Posts Tagged ‘Interview’
Runic Games’ Max Schaefer and Travis Baldree - Flagship closing down
August 15th, 2008 / / by Sp3tSnAz
While not strictly related to Blizzard, we’ve been following the progress of the former Flagship Studios’ developers, so this is relevant.
GameCyte has a new interview up with two of them who have started a new studio, Runic Games, who are Max Schaeferand Travis Baldree. The interview delves deep into why the company moved, why they think FSS failed like it did. It specifically mentions the current state of FSS right now as well. Specifically Max makes an emphasis on the fact that for all intents and purposes Flagship Studios is closed down, and Bill is just there to finish off the closure.
Max then goes on to talk about his brother and his involvement with the team. It then goes on to talk about if FSS had any chance of staying open. They then talk of the sorts of games they want to make with the new studios.
Next they talk about the game’s (Mythos) differentiation with Diablo 3 and Sacred 2, as well as the whole colour issue in Diablo 3. Lastly they mention that Namco at the moment is just handling the box sales of Hellgate London, but there is no current knowledge of what they plan to do with the game later.
Blizzard Denies Art Complainers Their Day
August 1st, 2008 / / by Sol Invictus
Blizzard’s Jay Wilson, lead designer of Diablo III has finally posted a response to the users complaining about Diablo III’s colorful art direction with a definite show stopper of an interview in MTV’s Multiplayer Blog.
52,000 signatures certainly wasn’t enough to sway Blizzard’s opinion on the subject and make them scrap over 2 years of work. As most people know, e-petitions work about as well as goth clothing on… well… anyone. Except for goths. Those complaining about the game’s art direction are the goths of the internet.
But that’s just my take on it.
“There’s no going back now,” he said during an interview in a Manhattan hotel where Blizzard was showcasing their newest games. “We’re very happy with how the art style is. The art team’s happy. The company’s happy. We really like this art style, and we’re not changing it.”
We all know that regardless of the game’s art direction, Diablo III will most undoubtedly outsell its predecessors and achieve top honors, so there’s little anyone can do to dissuade Blizzard from its decision to make the game more accessible to everyone.
Jay also notes the decision didn’t come easy when he states that Diablo III carried a grim and gritty look two and a half years ago during the game’s first and second iterations, but with all the targets on screen it became difficult to see what was actually going on and that the light radius from previous games didn’t quite work in a true 3D environment. When they made the move to a third art style they realized it was time for a change.
Jay further notes that there will indeed be ‘dark’ environments all throughout the game in spite of the game’s brighter areas, so we can expect to see a significant degree of diversity throughout the game’s locations.
Further details can be read at MTV Multiplayer, so be sure to check out the full article.
Thanks Delacroix.
Computer and Video Games Diablo 3 Preview
July 24th, 2008 / / by Sp3tSnAz
CVG has a new article up today, which has an interview with the team behind Diablo 3.
The interview talks of core philosophies with the game, the new gameplay, as well as the storyline.
EuroGamer Interviews Mike Morhaime
July 3rd, 2008 / / by Sol Invictus
Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard has been interviewed at EuroGamer. He had some very positive things to say about the PC gaming industry, reaffirming his support for the platform and poked holes in some of the things people have been saying about it, such as the supposed ‘demise’ of PC games. Read more…
Diablo 3 interview - random areas, co-op and the rest
July 1st, 2008 / / by Sp3tSnAz
The Guardian has an interview conducted by one of its game writers, Greg Howson, talking to Leon Boyarsky, the Lead World Designer of Diablo 3. It’s a short interview but full of interesting information like the Adventure Quests, as well as comparisons to other games in the genre including Hellgate: London, Mythos and Titan Quest.
So how do you fit the random settings, which Diablo is well known for, in with the more structured game you appear to be planning?
