Ragnar Tørnquist: Storytelling and World Building in The Secret World

By Steven Crews | April 8, 2009 | | Filed under: Events, Features, Interviews | Tags: Funcom, The Secret World

The MMO Gamer: Did you just say you’ve been working on The Secret World for over seven years?

Ragnar Tørnquist: Yeah, the genesis for this universe happened in the late 90s, like 96/97, that’s when we first started thinking about it.

We actually started working on the game called “Cabal” in 2002, which is the same universe, same game.

We stopped development on that in order to focus on Dreamfall, and then we picked it up again in 2006. So, we have been working on the game, as an official title, for seven years.

The MMO Gamer: Let’s talk about that genesis. Did you come up with it personally? Did someone else come up with it?

When did inspiration strike? Were you just sitting at lunch one day and you randomly thought: “That would make a good MMO”?

Ragnar Tørnquist: No, I think the way it worked is that in the beginning I just liked this kind of setting, this kind of contemporary dark fantasy setting.

Things that, you know, comic books like Hellblazer and Sandman get into; things that bring mythology and legends into the real world.

I thought, “You know, that’s a great setting for a game.”

And then that sort of coalesced into an MMO, that brought new elements on board, like what can you do as a single hero in a war between good and evil? It never is just with one person.

I worked on a lot of the setting and story side of things. We had other people, we were a very small story team that hashed out all these ideas and discusses it.

But then whenever you had new people, like concept artists, or gameplay designers, they all bring something to the table, something that adds to what the game is.

The game keeps changing, it’s not like it has been static for seven years. It has changed radically from 2002 until now, but mostly on the gameplay side and the locations chosen. Not so much in the actual universe itself. The universe itself is pretty much the same as it was back then.

The MMO Gamer: We seem to be running short on time, so this will have to be our last question.

I like to end my interviews on a more philosophical note, as opposed to, “What are your features, when is it coming out, and how many exclusives are you going to give me?”

So, why do you make games? Why do you get up every morning, go to work at Funcom, and do what it is you do?

Ragnar Tørnquist: I think, personally for me, it is a lot about creating worlds for people to enter; to tell a story, but not just to tell a story, but to provide an arena for that story, create a world for that story to exist in, full of characters to exist in it.

For me, there are a lot of cool things about game development. I love the game mechanics, I love the controls, I love the user interface, I think those things are really cool and I love working with that.

But personally, what gets me going and keeps me going is writing these characters, writing these stories, and creating and building these interesting universes.

The biggest reward is to have people play it, enter it, talk about it, and to read their discussions on forums, to read the reviews, and to really see what parts of the game that people enjoyed and, in some cases, didn’t enjoy as well, and get that feedback from that.

That’s what keeps me going.

The MMO Gamer: Alright, well thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it, and we hope we can do it again sometime.

Ragnar Tørnquist: Yeah, I hope so too. Thank you.