Maximum PC interview RSS Feed

Cryptic Talks Star Trek Online's Space Combat, Away Missions, and Competing with WoW

Norman Chan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0600

We chat with Craig Zinkievich, executive producer at Cryptic Studios, about making a game for Trekkers and competing with World of Warcraft

Set 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (the last film before the J.J. Abrams reboot), Star Trek Online puts you in the shoes of a captain in a newly sparked war between the goody-two-shoes Federation and savage Klingon empire. The promise of exploring the final frontier, massive space battles, and obscure Star Trek references fills us with geeky glee. We went down to Cryptic Studios’ offices to play the game and quiz Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich to ensure that fans of Star Trek and MMOs are getting the best of both worlds.

Maximum PC: It looks like Star Trek Online is focusing more on action, as opposed to boring bits like interstellar diplomacy.

Craig Zinkievich: The game is set in 2409, about 30 years after the events of the Star Trek: Nemesis movie. A lot of stuff has happened since then. The Borg have returned to the Alpha Quadrant, bent on assimilation. The Romulan Empire still exists, but they have to deal with the fact that they don’t have a home world – so there’s a power vacuum there. The most important aspect is that the Kitomer Accord – the treaty between the Klingon Empire and Federation – has broken down. In STO, you play either as a Captain in Starfleet, the military wing of the Federation, or the Klingon Defense Force.

We’ve really tried to make the content in Star Trek Online feel as though you’re in one of the Star Trek shows or movies. You’re never just in one place. You can be on a ship, get a distress call, beam down to a planet, then beam up to a satellite that’s on fire, and finally back to your ship for a climactic space battle. You’re constantly moving between ground and space to really get that cinematic feel.

The biggest challenge in creating STO is that it’s two whole games—you have your ground combat and your space combat. But the game demands it; you have to go back and forth, and I think it’ll be the strongest aspect of the game.

On Space Combat

CZ: Space combat is very much like the shows. It’s not a dogfight—you’re not zipping around. You’re in huge 1,000-meter starships with hundreds of crew onboard. In the shows, it’s all about tactics and positioning. It’s about bolstering a shield that’s taken damage, transferring power from your deflector dish to your weapons or engines at the right time. It’s about knocking your enemy’s shields down with phasers and taking them out with photon torpedoes.

Each ship has four directional shields – though some of the smaller ships only have one shield. All weapons in STO have facing and firing arcs to them. For example, a ship can have forward facing photo torpedoes with a 90 degree arc, and two phaser banks with broad-side arcs. So in battle, you would flank broadside along your enemy to use both phasers to knock down enemy shields and then turn toward the enemy to finish them off.

MPC: Is the point of the battle to destroy the ship?

CZ: Yes, because it’s wartime, the battle does come down to destroying your enemy’s ship. Most of the time, they don’t give up at the end. There are certain instances there the enemy will surrender to move the story along, but most of the time it’s a fight to the death.

MPC: How does respawn work, then, if your ship is destroyed?

CZ: Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.

MPC: How does your crew and shuttles factor into the gameplay?

CZ: Each ship has a crew bar, which affects your hull regeneration rate – how fast you can repair systems that get damaged. There are certain powers that allow you to send boarding parties to other ships with shuttles, which takes crew. You can even send healing parties to repair other vessels during co-op.

The really cool powers come from your bridge officers. Like the shows, it’s all about the people—who’s there on the bridge during a crisis defines how the ship deals with it. You have a roster of bridge officers (starting off with one) that you can upgrade over time. These guys are like MMO pets, but taken to the next level. You name them, customize their look, give them equipment, and level them up with new skills and specializations. And the skills they have really end up defining what role you play in missions.

Some skills include tractor beams, which can hold enemies in place during combat, or high yield torpedoes that deal super damage. Each officer has one ability to begin with, but as you level them up, they get up to four skills. Each officer seat can also be upgraded, too. Officers in Ensign seats can only use one skill, while those in Lieutenant or Commander seats can activate more of their skills at once. With bigger ships, you gain more weapon slots and more bridge officer seats as well. The maximum is six officers with 12 skills total.

MPC: How does ship upgrading work?

CZ: Players start off with a generic Light Cruiser ship. Several hours into the game, you replace that with one of three different classes of ships – Engineering, Science, and Tactical, each with five tiers that you can advance through. Every ship has weapons, deflector shields, impulse engines, and Officer seats, all of which can be upgraded. But when you actually reach a different tier of ship, you get a new ship [of that class] entirely.

MPC: Can you re-spec your ship in the middle of the game?

CZ: You can change ship classes at any time if you want to try a different style of play. You just use your Starfleet “merit” and buy the ship at a Space dock. You don’t lose the previous ships that you had, either. You’ll always have the Light Cruiser, for example, if you wanted to use it for a specific mission. One night you could use a Defiant class ship for a quick space battle, and the next night, you could change to a Science class ship – the healer – to support your guild. You can really change what role you play on the fly.

MPC: So there are 16 different ship types in the game?

CZ: Yes, there are 16 total configurations total, from three ship classes with five ships in each tier, plus the first Light Cruiser. But within each configuration, we want you to be able to customize your ship’s appearance.

MPC: Like designing your character in any other MMO.

CZ: Yes, but still want you to be able to look at somebody’s ship, and know what configuration and class that ship is in.

MPC: Does the game have the “hot rod” style Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie?

CZ: [Laughs] No, we don’t have the new J. J. Abrams “hot rod” ship in the game yet, but we do have access to that in terms of our license. We’re focusing on filling out and rounding out what [the Federation of] 2409 looks like.

[Craig then loads up several ships on a computer, including ones based on the Intrepid, Excelsior, Miranda, and even Prometheus classes that will be recognizable to hardcore Star Trek fans.]

Our artists have done a fantastic job designing these ships and the elements that’ll let you customize each configuration.

Away Mission Gameplay

MPC: Let's talk about the ground-based away missions.

CZ: When you go down to a ground mission, you always play in a five-person away team. If you’re playing by yourself, you beam down with four bridge officers. If you’re teaming up with other players, you’re going to all go as captains.

MPC: Sounds like that would be against protocol!

