Interview: Hermann K. Peterscheck on Jumpgate Evolution’s Design Philosophy
The MMO Gamer: You have some impressive eye candy in the game’s visuals. My concern, though, is that they may be a bit too impressive for their own good.
Looking at games such as WoW, which arguably owes a good portion of its success to sheer accessibility on a wide range of hardware, is there any concern about speccing yourselves right out of the market?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: Yes. There is that concern. We made our minimum spec to be what World of Warcraft, EVE, and the other main competitive MMOs are. We have a machine speced out that way with all those games on it and make sure our game runs on it as well as those games do.
To be honest the graphics quality that our programmers and artists were able to attain surprised me. The directive was definitely: run well, look great… and they hit that one out of the park. I can’t really explain how that happened other than there was A LOT of iteration on those first few assets and our artists have come up with very clever ways of making things look really good with lower poly counts and texture memory than is usual for “next gen” games.
Obviously games look better on higher end hardware but I can tell you that the game looks really good even on lower end machines, and we are dedicated to keeping it that way.
The MMO Gamer: Staying on the subject of accessibility… One of the major criticisms I’ve encountered any time I’ve read player reactions to the original Jumpgate was the near-mandatory need for a joystick to play effectively… extending to the point that even one of your fansites is called “Joystick Required.”
Do you have any plans to make the game easier to play for the keyboard and mouse crowd this time around?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: Absolutely. This goes hand in hand with the whole accessibility approach. Most people play PC games with mouse and keyboard and we have spent a ton of times making sure that it behaves well with those input devices.
In fact, the team is reasonably split between mouse/keyboard and joystick so we naturally make sure that both are well supported. I think you will find that no matter which way you prefer to play the game will play very well.
The MMO Gamer: I wonder if you’d indulge a bit of morbid curiosity on my part… to sate hard science fiction fans, do you have any plans to add a checkbox in the game’s audio configuration section for “No Sound in Space”?
Hermann K. Peterscheck: Don’t all games have this? I think turning off sound, music, tutorials, help popups, etc are things that all games should have.
It’s not a question of realism as much as it is a question of annoying the player. Players should be empowered to play the game the way they want as far as we can allow them to.
Who am I to say you shouldn’t listen to hardcore death metal when you are playing Jumpgate? Just because I don’t want to listen to it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I really hate it when developers force me to watch cutscenes, don’t let me turn off sound or music, and stuff like that. I think it’s totally unnecessary.
If you want to turn off all the sound because you feel that’s what space should sound like, feel free. However, I think that as developers we are trying to create a compelling experience and empty black space with no sound sounds not so compelling to me.
Basically the directive is that fun, compelling game play will always win out over hyper realism. You need to be believable and consistent, but that is different. For example, I think that Pixar movies are highly believable, but completely unrealistic… I’ll let you imagine some things that might be very realistic but not very fun or believable.
The MMO Gamer: To wrap everything up, since we began our conversation just prior to Christmas: Did you get everything you wanted this year? You never know, someone who really wants into beta just may take you up on it if you didn’t.
Hermann K. Peterscheck: I had a few days of rest and relaxation, which was perfect. When you have the great fortune of having a job you love, it can become a bit obsessive, and sometimes the best thing is being forced to get some distance for a while. When I came back I had a bunch of new energy which will now be needed and consumed.
The MMO Gamer: Well, thank you very much for joining us for this lively discussion. We appreciate it, and look forward to doing it again some time.
Jumpgate Evolution is currently in closed beta. You can find more information about the game at the official website: http://www.jumpgateevolution.com
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