TE: For new players to Jumpgate or Evolution, what’s going to attract a new market to this game?
HP: I think a lot of times when developers get asked that very question, they talk about some new mechanic they’ve come up with. So they’ll say something like “we have a really cool combat system” or “we have this awesome quest system no one’s ever seen before,” and while that stuff can be compelling, pretty much MMOs all have the same features. In my mind, what distinguishes high quality MMOs is the ease in which you can get into and the depth that’s there once you’re in.
So we’re spending a lot of time blind-testing the game. Having people come in, sit down and play.
I think from the onset there’re a lot of fans out there of space games and there haven’t really been a hugely successful space combat game in some time. Freespace 2 did pretty well and was a lot of fun, but I think there’s an unserved audience, and if you make a good game, you’ll grab them.
And you’ll grab their friends.
If I play an MMO, and I’m playing for a few hours and it’s fun, I’m going to grab my buddy and tell him. I think the growth of a lot of the big MMOs, especially the ones that don’t have a huge advertising power, like, say, EVE, comes from that kind of experience. So, I’m not really so much concerned with creating a market. I’m more concerned with making sure that market is aware of the game, and when they jump in and try it, their experience is positive.
Where I think a lot of MMOs fall apart is they just don’t work. You get 'em and they crash, the login servers don’t work or there’s a huge download. So we’re really trying to make sure we don’t stumble in those areas.
Another thing we’re focused on is making the game visually appealing right from the outset. A lot of MMOs and games really have these incredibly high system requirements and then end up choking. So we’re looking at games that had stunning visuals but not have incredibly high system requirements, so the ones that come to mind are EVE, World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. They look good and they run on everything.
So, considering our specs, I’m impressed with what the art team has come up with. We’ve done a lot of things to make sure the game is visually compelling and that a lot of people can play it.
One of the things MMOs get criticized for is when they launch and aren’t immediately successful, they’re empty. And empty MMOs are not fun. So we did a lot of work on an AI server to make sure that space feels full with trading vessels moving around trading cargo and doing other things, so that when you launch it already feels alive right away. We can scale that up and down depending on the server, so if a lot of people start playing the game we can make the AI less or more. So it’s pretty cool to have that.
