourite games I’ve ever worked on. And I think that it was really amazing to see how much a part of the culture it became here. And so I think that we all waited a long time for Starcraft 2. We never worked on it when we were at Blizzard, so it was nice to see that they didn’t let it die. I look forward to seeing what they are able to do with the franchise.

Dave: It is almost a big sigh of relieve that they finally announced it. I had recently started at Blizzard when Starcraft was in its final stages. Working at Blizzard and testing the game, it was very exciting time and brings back a lot of good memories. To see the sequel come out and knowing that it is going to be an excellent game, it is just very exciting. It is fun to see an old and early game industry memory for myself personally, coming back. It looks like it is going to be huge, very exciting.

Why is the Hellgate in London?

Bill: We always had the idea that there was a huge world event that was happening all over the world. And so we wanted to focus on the stories that were happening in different parts of the world, and the first place we chose was London. So for us, identifying it with the Hellgate, which is the opening between the world, the demons and ours, and then setting it in London was important too. There were a lot of reasons we chose London, that is why we put London after Hellgate.

Dave: We picked London because it is one of the most famous cities in the world, obviously one of the busiest, and it has a very unique look and feel, and had so much history to it and that was important. One of the reasons we picked a real world setting, as opposed to an entirely fantasy setting like the Diablo series. It provides a new challenge for us, and as developers, we like to be challenged and we wanted to see how we could take a real world setting and make it our own. Really just iron out the unique world, and the look and feel based on something that is already familiar.

And that right there was a big challenge. London has so many unique landmarks, the underground system and histories. From the Romans, to modern day, to the future, there is so much richness in the history. Yet it is unique looking so it is not a total mish mash of cultures. It has a very unique flavour, so we just look at that as an opportunity and it roots it. We put it the title because we wanted to kind of reinforced that this is a fantasy game but it is based in a real world setting. Hellgate by itself is a great title but it is kind of ambiguous. To tie it in and to really make it stick in your head, what it is we are trying to do, to define the look and to really capture the audience.

Why is the game date constantly changing? Is it because Blizzard announced Starcraft 2?

Bill: First of all, we don’t know when any other company are announcing things, so we can’t set our schedules before anyone else does. The things that we know are exactly what people out there know. All of our development schedules, whether it is alpha testing or beta testing, are all based on what is best for the game. Sometimes we will actually move off dates when we think we are going to do them, because actually things are going better than we imagine. The things that we thought we had to do in the alpha test, for example, we have been able to figure out on our own internally.

So we don’t like to move to alpha testing or beta testing, until we have exhausted our internal testing process. We also want to make sure that when we put a game into the alpha and the beta testing periods, that we are really getting something from that. And that means on both ends, we’re getting data that is good for us to get, but then also the players are getting the experience that we want them to get at that point in time to give us the best feedback. So for us, it is always an issue of what is the best thing for the game. And we really don’t ever look at anybody else’s products.