Interview: Hermann K. Peterscheck on Jumpgate Evolution’s Design Philosophy
The MMO Gamer: To your second point, I agree with you wholeheartedly that, as far as I’m concerned, I would much prefer to play a game that the developers enjoy playing themselves.
But, I can also see that if someone has been through months of crunch, working on something six days a week, twelve-plus hours a day, even the greatest of games are bound to lose their luster.
How do you avoid that?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: I disagree to some extent. I read a great interview that Mark Kern gave (project lead for World of Warcraft). He was saying that in internal testing he had to tell members of the team to stop playing WoW so much because it was interfering with their development progress.
Of course not everyone will play the game they are working on at that obsessive a level, but some people should. Also, after some time of course you will burn out on a game and put it away. If everyone on a development team has played the game start to finish a few times and enjoyed it, that’s a pretty good mark to hit.
I think very few games ever attain this because it is very hard to do. It’s also hard to make sure that you have an environment in which people are working on something that they enjoy and not just “getting it done and over with.”
Burnout can and will happen. People will get tired of playing the same game over and over again. However, they should enjoy playing the game at least some of the time; and some people should enjoy playing it a lot.
The MMO Gamer: Getting back to an earlier question, before we began discussing originality: You mentioned killing other pilots among your list of things to do in the game.
PvP has always been something of a delicate issue in the genre, even going back to its earliest days… In general, what is the game’s stance on it going to be?
For instance, will it be more towards the inclusionary, with separate “PvE only” servers, or aiming for a harder audience, with things such as corpse looting?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: Our approach to PvP is to treat it as a voluntary but rewarding experience. I think that if you don’t provide non-PvP players with a complete and rewarding experience you alienate a large part of the audience.
Likewise, if you don’t give PvP players meaningful experiences, you alienate them as well. Personally I like both PvP and PvE activities so I understand why the debate gets so fierce.
The particular implementation for JGE will probably be either PvE and PvP servers and/or regulated and unregulated areas within space. What is important is that as a PvE player you can enjoy the game from beginning to end (if there is such a thing) without feeling like you are somehow weaker because you don’t want to PvP; and the same goes for PvP content.
Things like WoW’s battleground vs. Raid content is an excellent example of how this can be accomplished. I think it’s hard to argue that one experience is “better” than another, but they are distinct and rewarding in their own right.
I have personally thought about things like Diablo’s “Hardcore” mode and I’m not sure why more MMOs don’t do something like that. The idea of a character who dies and may either never come back or need a long “cooling off” period would definitely add to the adrenaline of a game, so that’s an example of a more extreme idea we are kicking around.
The MMO Gamer: Then of course there’s the flip side of that question: If someone decides to buy the game and play it as the consummate pacifist, how far could they get?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: As I said above, the PvE player will not be stopped by the fact that they don’t want to PvP other than the fact that they won’t get the rewards for PvPing.
As a specific example, let’s say you want to craft a really powerful weapon – some of them will be craftable with stuff you get from high end PvE, some are craftable from things you might get from high end PvP and it’s up to us to make sure that the rewards are useful and appropriate. I think it’s a mistake to force a style of gameplay onto people unless you have no other option.
Also, I think if you focus on making the experiences fun and meaningful you’ll find that most people will try most anything if they play for long enough. Although many people may not PvP in the beginning, if it isn’t forced down their throats I bet they will try it out and, who knows, they might love it!
I always hope that we can provide experiences that are fun to people as opposed to focusing on some kind of ideological battle. I don’t know of anyone that hates PvP in all cases (that is to say, competitive card or board games, game shows, etc. all being examples of PvP). It’s the presentation that I think is the problem.
If you decide to try it out one day and get beaten over and over again you won’t want to play, but if you start and make some progress and have a good time, you’ll do it over and over again!
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