CZ: Yeah, it’s funny. You have protocols like the Prime Directive, but those things never come up in the shows unless they have to break them! So, yes, you’re constantly breaking protocol by beaming down, but it wouldn’t be fun just to sit on your ship.

But this is another one of those places where you can change your style of play depending on which Bridge officers you slot. You can choose to bring medical officers if you’re playing with a Leroy Jenkins-type player one night, or bring a tactical officer if you’re going on the offensive.

MPC: Which player in a party gets to decide who to bring down, if you’re not playing with a full roster?

CZ: The team leader gets to assign which players go in the away team slots, and who has control of extra slots.

MPC: And the biggest group you can play with is five players?

CZ: Exactly, it’s five people per normal instanced team, which is the same for instanced space battles. There are larger persistent areas, like large fleet actions, where you can have dozens of ships. The same goes with large away missions, where you can have several teams [of five players each] on one planet at once.

Bridge officers on the ground are fully-functional MMO pets. They’ll follow you, use their abilities, and go into combat. If you want to, you can micro-manage them. You can tell them to stay in one spot, be aggressive, and even set their targets before combat. You can ask them to use special abilities on the ground, like healing or setting down minefields. Ground combat is fast-paced run-and-gun. It’s about maneuvering around your enemies and flanking them from the side, which does more damage. As a Captain, you can equip yourself with two weapons that you can switch at will, including melee weapons and martial arts skills.

MPC: And what kinds of things are you doing on away missions? Just killing everyone?

CZ: Just think of all the myriad things you’ve seen in an episode of Star Trek. For example, after you dispatch Klingon ships above a planet, you may have to beam down to the planet to save the locals from the Klingon landing party. Some missions ask you to recover artifacts and others have you following people back in time.

MPC: What type of loot will you be able to collect from missions and random exploration?

CZ: With bridge officers, they all have a paper doll that needs to be equipped with armor, personal shields, weapons, and other tools, which you’ll find on your missions. The same goes with your own character avatar. There are plenty of items and loot that you’ll find within the game, which you can sell or trade at spaceports. You can even find potential bridge officers.

MPC: Like an alien that you meet on a random world.

CZ: Yes. Another one of the loot items that is very important on the ground missions is your kit, which is a career-limited loot item. The kit gives you really cool powers on the ground, like Security Escort, which lets you beam in extra NPC characters for this mission.

MPC: A bunch of red shirts?

CZ: Exactly! They should have a much higher aggressiveness factor. These kits end up defining your role. Medical science players can deploy stasis fields with their medical tricorders. And over time, as you level them up, each kit can have up to four powers.

MPC: Will you be allowed to team up with friends who are at a much higher or lower level than your character?

CZ: The missions themselves are set level, and you can bring in a range of levels to play in them. Like City of Heroes, we have a sidekick system that lets your team scale to one level, with the experience rewards scaled along the same line as well.

MPC: What will be the level cap for the game?

CZ: We don’t have levels, per se. We have five ranks in the game, ranging from Lieutenant to Admiral. Each of those has 10 sub-ranks, so that ends up being 50 “levels.” And that’s indicated by the pins on your uniform, just like on the show.

MPC: You mentioned spaceports. Do you mean space stations like Deep Space Nine?

CZ: There are several large social hubs within the game. Earth Space Dock is probably the largest one for the Federation. That’s where you go to repair your ship, visit the auction house, and get access to new ships. There are major ones like Deep Space Nine, and minor ones like Memory Alpha, which have similar amenities.

MPC: Sounds like you’re including a lot of details from the shows.

CZ: In almost all of the content that we’ve made, there are Star Trek references, like a familiar character’s grandson or something that was alluded to once in an episode. We have pretty hardcore writers who end up getting all of those references in.

The Genesis Device

MPC: In terms of art assets and content creation, how much of that is crafted by designers and how much is randomly generated?

CZ: If you’re going to make a Star Trek MMO, you’ve to let players boldly go where no one has gone before, right? So we needed to make hundreds and thousands of planetary systems that you could explore. We did that by creating a Genesis game engine that could procedurally generate maps and systems.

Not all of the content is automatically generated. A good deal is first procedurally generated, and then given to our artists to hand-craft to coincide with story-driven missions. The pure procedurally generated content is more for exploration, when you want to make contact with someone who’s never heard of the Federation before. Genesis has been a really powerful toolset that allows us to create the foundation for our artists and designers to add the really cool content, as opposed to spending their time on the more boring tasks.

MPC: Do players then experience the same content or see different worlds when completing mission on their own?

CZ: The main episodic story content will be the same for all players. There are also Patrol missions, which will also be the same for everyone. But the exploration content, when you go to star cluster, for example, will be different for each player. There may be some similarities, but you’ll end up seeing different stuff.

MPC: How much of the Star Trek universe can you explore?

CZ: The game is split into four hubs – Federation/Klingon (where you start), Romulan, Cardassian, and finally Borg at the end. We liken each of these hubs to a season of Star Trek, each season with a set number of episode missions based there. Each will have major and minor story arcs, as well as one-off episodes. There’s an overarching story arc for the whole game, so that always shows up in each hub, story-wise.

Each hub is split in sectors, where are high-level maps that you’ll use to fly between planets and spaceports. This is one of the persistent areas where you’ll see hundreds of ships flying around, in addition to the large fleet action zones.

Making the Game Appealing to Star Trek Fans

MPC: What kinds of compromises did you have to make for this to appeal to both MMO players and Star Trek fans who might never have played an MMO?

CZ: There are some compromises we’ve had to make, license-wise, like adding many phaser weapons variations [in addition to the two main types in Star Trek canon]. In terms of gameplay, our goal is to make a really deep MMO that doesn’t scare away someone who has never played an MMO before. For example, the power-level interface has a complex mode where you can move individual power bars, but there’s also a mode where you can use preset power levels for offensive or defensive stances.

MPC: Do you base the content on materials like the Star Trek technical manuals and the Klingon language?

CZ: We definitely use the technical manuals to get the scale right. We don’t have plans to translate the game into Klingon, but who knows, maybe we’ll figure out a way to get the community to localize it for us.

