Interview: Hermann K. Peterscheck on Jumpgate Evolution’s Design Philosophy
The MMO Gamer: Fantasy MMOs have killing rats. Land-based SciFi MMOs have killing giant, irradiated mutant rats that bleed acid. Space-based MMOs tend to be slightly harder to pigeonhole.
What sort of activities in Evolution could a player expect to find themselves involved in on a day to day basis?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: Killing flying space rats.
Seriously though, I think the general consensus that MMOs are just mindless rat killing simulators is not entirely correct. Look at the differences between the original Ultima Online and World of Warcraft.
Essentially the core of the game is fighting creatures to gain power to fight tougher creatures to gain more power. However that is like saying that movies are basically just stories about people that have stuff happen to them and it resolves in some way. It’s the execution and implementation that makes things really stand out.
So to actually answer your question, you will fight enemies, explore areas of space, advance your ship with equipment, make friends, fight against other pilots, mine, and tons of other things we can think of.
The key is that people always have a few things that they can do. If I really love a game I find myself thinking about what I’m doing NEXT, even when I’m not online. That does not happen by accident. You know your game has it when you, even as a developer, are thinking about what you are going to do next in your own game.
Too many developers never play their own game and think that because they spend so much time on it, they can never enjoy it. I don’t think that works very well. Put it this way: would you trust that Toyota is the best car if you visit the Toyota headquarters and everyone drives a Honda?
I don’t see why games are different.
The MMO Gamer: You bring up two good points here that I’d like for us to get into further.
First, we could conduct an entire interview just on the fact that the basic core principal you described, killing things to gain power so that you can kill even bigger things, has been relatively unchanged since Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson added roleplaying elements to Chainmail and came up with Dungeons and Dragons, over thirty years ago.
But, that’s a much larger issue. Let’s focus on MMOs for the time being:
I’ve heard it argued before, when the subject of derivative design comes up, that it’s not the rat-killing quests that matter in a game, but the background and story you’re immersed in while killing the rats.
While I can concede that up to a point, why should we—meaning, players, creators, and everyone else involved in the genre—be satisfied with that sort of status quo?
I mean, have you ever felt the urge to walk into the office one day, call all the designers into a meeting, and say, “This is it, guys. From this day forward, we will never implement another kill, collection, or FedEx quest for as long as we live. We’re all creative people here, so go think outside the box!”?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: Originality is over rated. Ok, that is a perhaps a bold statement; but I think it’s true. Consider Shakespeare; seen by many as the greatest writer of the English language; and yet most of his plays are rehashes of existing stories. In fact, the idea of coming up with an original idea is a very modern concept.
The old classic writers would have considered it arrogance to think that you could come up with a better story and instead you should be focused on refining what already works.
The reason why so many RPGs have a kill-collect-gain power element is because it works. The difference between Baldur’s Gate, for example, and the hordes of mediocre RPGs is execution, not design. Or rather it is in the details of the design and execution that it stands above many other games, and not because it has some “we won’t do kill missions” kind of approach.
Another way to think about it is music. Why should all music use the same keys all the time. Why should there always be the bass clef and the treble clef. Why do we need harmony and counterpoint? Can’t we be more original? Of course we can, but is it being done for good reasons.
I suppose ultimately my question back is: if a certain design paradigm works, why change it? I think that you will have a much more solid game if you don’t reinvent everything just for the sake of being original.
It’s better to learn from the many masters of the past and then make adjustments here and there and try to find some new form within those constraints. In short, we should be original where we have to be, or need to be, not just because we think we are so much smarter than all those that came before us.
[Note: As mentioned in the introduction, we agreed to save this discussion for another time, and further follow-ups were withheld.]
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