Interviul e luat in luna mai a anului 2011. Informatiile sunt insa inca valabile. Planuiam si o tradudecere dar am renuntat. Posibil sa revin cu un preview.
Discutia s-a purtat pe Skype dar inregistrarea era de o calitate prea slaba ca sa o pot pastra din pacate.
Kim Haar Jørgensen este Game Director al jocului
Me: First things first: what is the idea behind
the game?
Kim: The idea for the game it's actually spawned
from playing a lot of FPSs. The initial idea is to ensue the FPS genre. Our
idea is to try to mix 3 genres that we love: the tactical genre from games like
Rainbow Six & Ghost Recon - and we try to mix that with role-playing
elements like in Deus Ex and System Shock 2, and then add the feel we got from
games like Half-Life and F.E.A.R. and other games like them.
Me: I understand...the good stuff about gaming.
Kim: Yeah *laughs*
Me: So what actually spawned the idea?
Kim: Well I guess I always discussed with my
fellow partner, as we always played every FPS and we used to always talk about
that one day things might move to virtual reality, and as you know so far, this
genre is about trying to simulate that you look out the eyes of the character
and we really wanted to pursue this as much as possible, the fact that one day
I would love to make virtual reality and complete immersion into a character.
Me: What about the company itself? When you
started Zero Point Software?
Kim: We started ZP officially back in 2004, after
I spilled my guts and my beans to my cousin, basically this happened at a
family get-together. My cousin raise of money, let's call it like that. I sat
down with my cousin and I told him about this game called Interstellar Marines
that I've been dreaming about for 7-8 years, I think we talked about the game
for 5 or 6 hours during the night, and in the next morning he came up to me and
said "I really wanna help you make this, you sound really passionate and
seems that the game you're mentioning here has great potential to be something
different". So we got my friend and
created a company to try to make this vision of Interstellar Marines possible
in December 2003. But back then we were only 3 guys, it was a slow progression
to try to raise money from investors, writing the manuscript for the game and
the first build...it's been a long journey since then.
Me: How
did you managed to get the budget for the engine and other stuff?
Kim: From
that moment it’s been like a rollercoaster ride. The initial funding we got
allowed us to create the first trailer for the game – we created a small
trailer in 2005, released in 2006. Only few funds, only 3 guys. Instead of
working on the engine we worked on how to sell the idea with a concept trailer
– and that became the trailer of 2006 in which we showed what is the game kind
of all about. And from there we started to work on the Unreal Engine and
managed to get a few investors aboard to work on the demo on Unreal Engine for
publishers. Right now we use a different engine because we can’t pay Epic
Games, means lots of dollars, so we had to find something that within our
budget.
Me: By the way, I really wanted to ask about
this Unity Engine. I saw how well it works playing the game directly in the
internet browser – how’s going to work on the full game? Because I suppose
those demo’s (Bullseye, Running Man…) are some kind of simplified versions,
that work on browsers.
Kim: Right now our technology it’s following what
the Unity guys are doing in terms of ability to use the engine inside a
browser, that is obviously pretty immature at the moment, but we hope this
technology will evolve in the next few years we develop IM and make it possible
to play the game. Our ultimate goal is to make the game available everywhere to
anyone – whenever it’s inside the browser or download and install it on your
computer, get it in the hands of the people as easy as possible. We also
looking into releasing the game on Steam.
Me: Enough about the engine. I want to know
about the storyline, I want to understand why is it a trilogy.
Kim: If we want to have all the story that we
spawned it wouldn’t be enough for one game, so right now the story is written
to be 3 games. For us is about creating the type of Science-Fiction you get in
Alien, trying to create SF that is believable so people want to be part of it,
without having to be too much like Star Wars or Halo, we want it to be
realistic Sci-Fi.
Our storyline sends us around mankind
meeting aliens, kind of like Alien, Starship Troopers and Final Fantasy (from
FF we liked only a few starships). In terms of story we feel that no movie or
game had yet sold how the first contact would be as realistic as possible. We
try to sell how would be if we someday we meet other, and not like aliens running
around being octopuses with green lasers and force fields; it would be more
like civilizations as mankind and what it would be like not to be able to
communicate with or understand each other, we think that’s pretty interesting.
That’s why they’re three. Be establishing the First Contact and imagine what
would happen from there.
Me: Less silly, more serious.
Kim: Exactly. Kind of like, if know Rainbow Six
or Ghost Recon and tactical shooters like that. We’ll love to play a military
tactic shooter with role-playing elements in a SF setting, where the story and
the setting are realistic as in RS or Modern Warfare but in a SF universe.
Me: Tell me more about the RPG part. Is it
going to be level-ups and stuff like that, or kind of more like Mass Effect
style?