MPC: What about playing as the Klingons

CZ: We’re not ready to reveal too much, but the Klingon gameplay will be drastically different from the Federation. It’ll open up a couple of hours into the game, and will be more PVP focused.

MPC: Is there going to be a lot of interaction between the two factions?

CZ: Yes, through the PVP and the indirect PVP gameplay throughout the Neutral Zone. But the storyline on the Klingon side is not the same as the one on the Federation side.

The 800-Pound MMO in the Room

MPC: When you’re designing a new MMO, how do you design it to compete with World of Warcraft?

CZ: I don’t know if there will ever be another World of Warcraft [-sized game]. The fact that WoW has so many subscribers is awesome, because it’s exposed so many people to MMOs. Whether or not there will be another game that gets millions upon millions of subscribers isn’t really [our concern]—we didn’t sit down and ask ourselves how we could steal WoW subscribers.

We first asked ourselves how we could make a decent MMO, how we could develop a reasonable business model, and have reasonable expectations. And then, we tried to make it the MMO that the Star Trek universe deserves.

MPC: And what business models work, if you don’t want to compete with WoW?

CZ: You can look at games like Warhammer and Conan, which launched with a few hundred thousand purchases. You can have a pretty nice business with a few hundred thousand users, or even fewer. So, I don’t think many people going into the MMO market sanely think they need 10 million subscribers to make money.

MPC: Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario where you need to have enough subscriber revenue to make new content to attract new subscribers?

CZ: Definitely. There’s a barrier. From our experience, if you don’t break 100,000 subscribers at any point in time, your game tends to just go away. Most games that don’t break that 100,000-subscriber mark tend to just be flashes in the pan. But once you do, you tend to get a really solid fan base with enough revenue to keep adding to the game, and things go pretty well.

MPC: What do you think about different business models, like opting for micro-transactions instead of subscriptions?

CZ: We like the subscription model, and will probably be using that in the near term. We are looking at micro-transactions and how that would work – Star Trek will have micro-transactions, but most of those will be cosmetic things. Some will augment gameplay, but won’t replace any gameplay.

MPC: Is there a risk in Cryptic having multiple MMOs in the market at the same time?

CZ: I don’t think there’s a risk as long as long as the products are different. If we were making fantasy MMO after fantasy MMO and competing with ourselves, we’d eventually run into problems. I also don’t think that we’re banking of people to play our games based on our name, either. We just want to make games that we want to play, and hope that other people will want to play as well.

MPC: How do you determine the long-term plans for an MMO, given the uncertainty of success?

CZ: We don’t have life spans on our games, and we go into the first year with an expansion and update plan. That being said, though, from our experience, the longer you plan ahead, the more likely the plan is useless, because the subscribers will tell you what they like and dislike, and what they want to see more of. So, even though we put a plan out there, we have to be flexible and listen to our captive audience. Which is kind of the cool part about making MMOs. [Once it’s released], it’s not just us making the game—everyone contributes.

Cryptic has also provided five keys to the Star Trek Online closed-beta going on right now. Post a comment on our Facebook page, under the Star Trek Online post, to get your name in the random drawing. We'll pick five readers to receive beta keys on Monday, November 23rd, at noon PST.

Conan O’Brien Interviews the Co-Creator of USB

Justin Kerr — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:43:29 -0500

Intel’s latest ad campaign wants you to believe USB co-creator Ajay Bhatt is a “rock star”, but if that’s true, why would they hire an actor to play his part in the commercial?

Well I have no idea, but that’s the question late night TV show host Conan O’Brien set out to answer, and the resulting interview touched on everything from technology, to gold plated shoes.

You might want to check this one out for yourselves but be warned.The commercial features almost as much lens flare as Star Trek.

Randy Pitchford Talks Borderlands, Piracy, and Why He Doesn’t Trust Valve

Will Smith — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:30:00 -0500

We chat with Gearbox's CEO about the state of PC gaming, the problem with Steam, and a little game called Borderlands

From the first time we saw Borderlands, we were intrigued. By mixing a fast-paced first-person shooter with the procedurally generated weapon system of a loot-hoarding RPG like Diablo, and letting you play the game cooperatively with three of your pals, the kids at Gearbox have made a game we simply can’t wait to play. We went down to Plano, Texas to play the first three hours of the game and to chat with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford about what the future holds for PC gaming, why Steam is not an ideal method of distribution, and why Randy loves Wal-Mart.

On Borderlands

Maximum PC: We see a lot of games developed simultaneously on multiple platforms, where the PC is very clearly a second-class citizen compared to the Xbox and PS3 SKUs. What have you guys done differently with Borderlands?

Randy Pitchford: The first thing is that we author our content on the PC. With Borderlands, we’re not porting the game to the PC, we’re starting there. The PC is our development platform.

The best-looking version of the game that you’re going to get is on PC. We target a high-end PC, but it’s scalable so you’ll still have a great experience on a 2-year-old PC. A 2-year-old PC will be comparable to the Xbox experience.

MPC: So people who can play Team Fortress 2 or Left4Dead will be in good shape to play Borderlands?

RP: Absolutely! We author on the PC, so the console versions are kind of reduced sets of the ideal content. Having said that, it is a first person shooter, which feels natural to play with the mouse and keyboard. Gearbox’s roots are in PC development, so we think a lot about that. We have a separate set of guys who are entirely focused on the PC version. Lots of games that are multi-platform don’t account for the mouse, in the menus, in the inventory screens, and the rest of the game.

For example, when we helped Activision bring Tony Hawk to the PC, they had this weird virtual keyboard. I didn’t need to use a joystick to navigate to the letter on the virtual keyboard because my PC already had a keyboard! We understand what people expect on the PC. With Borderlands, it’s different. We’re not porting the game to the PC, we’re starting there.

MPC: Borderlands is a multiplayer-focused game, but there aren’t any lobbies?

RP: All the modes that you can play are actually inside the game. In most games, you have the campaign, which is one thing, then you have competitive multiplayer, which is another. In Borderlands, if you want to play with a friend, you can just invite him to join you, but from that point on, there’s no lobby.

