Interviews:Stargate Worlds: A Post-Trailer Interview with the Team
From Stargate Worlds Wiki (SGW)
Interview at TenTonHammer
Ten Ton Hammer: What are the two worlds that we actually see during the sequence of the trailer? Can you tell us a bit about them?
Dan Elggren: The first world that you saw was Agnos and the second world you saw was Anima Vitrus.
Chris Klug: Agnos is an artificial intelligence world. It’s related to stuff that the ancients did. The world is essentially a giant artificial intelligence entity. It takes the form of a location in space, but it’s really just a construct of the artificial intelligence.
Anima Vitrus is a kind of “living world,” meaning that it takes the Gaia concept (that the planet is a living entity) and manifests that into a more obvious fashion. Those are both high-end worlds in our universe and sit in the late 30s to early 40s level range. It’s set up as a sequence; you go from Agnos to Anima Vitrus.
Ten Ton Hammer: You had a Death Glider shoot at the group of characters as they pass through the Stargate. Is this going to be a common occurrence in the game or was that more for dramatic effect?
Dan: I think it’s essential to know that we will have these sort of “story sequences” the moment you enter an instance or just through general gameplay, but it did make it into the trailer for dramatic purposes.
Chris: We’re hoping that one of the key things that will distinguish Stargate Worlds from the rest of the titles in the genre is that there is a battle for the control of the universe that is happening in the game. The battles that are going on are more military in nature than in your typical MMOG and so things like a Death Glider swooping by overhead are going to happen. Maybe not literally what we saw in the trailer, but something similar.
Ten Ton Hammer: In the official trailer that was released to the various websites on the internet, it sounds like the human says, “We come in peace. Wait….no we don’t.” But at the same time, he has an Asgard with him. Will Asgard players have the option of playing an evil character, or did I just infer too much from that clip?
Chris: The line was supposed to be a joke. *laughs* The Asgard are definitely on the same side as the original Stargate troops, so you could call that the “good” side if you want. They will not have the option of playing an evil character.
Ten Ton Hammer: I just wanted to sort that out for anyone who misunderstood the purpose of that particular line/sequence.
Chris: I understand, but it was supposed to be a joke in that this group walked through the gate and encountered something that they didn’t expect.
We actually went over that whole scene for hours, and we never thought that people would interpret the group as being evil because of that line.
Ten Ton Hammer: Has anyone brought it up besides me?
Chris: *laughs* You’re the first!
Ten Ton Hammer: Speaking of the Asgard, what’s the little object that’s floating beside him as he walks through the Stargate?
Chris: The Asgard characters have drones, which do a lot of the Asgard heavy lifting, combat, and that sort of thing.
Dan: I mean, how do you really take an Asgard into battle? That’s one of the questions we always heard, but players wanted the Asgard combat capable to make them more appealing as an archetype. The drones can be upgraded and played with as you advance your player character. It adds an interesting difference between the Asgard and the other races.
Chris: When we had our first conversation with Wright and Cooper, I asked them directly whether the Asgard we see on the show are nimble, but limited by the puppeteering technology. Basically, we were wondering how they wanted the Asgard portrayed.
They responded by saying that the Asgard are much more physical than what we see in the show, but at the same time nobody thought that the Asgard would be wearing body armor and have an AK-47 cradled under their arm. We went with the idea that they would offload their physicality onto their drone.
Ten Ton Hammer: Is the drone like a pet? Similar to what Hunters in WoW and Mages in EQ have?
Chris: It certainly falls into the same aspect of gameplay, but it functions a little differently. It needs to be under your direct control, rather than simply following you around.
There are other pets, in the classic sense, in the game, but the drone functions differently.
Dan: It’s like your body armor, essentially.
Ten Ton Hammer: That leads me to the next question: Is Stargate Worlds going to be a combat heavy game? If so, will it be more of a first person shooter style of gameplay? In all of your interviews, you talk about “cover” and the AI of the enemies, and I think a large portion of the community is wondering about that question.
Dan: The combat system is definitely unique among MMORPGs, and we definitely have a combat focus. We had to think of a different way to do combat, simply because we had characters with energy and projectile weapons running around. It wouldn’t be very likely, in our world at least, to have a character get hit over the head with a sword.
That said, we’re definitely not an FPS or a twitch-based game. The game is more along the lines of a typical MMORPG in that you’ll be clicking on your enemy, but the way the combat moves is going to be very unique. You enemies will use cover, and there’ll definitely be different techniques that you’ll need to employ to actually succeed in combat. How you manage your group and the targets you’ve acquired will be a big step in how our combat system works.
