If you could go back to 2003 or 2004, what would you have done differently?

(Laughs) Probably hundreds of little things and a few big ones. I think, with perfect hindsight, there'd be some major changes to the game. We would have done one business model or the other, and we would have focused on having a persistent world as opposed to instanced gameplay. I really don't know if that model can exist. People are so used to how MMOs play now, with a persistent world and then having some instances that you go to... We were certainly changing Mythos over to that, to be a persistent game, as opposed to having a hub and then going out and doing the instances. I think there were things from a business side that we could've approached better, and they cross into development too. Doing less and doing it better would've helped us. There were some areas that we should have done more in, and I would have preferred to spend time and effort to do more in the areas where had deficits, rather than do things like Games for Windows in Vista. It's a big stretch for a company even as experienced as we were to be doing that out of the gate. Our experience may actually have hurt us a little bit because we came from the place where all things are possible, so we used that same mentality to make our first product, and although tried to be somewhat realistic, we ultimately just went for it on every possible level – and after awhile you realise you just can't get everything done.


To go further back in your career, you worked on Diablo, and that's coming up on a third sequel. How do you think it's been handled?

Ultimately they're going to do a great job, because Blizzard always does a great job on products. I was interested by the big explosion that happened online when they released the first gameplay footage and screenshots, when that vocal minority was outraged that it didn't have that dark, gothic, gritty look. But that actually made sense, because it's not Blizzard North doing it anymore. That's the art style that the guys down at Irvine do. So it looks to me as what I would've expected from those guys, handling the Diablo universe. I always thought that was a real strength between having development teams in Irvine and San Mateo. Blizzard North had a different art direction, a different style, and different thought processes towards mechanics that were all very solid, and allowed the Diablo games to expand out on their own in a lot of different ways. I think that what you're seeing now is that mechanic being taken over by the guys in Irvine because it's involves them now, and so it's going to have that flavour. I want it to be great because I love Diablo, and I want another one.


Blizzard North had previously been working on the third Diablo, from what I understand?

There was definitely work on it up north, but whenever something switches to a different team or a different lead, they pretty much tend to scrap everything.


So everything was just thrown out, and started again?

I would guess so, but I have no actual knowledge of what they did or didn't do, as that was well after we were gone. But I wouldn't be surprised – there's hardly anybody from the original team or even the Diablo 2 team that's there – so my guess would be that they thought “Great, we have this awesome thing that we're working on,” so the designers and artists there would now be able to put their visions into the Diablo universe. Nothing that I've seen looks like anything I ever did with the game, so I would imagine they got rid of the vast majority of what I did when I was there.


From your comments I get the feeling you'd prefer the Diablo 1 or Diablo 2 art style.

I don't dislike how it looks now. I didn't look at it and have the appalled reaction a lot of people did, I just appreciated that it had a very distinct look. The Diablo games looked different to the Craft games, and I liked the fact that it was very dark, gothic fantasy. I just think that it's nice to be able to have different worlds represented with very different visuals. One of the things I liked about Champions before I worked here was the fact that they made the decision to give the game this four-colour comic look. Now that I work here, I know that it permeates everything. The gameplay, the action combat, and the dialogue: everything is all about bringing four-colour comics to the MMO space. It's the same thing, the dedication of style. If you look at World of Warcraft it's very much the same. They chose an art direction, and they executed it to the full. When WoW came out, there were plenty of people who didn't like the way it looked, and I think that with Diablo 3 there'll be some people who don't like it and prefer the look of the first two Diablo games. When they first released the the videos and the screenshots, there was definitely an uprising from certain sections of Blizzard and Diablo fans, but Blizzard does what it's going to do so I'm sure that all those people who were really upset will still be in line with the rest of us, getting a copy! As long as it's good and cohesive and takes the stories that they're telling, I'm okay if it doesn't look exactly like it did before, although I did like that really dark, edgy, gothic look.


Are you still in touch with Max and Eric (Schaefer) - (Original Diablo developers / Blizzard North Execs)?

Actually, I am. We live very close to each other, we were plotting getting together for dinner, I know their families really well and will probably see them over the Easter holidays for Easter dinner and things like that. One of the things that survived Flagship was that the founders were friends. We were all good friends when we started the company and that didn't change when things didn't work out, so it's nice to know that friendship can survive business!

Read the first part of our interview about Champions Online here.

Comment

Add a comment using your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Google or OpenID accounts.
blog comments powered by Disqus