If a friend joins you, he’ll be doing your missions, he can take missions once he’s in the game, but you’re your game. Or, you can join him and take part in his experience. Or, you can start a game together, using the characters you’ve built up from other play sessions. Doing that doesn’t mean you’ve lost whatever progress you made when you were playing alone. Your character is persistent across all play sessions, if you want it to be. You can also create multiple characters. You can carry your character’s progression through all the games you play, or your friends, or whatever you want to do. You can move that persistent character around through all those different game experiences.

In addition, if you’re playing with friends in the cooperative mode, you can also compete with them. There are a couple of ways to do this: One is the duel, where you can smack someone in the head, then if that person smacks you back, you can just throw down right there. It’s just a quick way to go, “Alright bitch, I’ve had enough of you—let’s see who’s got it.” There are also arenas, which are like the Thunderdome from the Mad Max franchise. You go into the arena and you can set up a more organized competitive match. Instead of a free-for-all deathmatch, you can play a kind of rocket arena or team DM.

MPC: But a team deathmatch would be two players vs. two players, right?

RP: Yeah, the arena is designed specifically for… specifically for… a type of battle. It’s like fighting in a Quake map. It’s not a random world, it’s like a duel.

MPC: Like Rocket Arena?

RP: Exactly! Rocket Arena is a huge influence. We’ve never had a commercial Rocket Arena, just mods.

MPC: So how do you do with the different levels in the game? Say I’ve been playing a while and I’m level 40, but my buddy is new and level 10. Can we play together?

RP: If you guys want to do that, go for it! It depends on whose game you’re playing in. If you’re playing in his game and you’re playing in the newbie area, you’ll essentially be a god, killing everything. But, you’ll also leech off most of the experience and rewards. So it will be a hard way for the low-level guy to grind. You can help people through the harder areas by doing that, just like you can in WoW or other games, and that’s fine! A lot of games won’t allow that, but you paid your $60, so we think you should be able to play with whoever you want.

MPC: Obvious influences: Diablo and World of Warcraft…

RP: Yes

MPC: Hardcore first-person shooters…

RP: Yes

MPC: Something with cars?

RP: Actually, I was having a hard time explaining that. We use vehicles kind of the same way Halo uses vehicles. There are some missions that are vehicle-centric, and there are interludes with big Road Warrior–style combat, but it’s not a racing game. Vehicles are kind of like gravy.

Settlements, like this one, serve as quest hubs in Borderlands. Places where you'll come to get new missions, upgrade your gear, and recharge your health.

MPC: What happens when you beat Borderlands?

RP: If you go through the story missions, and you’ve beaten them all, and ended the story, you have a couple of choices. You can go back and complete the optional missions, and level up your character and become more powerful and get better gear. Alternately, if you’ve completed the story, you can replay the game, but everything’s harder, and all the bosses are tougher.

The other thing is that you can reach the level cap (level 50), and there are some end-game content places where it’s fun to grind for gear. We’re not announcing anything yet, but I can hint that there will be DLC for Borderlands, as well.

MPC: For PC too?

RP: Yeah, for all platforms.

MPC: How are you going to do downloadable content for PC? You’re not using Steam or Games for Windows.

RP: I did say we’re not doing Games for Windows. We haven’t said anything about Steam yet.

On the State of PC Gaming

MPC: What’s your feeling about the health of the PC as a platform for games?

RP: It’s tricky, right? It’s a very powerful platform and it’s very flexible.

MPC: You mean the technology and the widening gap between Xbox 360 and PC’s capabilities?

RP: The longer the generation goes with the consoles, the more the extreme side of the PC will have an advantage, from a technology perspective. The other thing is that the PC is a very flexible platform, we can build PCs of a lot of different types. Another angle to that is that it’s a very accessible platform, it invites a lot of different development activities. However, the biggest games in the world are very costly to produce.

MPC: $30M-$40M for some AAA titles, right?

RP: It’s becoming very difficult to rationalize that on the PC alone. When you’re sitting in my seat, you want to make sure that you’ve thought through your business model, and want to make sure that you make at least as much as you spend. Because if we don’t make as much as we spend, we don’t get to do it again. That would suck.

As you add more players to your co-op game, Borderlands ramps up the difficulty. With four players, expect to fight lots of baddies, and a ton of Badass bosses, the game's uber-difficult elite characters.

MPC: We don’t want you guys delivering pizzas. That would be bad.

RP: We learn something each time, and we get better each time, so we want to make as much as we spend at minimum to keep going. We need to make a lot more than we spend if the pattern continues, in that the cost of the next project is much more than the cost of the previous project. So anyway, what does that mean? How healthy is the PC platform? I believe the PC has a hard time being a dominant gaming platform, because of the advantages it has. Because it’s such a powerful, flexible platform, it’s also less accessible, to ordinary folks.

MPC: There can be a high expense to them too.

RP: It can be expensive, but you can amortize your investment in a PC in a lot of different ways. Everyone uses email, browses the web, and watches YouTube on their PC, but you can’t really do that on a $250 console. You’re not just buying a PC as a gaming platform. You can rationalize that cost in a bunch of different ways. The big problem though, is the flexibility of the platform. It becomes a real challenge to push things because it’s difficult to know whether your customer has a high-end gaming machine or a 4-year-old computer with Intel integrated graphics. Ultimately though, that versatility of the platform means the PC won’t be the dominant platform, but it also means it will never go away.

MPC: Unless people stop making PC games.

RP: Which is very unlikely. Games will change, but we’re always going to amuse ourselves with whatever tools we have.

The sexiest bit of Borderlands is its procedurally generated weapon system, which combines thousands of variables to create monster weapons, like this shotgun that shoots flaming razor blades.

MPC: How worried are you about piracy?

RP: I think I look at piracy a little differently than most people. It sucks as a content creator who has invested a lot of, not just our money, but our souls, our creativity, and our time, to know that someone’s stolen something. That feels bad.

Part of it is price point, part of it is convenience, but part of it is that the bootleg, stolen stuff is harder to get now. There was a period of time when I could type in the name of a song and I’d find a website with it on there. Today, I have to use Bittorrent and all this other stuff.

MPC: You have to speak that language.

