Interview with Jumpgate Evolution Producer Hermann Peterscheck

With NetDevil’s recent announcement of their upcoming space MMOG Jumpgate Evolution, The MMO Gamer took the opportunity to interview Hermann Peterscheck, the Producer for the game. In this interview, conducted by  staff writer Steven Crews,  NetDevil  sheds some more light on their  latest project.

The MMO Gamer: For those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, tell us a little something about NetDevil, and what it is you do for the company.

Hermann Peterscheck: Well, NetDevil is a 10 year old independent MMO developer. There’s not a lot of independent studios out there with 10 years of exclusive MMO experience so it’s a good company to be at, if you like MMOs. My current title is “Producer” focusing on Jumpgate Evolution. Being a producer means all sorts of things at various companies. In the case of JGE it means that I oversee the day to day development, and am accountable for its progress. The blessing of the product is that we have a relatively small team of (8) very talented and dedicated people so it’s not particularly hard in terms of management. The down side of a small team is that you can not afford to make huge mistakes, so we have to be quick and clever.

The MMO Gamer: Tell us about Jumpgate: Evolution. What is your—to use a clichéd term—“vision” for the game?

Hermann Peterscheck: To make the best space action MMO ever. We feel it will be right up there with Elite, Wing Commander, Privateer and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. That’s an ambitious goal as those were all masterful classic games, but we have good reason to be optimistic. Jumpgate Evolution is primarily an action combat game although there are many aspects that are not combat related. There is mining, exploration, economics, station ownership and various other things that make MMOs live. I suppose in this sense it is a somewhat traditional MMO – most MMOs are fighting games, aren’t they? A big difference is that combat is largely skill based; that is to say, just like in the games mentioned above, you have to aim and fire. “Leveling up” per se, has more to do with accessibility to equipment and various other forms of content in the game.

The MMO Gamer: There seem to be some conflicting reports about it on the internet… Do you consider Evolution to be a remake, a sequel, or an update of the original Jumpgate?

Hermann Peterscheck: This is a tricky question. I guess as long as we end up with a good game I’m not that focused on what we call it. The thinking behind it was like this: Original Jumpgate was a really cool game that never reached its full potential. Why was this? We took a lot of time answering those questions and Jumpgate Evolution is the answer. On the one hand it is a substantial enough remake that it could be considered a new product; however it retains enough of the original that it could be considered a major update. This is why we decided to not call it Jumpgate 2. We want to be careful not to misrepresent the product. At the end of the day, however, if the game is fun to play and people think it’s great, I don’t think it will matter so much what we call it.

The MMO Gamer: What was the impetus behind the decision to go back and remake your first title?

Hermann Peterscheck: It’s really about our company’s approach to making the best game we possibly can, and if we really believe in the product, we’ll try to figure out any way we can to let it reach its full potential. There are many products on the market that seem like they “could have been great” but for one reason or another, they don’t get there. What really drives the project is our passion to make a great game. We think that space combat games are fun. We think that MMOs are fun. We look around and see that there are no action combat trading MMO type games and think “hmm, well we had one, can we update it and make it awesome?” I think the answer is “Yes.”

The MMO Gamer: As a remake, do you have any plans on carrying over existing data from the original game, such as accounts, player-owned stations, etc.?

Hermann Peterscheck: The short answer is yes, we are trying to retain all of the old functionality from Jumpgate that was cool and fun. In terms of player data we are still figuring out what we want to do. I can say that the two major areas of consideration are that on the one hand this is a different enough game that we do want to start with a blank slate. On the other hand we have people with years of work and thousands of hours invested into the game and we don’t want to say “Too bad. All that work is gone.” Whatever solution we come up with will take both of those things into consideration.

The MMO Gamer: How will Jumpgate Evolution compete with and be different from EVE Online?

Hermann Peterscheck: In the broadest sense, all MMO games can be considered competition. In the end, we are competing for eyeballs and asking people to spend their leisure time and money with our product. The EvE comparison is natural, being that it’s a subscription-based space MMO, but that’s really where the similarities end. The big difference between the two is that JGE is an action based combat MMO, while EvE is much more focused on empire building.

In reality, we are much more trying to make Privateer or perhaps Elite Online; what I like to call the Han-Solo experience. Han Solo is a guy who pretty much flies around the galaxy half looking out for his own interest and half engaged in a larger struggle. That’s what we want players to feel. The fun part is that being an MMO, it won’t be a scripted experience, so players can always have the option of playing the role of a Han-Solo who is more of a rogue than a do-gooder. We think that players will find JGE a completely unique experience, and vastly different than other MMOs in terms of overall game play and features.

The MMO Gamer: Do you plan on shutting down the original Jumpgate servers when Evolution goes live?

