From the Codemasters Connect event
In conjunction with our recent preview of Jumpgate Evolution from the Codemasters Connect event, we also have a short Q&A conducted with the President of NetDevil, Scott Brown, who kindly sat down with us to answer a few questions on the MMORPG as well as responding to the criticism of his company’s Unreal Engine 3-powered first person shooter, Warmonger Operation: Downtown Destruction.I’d like to say a big thank you to Dan Corbett from Xbapodcast for coming to my rescue and sending me over a copy of the interview transcript.
Before reading the Q&A, I suggest that you check out our preview, which gives you more details about the game.
HEXUS: Tell us about Jumpgate: Evolution and how it relates to the prequel Jumpgate: The Reconstruction Initiative
Scott Brown It all just started off as a face-lift of the original Jumpgate, but we wanted to ensure that we did it right so we totally re-made it.
The story behind it is that an enemy known as the conflux has moved people from one area of space to another. The classes and so forth are pretty much the same as the original.
We’ve also made sure that the player can choose what they want to do throughout the whole game so if you want to be trader, crafter, miner or even specialize in security, the choice is yours.
The system also works similar to Gran Turismo, where you unlock licenses so if you want to fly “that” really big ship, you will have to unlock the license before you can fly it.
HEXUS: I understand that you’re focusing heavily on making the game as accessible as possible?
Scott Brown The accessibility of the game was our main focus. If you read the development reviews of all the great games they all have one thing in common and that’s focus testing. We focused tested many things inside the game over and over again.
Focus testing is getting someone who has never played the game before and asking them about their frustrations and points where they get stuck in the game.
For example, we had a girl in focus testing and one of the mission was like, kill so many ships and the girl said “I wish you had what WOW has where it tells you how many guys you have to kill”. But, while she is saying this is actually on the screen. We were like ‘why can’t she see this?’ Well, we looked at it over and over again and realized that this message was only shown for three seconds, whereas World of Warcraft shows the same message eight seconds. So, of course, we changed the length of the message.
Click for larger imageHEXUS: Due to Jumpgate Evolution’s accessibility and relatively low system requirements, are you hoping to attract a large audience?
Scott Brown Yeah, look at Runescape, it runs on almost everything and yet has over a million subscribers. The toughest task for us was making a modern looking game with low system requirements, but we did it.
HEXUS: What are your proudest achievements in Jumpgate Evolution?
Scott Brown The accessibly in the game, but also NetDevil as a team is probably one the best I have worked with. The team is just ten guys. We’re also very proud of the amazing graphics in the game.
HEXUS: So why should gamers be excited about Jumpgate Evolution?
Scott Brown The action, the adrenaline and the heart pounding experience!
HEXUS: Jumpgate Evolution will be a subscription-based game. Do you think we’ll eventually see an end to this particular business model in favour of free 2play games? And, don’t you think that the MMO market is saturated at the moment with mediocre titles?
Scott Brown I don’t agree with that, it’s like the rumors such as ‘pc gaming or console gaming is dead’. Whatever makes the game better as a whole, if it’s free to play then we'll do that, if subscription is the best opinion we will also do that.
The reason why many MMOs are subscription based is because gamers have to pay for continued development as opposed to console games which once released development is over.
HEXUS: This is slightly off topic but how do you respond to the criticism of your first person shooter Warmonger Operation: Downtown Destruction (see HEXUS.gaming review)?
Scott Brown Warmonger was made with just four guys and they did so many amazing things, such as the physics - if you shoot a flag it would cut in several places. One weapon can almost destroy a whole level.
The only problem with the game is that it requires a physics card, which not many people have.
Without one it’s a horrible playing experience. Hopefully with the rumors of NVIDIA putting physics on their graphics card (if you have SLi) then maybe physics cards will become more mainstream in the long run.
Click for larger imageHEXUS: Finally, when can we expect to see Jumpgate hit the stores?
Scott Brown Our goal for release is this year.