RP: I’m comfortable speaking that language, but a lot of people aren’t. Any computer savvy person is going to be able to pirate, but the question is “Can your mom pirate a song?”

MPC: But she has the option of paying the $0.89, and that’s easier for her.

RP: Amazon has made it super easy. On the videogame industry, especially on the PC side, we kind of suck on all three points. Our retail experiences are sometimes less convenient and less trustworthy than the alternative. There’s a ton of risk as a retail customer—half the time you don’t even know if that game is going to run on your PC.

Then there’s the DRM issue, which makes us even more skeptical of retail sales. DRM has been handled terribly for so many years. For example, false negatives are a disaster for everyone. I’d much rather have a false positive, and allow thieves to play, than prevent a paying customer from playing my game. The industry has destroyed a lot of good will with DRM problems.

MPC: You’ve had issues with this in the past?

RP: The more control we have, the better off we are. If you look at Hell’s Highway, there was virtually no DRM. We put our foot down on that, and they said “Ok, we’ll go your way.” Still, that’s not an ideal situation, because we released it and it was immediately stolen. Release and steal wasn’t good.

On Steam, Games for Windows, and Wal-Mart

MPC: The download services, like Steam, are helping make it easier to buy games though, right?

RP: I’ll tell you what. Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve.

MPC: Because they’re competitors?

RP: Right.

MPC: You guys have worked with them a lot!

RP: I know. And I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.

Rocket launcher-equipped vehicles in Borderlands not only let you travel quickly across the game world, they also open a whole world of vehicular combat, giving entirely new meaning to the phrase road rage.

MPC: So you think Valve should spin off Steam?

RP: They should! It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.

I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.

MPC: What about Microsoft?

RP: Microsoft has every single one of us running Windows, and it could solve this [distribution] problem in a second if done right. It’s not hard, but either the company doesn’t know how to do it, or it’s not willing to invest, or it’s got other priorities. Gamers can see the prioritization. Microsoft is focused on the console platform. For the time being, that’s nice, because some of us aren’t sure we want Microsoft to control [distribution]. Frankly, at this point, I’d rather trust Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

MPC: But you can’t think brick and mortar retail is the future?

RP: The thing I love about the digital method is that I’m buying a credential. When I buy a credential, I can log in from any terminal and my content can follow me, but I don’t care who I buy it from. I’d rather buy it from someone whose only interest is serving me. I’m cool with it being a digital retailer, but I want that to be their only business. And then I’ll really trust them.

Of course, I’m kind of joking when I say that I want Wal-Mart to control it. What I’m really saying is that brick and mortar stores work because they give the customer the retail experience he wants. At the end of the day, their only business is retail, and if they fail to serve their customer, they die. I think if we’re more convenient than stealing it, and we, as a culture, are learning that stealing software is still theft. We all want to be good people, we don’t want to be criminals.

As you progress in the game, you'll be able to customize your character, specializing in one or two of the six main weapon archetypes. The upshot? As you progess in the game, you'll be able to do even more damage with that machine gun that fires grenades instead of bullets.

MPC: Given the opportunity, most people choose to do the right thing.

RP: We need to improve the convenience thing, and we need to figure out who controls the digital distribution stuff. I think it depends on the model. If they’re slicing a piece of all of us off, that sucks. It depends how much the piece is. There’s a fair piece and an unfair piece. How much service are they offering? Are they creating opportunity for us to manage some of those resources themselves? We’ll bear the burden of the cost of the service, but we want more of the reward. Are they creating that opportunity for us or is the only way their way?

The best example is that I can go to this place using Vista to buy software from Microsoft. But, I can also fire up my browser, whether it’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla, and I can go to any retailer in the world and purchase something. That’s really neat. Amazon has somehow figured something out, as have Apple and others, and made it really convenient for me to buy songs. They have that interface exactly right for the way I want to consume that. It seems like it’s not that hard to do. We’re not there yet, it’s still 2009, but we can see it and know that it’s possible.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited Mega-Interview -- All Conceivably Relevant Topics Discussed!

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:15:00 -0500

Dungeons & Dragons Online, like the lion’s share of MMOs out there, has undergone countless changes since it launched, but never something this huge. Previously a subscription-based game, DDO is just about to engage the landing gear on its brand new free-to-play option, which brings with it new features of all shapes and sizes. We spoke with senior producer Kate Paiz about DDO’s latest makeover, chatting about topics including the DDO Store’s effects on game balance, the when’s and why’s of DDO’s new free-to-play model, the recent sale of id Software, and much, much more.

Seriously, grab a sandwich or something. This one’s a doozy.

What prompted the decision to go free-to-play? Why move away from a subscription focus?

Ever since we’ve launched, we’ve gotten feedback from players that we’re just a different kind of MMO; we don’t have the same kind of basic gameplay mechanics as a lot of other, more traditional MMOs do. We have a lot of private, party-based instances. We give XP based on the completion of an adventure, of conquering a goal. So you saved the girl, right? You know, destroyed the weapon – completed something that was a little more epic than just killing monsters. It’s a bigger task. And because we’re based so faithfully on the [D&D] 3.5 rule set, there are also just some basic mechanics that differed [from other MMOs].

So one of the things that we hear all the time is that because we’re not that traditional MMO, and because research has shown that one of the barriers to joining an MMO is the subscription price, we felt like it made more sense to pull from D&D’s roots and go back to sort of a more module-based purchasing option, where players get a certain amount of content, like the players’ handbook, right up front, and then they can use that as much as they want and then purchase additional content when they want, the way they want – rather than being locked into a subscription fee.

How are longtime DDO players taking the news that their MMO of choice is changing so drastically?

So far, the feedback on the forums is very positive. We’ve gotten a lot of [reactions like] “Yes! I can finally get my one non-playing friend to join us! And this is going to bring the party back together from college!” This is going to give players the opportunity to expand that social network that’s so critical in playing both MMOs in general and D&D as well. I’m so pleased at how much they’re into it.

Do you think subscription-based MMOs are a dying breed? Recently, both Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online were forced to shut down. How do you see the business model faring going forward?