Hermann Peterscheck: This is another thing that we are trying to figure out internally. Personally, the idea of destroying hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of peoples work, fun and experiences leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. When an MMO gets cancelled it’s like you are destroying a world; or maybe less dramatically a cool bar that people hang out in. It’s not something we would do lightly.

The MMO Gamer: How long do you plan on supporting the original servers?

Hermann Peterscheck: This is the practical side of game development. Running a game costs money, and if it costs you significantly more than it generates, eventually it doesn’t make sense to run anymore. I can say at this very moment, Jumpgate is not in that category. The game makes more money than it costs. Something that I have been investigating is what other games have done. Runescape has kept their original game running for a long time, so it’s certainly possible.

The MMO Gamer: Aside from the improved graphics and AI you mention in your press release, are there any other major changes from the original you can discuss with us?

Hermann Peterscheck: Tons! The other major thing is the UI. We are completely doing that as well. Beyond that there are tons and tons of little things that add up to a significant change. Personally I think that the difference between a good game and great game is not some massive feature that no one has ever thought of; it’s the execution. It’s all about the little things: making sure that flying feels good, that combat is challenging but not frustrating, that shooting things is satisfying, that launching and docking are memorable experiences. Things like that. When I think about games that I really love, it’s hard for me to put my finger on one or two things that made the game work… at least one or two things that other games didn’t do. It’s the thousands of little things that add up to a great game, and those are the things we spend a lot of time on right now.

The MMO Gamer: Something of a personal question on my part, a feature I’ve been hoping for in a space-based MMO ever since I first played Starflight: Are there any plans in future updates or expansions to add a terrestrial aspect to the game, where you can land and exit your ship?

Hermann Peterscheck: As you can imagine, we are really excited about the game and have had all the conversations of what the game could be and what we want to add. I’d like to keep adding to the game for as long as people want to play it and continuously add new stuff to it. So there are all sorts of plans for future updates, but I can confidently say that at this point the launch plan does not include terrestrial planet exploration.

The MMO Gamer: I’d like to touch on a different subject now, if we may: NCSoft recently announced that they were shutting down Auto Assault. Where do you think that the game went wrong? Is the game being shut down to free up resources for your new projects?

Hermann Peterscheck: That’s a whole interview unto itself. We have spent a lot of time thinking about Auto Assault and what we could have done to improve the game, etc. I can say definitively that shutting down the game had nothing to do with freeing up resources for other projects at NetDevil.

The MMO Gamer: What lessons learned from Auto Assault can you take away for future developments?

Hermann Peterscheck: Each time you work on a project, the hope is that you learn things from it that help you in the next one. Auto Assault was no different. There really are too many to mention and they are lessons across all disciplines of game development. That said, I’d have to say that the two biggest lessons for me had to deal with accessibility and thin slicing.

In terms of thin slicing, Auto Assault taught us to avoid going into production too early. The bulk of most games can implemented with a small set of assets. Thus, it is much more effective to iterate on a small set of assets than on a large set. This seems completely intuitive but is not practiced as much as it perhaps should be. With Jumpgate Evolution we have spent a lot of time in a small area of space, focusing on one mission with a few assets. Each day we conduct play tests, write down a list of things to fix and fix them for the next play test. If you do this about 50 or 60 times you end up with something reasonably well polished. The idea is polish at the beginning, not the end… in fact, polish at the beginning, the middle and the end… never stop polishing.

Accessibility is the other big one. Test, test, test. If you are not able to test your game; then you should be working on things to make the game testable, as soon as you can. If the game is testable and you aren’t testing it, you should be. In Auto Assault, we implemented lots of major features and then iterated on them, instead of taking one feature at a time. Something to keep in mind, of course, is that with Jumpgate Evolution we have an existing product to compare against. With Auto Assault there is literally no game like it; which would make doing this difficult. Testing will tell you, definitively, what the important things are to work on. What good does it do you to have 5000 custom missions with all kinds of different content if no one can find the accept mission button?

The other half of accessibility is making sure the game actually works. This sounds so silly and obvious, but so many games release and they simply don’t work. What I mean by that is that the frame rate is low, or there is popping and skipping, they crash and so on. Imagine your favorite movie. Now imagine every 3 seconds it pauses, the sound makes a popping noise or cuts out… it goes black for a few seconds and then slowly recovers. That movie now sucks. The reality of development is that if the game is not smooth and stable, it sucks. There are no good games with bad frame rates. Thus, one of the most important things to do is make sure that your game is smooth and stable at each step of the way. Don’t make the mistake of believing that at some point you’ll go back and “do a performance pass.” You won’t and it will be too little too late. If something gets added to a game that kills performance, that now becomes a critical thing to fix.

The MMO Gamer: Is there anything we didn’t address in this interview that you’d like to tell our readers?

Hermann Peterscheck: I think that’s a lot of information for now. There’s tons more I would love to talk about, but we can always save that for another time…