Kim: ME is a bit hardcore, even it’s still a bit
softcore…the type of RP we are introducing is enchanting the First-Person
mechanics: we got weapons training,
character training, and an equipments shop, which means that by playing the
game you are rewarded. You get XP by killing bad guys, completing objectives,
finding hidden rooms and stuff like that, exploration, etc. …and those XP
points to be used in 3 shops: when you go to the weapons shop you can purchase
more advanced weapons, put xp points in a weapon to get it to shoot much
faster, more precise; also you can unlock various extensions for a weapon like
scopes or silencers. Some points goes for character, such like strength, stealth…;
be able to carry more weapons, wear better armors, run faster, be more stealthy
and more, it’s up to you what you want to upgrade.
The first shop I mentioned, the
equipment one is the shop where you upgrade your equipment, buy mines, helmet
with night vision, better map display, hacking equipment etc..
It’s about enchanting game play you
expect from tactical shooters and having fun with the character progression by
that time.
Me: So the player will feel more satisfied by
the actions they do.
Kim: Precisely. Because, traditionally when you
play a game like Portal or MW, you have the cinematic feel and the story –
that’s great, but you don’t have goals for your character, and we really miss
that in FPSs. The best two examples are Deus Ex and System Shock – they
improved the FPS formula by introducing RP elements.
It would also be cool with playing
in CO-OP, for example having a friend that’s upgrading his rifle and you are
upgrading your medic skills, you know, trying to create the best team possible.
Me: What’s your opinion about the current
shooters then? You believe something is missing?
Kim: Well, for example: I’ve completed Crysis 2
recently, which was pretty awesome actually. The tactical arsenal of weapons
was getting close but lacked of co-op and role-play elements. And the type of
SF they put into it’s like, nothing explained – why are the Ceph running
around, where do they come from. I think it’s still missing the kind of things
we want to do. Crysis 2 is a great example of fantastic game that’s getting
close of our goal but yet it’s still not there.
If you play a tactical FPS, they all fit the
co-op style, got a great tactical arsenal of fantastic weapons. But the story,
the cinematic feel and exploring the world – those are not there.
And then you have games like MW and
Black Ops; those are completely linear, just from A to Z, it’s a prescript of
the story, a rollercoaster ride where you get to shoot enemies along the
way...I think those games are cool, for a few hours, but I usually get to be
irritated by the fact they are not trying to improve the idea. I think that also the multiplayer was
fantastic…so it’s really hard to explain the things that are missing.
I think I.M. is going to be a mix of
a few FPS genres that we all know and love.
Me: How Deadlock, the multiplayer, is going to
be?
Kim: First, Deadlock is a technology platform for
getting the people to play it early on, and then trough the development we
gonna allow people to give us feedback and suggestions; hopefully they’ll love
to help create a better game.
But there is something else we’re
crafting right now, because it makes most sense, and the once we got the
technology for the multiplayer we’re gonna move to the game play next, and then
moving to start working more effectively on the first game.
Me: How is it to not have a publisher, being
more free?
Kim: In
terms of planning and stuff like that it’s obviously we’re planning as much as
possible, about what type of work is more creative for us.
Being complete independent from
publishers there is no one that tells us “you can’t do this, you can’t do
that”, it’s neat for us.
But in terms of time, we have to show
results for our investors so we have to develop a great Deadlock experience so
hopefully more people are joining our community and more people will pay so we
can create more games, more of I.M.
So, I think it’s a fantastic
situation, and at the moment we wouldn’t it any other way.
Me: It can be seen on your site that you
mentioned about a quest – about revolutionizing the industry forever.
Kim: The
concept: if you have the developers and the guys that inspire games we don’t
need anybody else – that’s all we need, no retailers, marketing people or
publishers. The community that plays and love the games – they get the money to
make the games faster hopefully. We can sell the games cheaper this way, so
people don’t have to pay 60$ for a game that can be paid for 25-30$, as a AAA
quality game. That’s what we thought when we talked about revolution. It’s the
fact that with the internet today guys like Notch can be sitting home and
create a fantastic game called Minecraft and sell it directly to his fans, he
don’t need any one else, there is just him and the guys wanting to play his
game, and hopefully because we’re all gamers we can get games because of that.
Me: What is your opinion about today’s
industry? For example, how long will the PC last – some say that the PC is
dead.
Kim: Yeah I don’t think so. Obviously more and
more people are buying smartphones and touchpads and what do they call them…errrr,
tablets. When we really think about it, it’s about entertainment. If you can
own a laptop that usually is for work/school and just has the power for playing
everything, and obviously people will still be buying laptops that are faster
and faster. I’m pretty sure that the traditional big bulk, our computer that we
have sitting on our desks may evolve to smaller laptops, but I definitely
believe that PC’s never gonna die, and the fact that people will always need a
computer.
Me: I observe that everything is getting casual
and simplified. I notice that I.M. is a hardcore/oldshool game.
Kim: Yeah it is, and we’re not gonna change that.
I think that what we see right now
is that being more and more people that weren’t playing games before so they
begin with the ones like on Facebook. It’s not gonna mean that the type of
gamers that we are, hardcore FPS gamers, are losing interest in FPS genre,
obviously not, and won’t be eager or interested in making people that plays on
social networks play, or say they should play FPSs. We would much rather focus
our attention on guys & girls that love Halo, HL, MW and that stuff of
games instead of trying to convince others.