I’ve been working in MMOs for nine years now, and I’ll say that it’s a very difficult space, very competitive. I think that there are some great subscription-based games, and it’s just one of those markets where, to succeed, you have to be doing a lot of things right. And again, our decision to broaden [DDO] was more about making sure that we were addressing the market that we thought the game was right for than our concerns that monolithic subscription games were a thing of the past. You know, Lord of the Rings Online, for instance, has great success with its subscription fee, and I don’t see us changing that plan for the game. For us, it’s really more about aligning what our goals are around what our business model is.

What audience is DDO aiming for? Free Realms, for instance, is obviously aiming for a more casual userbase, and has recently seen its player numbers shoot up to over 3 million. Are you targeting a similar audience?

We’re definitely going to continue to appeal to the D&D crowd, and we’re expecting to broaden that with the change to a free-to-play model. We’re looking to pull in more of the young crowd who are MMO-focused or action game-focused, so teens and 20-somethings. We especially expect a lot of kids who are in college or in high school, who don’t necessarily have the monthly spending allowance that people in the workforce have to use the opportunity to unlock points in-game to earn premium content. Again, though, that’s not going to work for everyone; for instance, the guy who has to balance his job with his family and friends won’t necessarily be able to take that path, but it’s there for them if they want.

Speaking of premium content, what’s the upward limit of game balance-altering items you’re willing to sell in the DDO Store? I thought I saw an experience boosting potion…

What we have right now are heal and spell point potions – you know, mana potions and things like that. That’s pretty much it. We don’t see a reason to sell base-XP stuff. I mean, we have small XP boosts, but they’re really constrained in their impact because we want to make sure that the loot-based game and playing with your friends continues to be a reward mechanic. We don’t want to water that down just to make a few bucks on the side.

So, say some people hate the DDO store and other Eberron Unlimited features. Would you consider adding retro servers to DDO, in order to let these players go back to the game’s pre-Unlimited “good old days”?

Some players have asked for that, but I would say that right now, that’s not in our plans. We’re certainly interested in understanding how many people would want to do that. You know, the DDO Store is completely optional, so anyone who doesn’t want to participate in it can find access to pretty much everything through non-store means. Again, you quest for the best loot and armor – that hasn’t changed. You can unlock at least two of the premium classes and races through gameplay alone, and if you really want the other ones, I recommend you subscribe if you’d rather not buy them through the store. Right now, we’re encouraging more purist players to play without the Store, and then we’re keeping an eye on the balance of that.

What are your thoughts on raiding in MMOs? The whole concept, at least to me, seems counterintuitive. I mean, you’ve gone through the whole game playing solo and running short instances in small groups, and then you dive right into the deep end with huge groups and big time commitments. Casual players, especially, seem like they get the short end of the stick here.

Throughout the whole game, we teach you to know your character and know the role you play in the party. But in general, it’s finding the right group of people to complete the raid with. So in general, we make a real effort to not break the basic game mechanics when we put players into raid content, though certainly we understand that some players are going to find certain raids not to their pallet. We do in general try to make them very accessible.

Seeing as Turbine’s an independent developer, you must have some thoughts on the recent sale of id Software, which was once thought to be a beacon of hope for large, independent development studios. Do you think large-scale independent developers have no choice but to eventually sell to a major publisher?

Well, across lots of industries, you see that sort of trend of independence coming up, then there’s a period of consolidation, and then more independents spring up. That’s certainly been true for a lot of things, and it’s not surprising to me that MMOs in particular and game companies in general are going down that road. We’re very proud to be a strong independent company with amazing franchises that have legs.

I wish id Software the best of luck, though. I love to see vibrant companies grow and continue to make great games.

So, what’s in the works for DDO beyond the Eberron Unlimited update?

Well, this release is really big for us, so that’s 99% of what we’re talking about these days, because it’s still in beta, so we’re still tuning and balancing. Once we go live with this, we do expect to release an update not too long after that will take players to another high-level adventure pack – not related to Shavarath; we’ve had a lot of Shavarath-related content recently and we wanted to give players a break from that. We have some really nice, nightmarish dreamscapes to walk players through. Right now, though, we’re focusing a lot of time and attention on beta feedback.

Final and most important question: What’s your favorite music to listen to when running through a dungeon?

Umm... [Singing] ‘Everybody was kung-fu fighting!’ [Laughs].

Really though, I like to listen to rock with DDO. I feel like it’s just sort of an applicable vibe to the action. But whenever I’m playing my monk, I do have the ‘Kung-fu fighting’ song in my head.

All right, thanks for talking with us!

If you’d like to know more about DDO: Eberron Unlimited, look for our preview of the game, which is going live tomorrow.

Nokia Considering Netbook Offering

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:18:56 -0600

Nokia has quietly been observing the influx of tech bellwethers into the cellphone market. Now, the world’s largest handset manufacturer is the one contemplating an invasion. Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told a Finnish news channel that the cellphone maker is giving serious thought to entering the laptop market.

"We don't have to look even for five years from now to see that what we know as a mobile phone and what we know as a PC are in many ways converging," Kallasvuo said. Nokia is widely expected to enter the netbook segment, if it does actually foray into the PC market.

Microsoft: Windows 7 to Bring Glad Tidings for Gamers

Pulkit Chandna — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:55:16 -0600

Will Windows 7 bring glad tidings for gamers? Chris Lewis, VP of Interactive Entertainment Business for Microsoft EMEA, certainly believes the new OS will keep gamers happy.

"It's all good news - it's even more robust, it's quicker relatively, and the early testing cycles are proving very promising overall,” an excited Lewis told Gameindustry.biz in an interview. He said the company will divulge more details later this year.

Lewis didn’t forget to reassure gamers that Microsoft remains committed to PC gaming. “Ultimately we're a Windows and PC company at heart,” Lewis accentuated Microsoft’s commitment to its roots.

Image Credit: Article Inspector

Exclusive: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Interview

Nathan Grayson — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:37:50 -0600

F.E.A.R. was, without a doubt, one of 2005's best first-person shooters -- deftly mixing balls-to-the-wall, head-exploding action with pee-your-pants level horror. Even better, its sequel, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, is poised to top its award-winning older brother in every conceivable way. We were lucky enough to engage in a quick email exchange with Craig Hubbard, F.E.A.R. 2's Principal Game Designer, and we're posting it here for you today.

