NetDevil: "Space Is Incredibly Boring"

24 Nov 2008 at 16:05:55 by Andy Alderson

Jumpgate Evolution developer, NetDevil, has told IncGamers how it decided on a visual style for its new space-based MMO.

Hermann Peterscheck, lead producer on Jumpgate Evolution, spoke about how the reality of space does not necessarily make for a good setting for a video game.

"Of course one of the first things you do is look at what other games do, what other science fiction films, browsing pictures of space and things like nebulas online and what you discover is that the way that space actually looks is incredibly boring," said Peterscheck.

"The way you get excitement out of it is by all the filtering technology, like the pictures from Hubble. Those were all interpretations of what was happening in space to one degree or another.  We decided the best way of doing this was by going over the top, out of the boundaries of normal experience.  The truth is that the real world is predictable, so when you want to be entertained in a fictional setting you don’t want predictability."

"Jumpgate allows you to jump from one point of interest to another very quickly without being bored and having to fly through blackness," he added.

"[T]here are areas that look like abandoned areas of ship graveyards, and there are these husks of ships just floating around with pirates in there who you can go fight.  The next sector you jump into could be a broken, flaming planet world where all the pirates hang-out, and the next area might be these huge ice crystals over an ice planet.  So within three jumps you could see that much diversity and we want to extend that as far as we can, and the way to make a game big is to make it rich."

Read part one of our interview with Peterscheck here.

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