This is where the “adventures” come in. Even in the previous games, where there was a lot of random elements, there were still specific characters in specific towns. But to keep as much of a random feel as possible we have these things called adventures. These are quests or scripted events or anything that can fit into slots in the world. These will be randomly placed and may appear in your game or may not. They could be little scenarios, or self contained events. We can chain them together and say if this spawns in this game then this will also happen. But your friend may not even see any of them in his game. But we’re not afraid to put the work into that as we think people will play this game twenty times in a row because that is what the randomness is there for. So if you don’t see it on your first go you may see it on your fifth. And that makes people want to play even more. And now we have new classes, with class specific quests and different NPC reactions to each class. This just adds to the variety and there is lots that can be mixed and matched. The adventures are like the flavour on top of the fixed action.
What do you think of the clones that have sprung up since Diablo 2 such as Mythos, Titan Quest, Hellgate etc?
We play a lot of games, we’re all gamers. I know people on the team have played those games. We look at all games and think “we like that” or “we don’t like that”. But then all developers do that. Yes, I’m being politically correct here!
Enjoy 
Blizzard Confirms Development of Next-Gen MMO
July 1st, 2008 / / by Sol Invictus
OnlineWelten.com’s video interview with Blizzard VP Rob Pardo during the Worldwide Invitational revealed the development of a mystery title.
“There is still one unknown project,” Pardo says in the interview. “We have another development team.”
When queried, Pardo affirmed that Blizzard’s recent job listings for an “unannounced next-gen MMO” were not related to Diablo III. According to Shacknews, the company had previously stated that the project was not a World of Warcraft expansion either.
Feel free to have your say on what game you think they’re developing.
Spotted at: Shacknews
Deep in Hell with Leonard Boyarsky
July 1st, 2008 / / by Sol Invictus
GameSpy has published a new interview with Diablo 3’s Lead World Designer, Leonard Boyarsky. Boyarsky says:
“I wasn’t a hardcore Diablo fan before joining Blizzard,” Boyarsky says as we begin talking. “I played them, of course, and I really liked them, but I usually like a lot more story depth in my games.” According to Boyarsky, what drew him to the project was what he sees as the franchise’s untapped potential for storytelling. “A lot of people are afraid that we’re going to slow the gameplay down by enriching the story parts of the game. We’re not doing that at all.” The idea is to use some simple cinematic techniques such as dialogue rather than monologue to convey quest information and crafting richer backstories for the main characters that will be reflected in their artwork and the way they view the central action of the story.
The rest of the article can be read here.
Joystiq chats with Jay Wilson on Diablo 3
June 29th, 2008 / / by Sp3tSnAz
Joystiq has a new interview up with lead designer of Diablo 3, Jay Wilson. The interview deals with many different topics, however there isn’t too much we don’t know already.
From a lore perspective, when is the game set? [Ed: Warning, spoilers below if you haven't played through Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction!]
It’s about 20 years after Lord of Destruction. Essentially since then, if you’re familiar with the lore, Tyreal destroyed the worldstone and the general consensus was that this was going to be the big Hell invasion because the worldstone’s keeping everything back. And essentially that invasion never happened and one of the many questions is … why? And we aren’t going to answer that today, but that’s what the story addresses. What’s happened to Tyreal since then? What’s happened to Deckard Cain?
We bring back a lot of characters, not just from Diablo 2 but Diablo 1 as well. We’re also bringing back some characters in kind of unconventional ways. For example, the barbarian we showed today is actually meant to be the same barbarian from Diablo 2. So we’re planning on doing a lot of cool stuff to make a richer storyline.
Enjoy
GameSpot: Diablo III Video Interview
June 29th, 2008 / / by Sp3tSnAz
Gamespot has conducted an interview with Rob Pardo, the Executive Vice president of game design at Blizzard and the Executive Producer of Diablo 3.
The interview talks of how the game was made and how long ago, which is about three years, as Blizzard North was working on a different copy first. The game is really far along and fun to play already, so they felt it’s the right time to announce it. Read more…