MPC: Is this the end of the F.E.A.R. story? Are we going for a trilogy?

Craig Hubbard, Principal Game Designer: As you’d probably expect, our immediate focus is getting the game done. Beyond that, who can say?

MPC: Was the story arc planned from the beginning, or has it evolved as it’s moved along?

CH: It evolved quite a bit, but that’s normal. What works on paper doesn’t always pan out when you implement it, so you have to make adjustments and do what’s right for the game. We also decided to take out the subplot about the unicorn who lost its horn. It was very emotionally resonant, but didn’t really fit the tone.

MPC: What’s the biggest problem you had with the original F.E.A.R.? How do you aim to correct it in the sequel?

CH: The biggest complaint people had with F.E.A.R. was that the environments were repetitive and bland. The sequel has much more varied and interesting settings.

MPC: Are you developing the game simultaneously for consoles and PC? What’s the game’s lead platform?

CH: The team knew how to make PC games but hadn’t done a console title before, so it was easier to ensure that decisions made for the consoles would work on the PC rather than the other way around. When the project started, we didn’t have our tech up and running on PS3 yet, so Xbox 360 ended up being the lead platform by default but we are still developing for all three platforms at the same time.

MPC: Three words: digital rights management. How big of a concern is PC piracy? If not DRM, how do you think piracy should be dealt with?

CH: Anti-piracy measures are a publisher decision, so our only real involvement is doing what we’re required to do by the people calling the shots. I personally haven’t done enough research on the subject to have an opinion on potential solutions.

Although I am fairly familiar with methods the British Empire used to combat piracy back in the 1800s. Maybe an occasional public flogging or slow, agonizing death by hanging would help…

MPC: Why go with a proprietary engine? With development costs as high as they are, wouldn’t Unreal 3 or something of the like make more sense?

CH: The costs are astronomical whatever route you go. Either way, you’re starting off with a tech foundation that you have to modify to achieve your goals. For us, the cost/benefit ratio has been better with our own tech than with licensing, but who knows what the future holds? Personally, I just care that we can continue to make competitive games.

MPC: Your game is generally classified as a horror title, or some variation on the theme. Most horror titles thrive on taking power away from the player (through limited ammo, bad camera angles, etc.) to create a sense of fear. Why give so many potent abilities (slow mo, mech piloting, plentiful ammo, etc.) to players in F.E.A.R.? How do you intend to keep a sense of trepidation alive when the game’s main character is such a badass?

CH: Well, Aliens features a bunch of bad-asses with powerful weapons, but it still keeps you on edge. I personally feel that good horror is more about fear of the unknown than fear of death. The thing that makes a serial killer scary isn’t so much the act of murder as the senselessness of it. Things that defy understanding can get under your skin even if you’re packing a missile launcher.

MPC: In the original F.E.A.R., it seemed like you’d either be fighting, or getting the crap scared out of you – but not both at the same time. How will F.E.A.R. 2 make these disparate elements more seamlessly intertwined?

CH: The trick was making sure you fight some things that scare the crap out of you.

MPC: These days, with games like Far Cry 2, Crysis, and Rage on the rise, linear shooters seem to be fading into the background. Sure, linearity allows the developer to tell a tighter, more focused story, but openness allows the player to create their own. Why go the linear route with F.E.A.R. 2?

CH: It’s not really about the story so much as a tighter, more focused game experience. The great thing about Far Cry 2 is that you can decide where to go and what to do, while the great thing about Gears of War 2 is that it plays like a tightly paced action movie. Each is fun for different reasons.

MPC: F.E.A.R. was one of the first FPS titles to give the player a real sense of body in the game world. If you looked down, your character actually had legs! Legs that could kick people! What do you think about games like Mirror’s Edge, which have taken that concept to the next level?

CH: I’m really impressed with the Mirror’s Edge demo. They did an amazing job. Obviously, it’s imperative to have a sense of body in a game where your body factors into the game experience, so it makes sense that a game about free-running would raise the bar in that area.

MPC: F.E.A.R.’s A.I. was lauded for its craftiness and realism – three years ago. Yet here we are now, and few games have passed or even approached F.E.A.R.’s lofty heights. Why is that? Do game developers care more about tightening up the graphics on level three than improving NPC intelligence?

CH: After Shogo, we decided AI needed to be a much higher priority. If you’re making a game based around fighting NPC enemies, the only way that’s going to be really fun is if they present a suitable challenge. Part of it is making the enemies tactically smart and showing them coordinating with each other, but you also want to feel like they have a desire for self-preservation.

MPC: If you could fix one thing about the FPS genre as a whole, what would it be?

CH: It’s a pretty rich and diverse genre, so I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally in need of fixing. Obviously, individual games have individual issues, but that’s not the fault of the genre.

MPC: Thanks for your time, Craig.

New Lossless Zip Algorithm Compresses JPEGs by 20%! Exclusive Interview Explains the Process

Norman Chan — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:32:00 -0500

The ubiquitous Zip file compression format has been a staple of PC users since it first made its debut as PKZIP in the early 90s. Back then, the size limitations of floppy disk media and the painfully low-bandwidth dial-up connections made file compression a complete necessity. The Zip format today, while still popular, has largely been eclipsed by RAR compression, which has offered slightly better compression at the cost of archiving speed. That’s why we were so surprised to hear that WinZip 12, which launched yesterday, boasted an unbelievable 25% compression ratio for JPEG images – without sacrificing image quality. Ever the skeptics, we put the new software to the test, and grilled WinZip’s VP of Development about how this new algorithm works.

We decided to test WinZip 12 on a large folder of high-resolution JPEG photos, each ranging from three to four MB, and totaling 1.13GB (or 1,217,671,445 bytes). This photo gallery (taken at this year’s PAX), was made up of 301 photos, each at 3888x2592 resolution, and taken straight from our Canon 40D camera.

Dragging the files into the WinZip program window, we were shown a pop-up with typical configuration settings, including the target destination and encryption options. The one notable difference was the presence of a “Change Compression” button. This opened a new window with two distinct compression options: “Legacy Compression” and “Best method for each file type”. We decided to give both a try.

With Legacy Compression, our newly compressed file ended up as 1.13GB, or 1,214,464,603 bytes. The total space savings displayed was 3.10Mb over 300 images, or about 1%. Looking at each individual file in the archive, we saw an average of 10KB reduction for each photo. Not particularly impressive, though at least the zipped file wasn’t larger than the original folder (which we’ve seen occur with poor compression algorithms).

“Best Method Compression” faired much better. Changing the compression setting to the new optimized algorithm churned out a 927MB file (972,699,916 bytes), or an approximate 20% size reduction. Color us surprised. We unpacked the new Zip file to examine the JPEGs and couldn’t find any difference between those and the originals – no new compression artifacts.

But here’s the catch (and there always is one). Compressing with the new algorithm took almost four times as long on a dual-core Pentium D machine than with Legacy Compression. Also, the new Zip file was only compatible with WinZip 12 – it wouldn’t open with Windows XP or Vista’s native archive browser, let alone on OS X’s built-in Zip app. That means that these files are useless unless you pay for WinZip 12. We contacted WinZip to find out exactly how the algorithm works, and how they expect to get the internet community adopt it.

Interview with WinZip’s Bill Richard (VP Development) and Shawn Cole (Director of Product Management)

WinZip 12 is able to significantly compress JPEGs. How is this possible?

Bill Richard: Essentially, we reduce the file size of the JPEG file when we zip it by recompressing the JPEG file’s lossless compressed data using advanced compression methods that do a better job than the original compression methods defined by the JPEG specification.

A very important point is that WinZip 12 will compress JPEG images with no loss in image quality or data integrity. This means that image files you put in a Zip file will be exactly the same, bit-for-bit when they are extracted. This is a critical feature for an archive tool and WinZip takes lossless compression very seriously. Full details of our new lossless JPEG compression method will be posted on our web site shortly.

What’s different about the compression algorithm this time around? Is it a new algorithm?

BR: Zip file compression has always used multiple compression methods. With WinZip 12.0, we added support for two new compression methods. The first is JPEG compression which has been developed by WinZip working in partnership with one of the original authors of the JPEG standard. The second is the LZMA compression algorithm and is good for many types of files we tested including DOC, XLS, PPT, EPS, CDR, DWG and many more. This was already defined in the Zip format appnote.txt file (the open specification for Zip).

These methods join others that we have introduced in past versions of WinZip like PPMd, bzip2, and WAVPACK to give WinZip a comprehensive tool kit that can now make smaller Zip files than ever before. To use these in WinZip 12, select ‘Best’ from the compression method options when adding files to a Zip file and WinZip will pick the optimal compression method for each file type you zip.

Does Winzip 12 only make improvements for JPEG compression? Are other image or document formats compressed better as well?

BR: WinZip 12 adds the LZMA compression method which provides significant compression improvements in both size savings and speed for many common file types.

Better compression seems to require a lot more computational power. How does Winzip approach the tradeoff between compression efficiency and heavy CPU usage? Which is more important?

BR: Our benchmark is the end user tolerance threshold. This is the point in which most people feel the additional compression savings is no longer worth the time it takes to achieve the extra savings.

How compatible are the new Zip files with other compression software? How about older versions of Winzip?

BR: This is always a good question and one users need to think about when making Zip files. The newer compression methods available in WinZip and other compression utilities are not backward compatible with older Zip tools or tools that have not kept up with the Zip file specification. All versions of WinZip will inform you when a Zip file is compressed with a method that WinZip version is not familiar with. We publish the specifications for new compression methods we introduce so that other compression utilities can add support. In summary, recipients of Zip files that include state-of-the-art compression methods will require a compatible Zip utility to extract the files.

Are there plans to release a shareware version of Winzip 12, or a version that’ll let users decompress (but maybe not compress)?

Shawn Cole: WinZip is and always has been shareware but it has never been free beyond the evaluation period. Anybody can download WinZip and use it for free for 45 days while they decide if it is useful to them. We are always evaluating the best ways to package the amazing features in WinZip but won’t be making any changes here in the foreseeable future. So far, our users seem pretty happy with their investments in WinZip.

Does Corel [the owners of WinZip] have any plans to license its algorithms or any proprietary software?

BR: It has always been and remains WinZip’s philosophy to promote Zip as an open archive. In that spirit, we have already published all our compression and encryption methods along with any enhancements we have made to the Zip format. This ensures that the Zip file format and the community that support it can benefit from these improvements. This in turn, benefits users around the world. An example of one benefit of this openness is that Zip files have become ubiquitous on the internet and because it is an open format, many virus scanners and search indexers have added the capability to “look” inside a Zip file. Proprietary or little-used archive formats don’t have that advantage.

The 3rd party zip market has been pretty stagnant since Windows started incorporating native Zip compression and as internet bandwidth gets cheaper. How is Corel changing WinZip’s business model to adapt to the new computing environment?

SC: The market for robust, reliable Zip utilities like WinZip has not been affected as much as you might think. We don’t see a stagnant Zip market and you can see that we have released several major versions over the years since Microsoft added built-in zipping to Windows. Think of it like this, Windows’ Zip compression and decompression features are like WordPad. It’s there, it’s free and sure you can write documents with WordPad but who chooses it as their primary word processor?

For people that need compatibility with all the archives they are likely to receive, or who need advanced compression methods or strong AES encryption, WinZip has clear advantages. To compare compression performance, just try zipping up your documents with Windows and then do it with WinZip 12.0 using the ‘Best’ compression method and see the difference. For even more power, check out our WinZip Pro Edition to see additional tools designed to automate many of the tasks that occur before or after zipping.

How much more compression do you think is possible with further R&D? Are we close to or have we reached the limits of file compression?

BR: One should never say never. There are a lot of really smart people in the compression industry continually working to improve existing ideas and develop new ideas. And, as computer performance continues to improve, so does the possibility to use new compression methods that only a few years ago would have exceeded the end user tolerance level. We do not feel the limits have been reached and we will continue to seek out ways to benefit the Zip format and the people that use it.