Chris: The paradigm we’re really aiming for is to try to make the players aware of their environment. The targeting and the actual combat mechanics will not be alien to MMO game players. What we want them to do is be a little more aware of what enemies are in their local area and for them to focus on managing the environment where the enemies are.
They should be asking themselves: Where have the enemies taken cover? Where can I take cover? The targeting and the combat won’t be any different than what you see in WoW. However, it does take place at range 90% of the time, but understand that the enemies aren’t going to just rush you and try to get into hand-to-hand combat with you. They will shoot at you from range.
The challenge is to figure out where players can take advantage of the enemy’s weaknesses on top of taking cover themselves. It plays out very simply, and the biggest difference is that the game encourages you to take cover and move. If you stand still, out in the open, you’re going to get shot. If you move and take cover, you’re going to be protected. That’s what we’re trying to encourage players to do.
Ten Ton Hammer: So if you get shot, is it going to be a bit more damaging than what is normally seen in a typical MMORPG?
Chris: We’re working on the balance of this right now, but you are more vulnerable – in our game – if you just stand out in the open. However, if you take advantage of what we give you – cover, movement, strategy, etc. – it plays very similarly to a traditional MMOG.
That said, it’s not a hit point battle. We are not delivering a game where the person with the most hit points wins. It’s the person who can control the battlefield the most intelligently who will win the conflict.
Ten Ton Hammer: How is that going to work with the Asgard drone? Will the players directly control the drone to take cover with them? How is that going to work?
Chris: There’s a lot of AI built into the drone, and yes, the drone will pretty much be following the Asgard around. The drone will have some basic commands, but you just basically need to think of the drone as a detached weapons platform. It’s a little closer to what a drone is rather than a real pet.
Ten Ton Hammer: What do you think the ratio between combat and general exploration is going to be in Stargate Worlds? Is it going to be a fifty/fifty combat to exploration ratio? Or is it going to be a bit heavier on the combat side of things?
Chris: The basic leveling paradigm for a lot of the classes is going to be combat. However, it will be possible to level with the archaeologist and the scientist through the play of the mini-games. Fifty-fifty is not really accurate, but it’s closer to 60/40 or 70/30.
Dan: Like Chris was saying, we wanted to give people a different way to play the game with the scientist and archeologist. With these classes, we didn’t want them to have to go through combat all the time. We wanted people to have different options, and different ways to socialize within this community.
Ten Ton Hammer: What kind of information or media should we expect next from Stargate Worlds? Are you just going to start unleashing information to the public, or is it something where you’re staggering the information that’s going out there?
Jeremy Taylor: What we’re going to do is basically work directly with MGM and the Sci-Fi channel in doing different cross-promotions and cross-tagging going forward.
The way we look at it, we’re trying to do a phased approach. Right now we’re in that sort of “introductory” phase and we’re going to be doing more as we go along. There will be new worlds and new characters introduced throughout the marketing run, and we’re going to be staggering that throughout the year.
However, we want to keep this whole thing relatively straight-forward and steady, but we want to have peaks in our coverage. For instance, like what we’re doing around Comic-Con and some of the Stargate DVD releases. So there will be different peaks as we go throughout the year, with steady coverage the rest of the time.
Ten Ton Hammer: Are you going to continue to have a close web presence with your community? Are you going to continue to bring exclusives to your community?
Jeremy: We truly value the Stargate fanbase and the people that are loyal to our forums, so we’ll continue to post things on those forums. But on top of that, we’re going to be doing things externally as well. I think we’d like to have a nice mixture of both.
Kevin: And we have given our community exclusive looks at screenshots from the game and videos of content. We definitely have given our community first-looks at things that no one else is getting, so it’s a great thing for our fans to continue staying around the forums.
Jeremy: I really enjoyed some of the conversations that were going on in the forums over the weekend concerning the trailer. I read it all – the good and the bad – so I really want to keep our community thriving.
Ten Ton Hammer: How are you going to make Stargate Worlds appeal to the largest general audience?
Chris: From my perspective, it really means that we need to introduce styles of gameplay that don’t require you to be an MMOG expert. For us, this sort of gameplay is exemplified by our scientists and archeologists.
The second thing we’re doing is crafting the introductory experience for every archetype to thoroughly explain the Stargate universe as well as craft an experience that has more in common with console type gaming. This means that the first ten or fifteen minutes will be crafted and guided so that the player isn’t just thrown into this social soup too early.
We’re not requiring players to know the Stargate universe. We’re delivering that information to them as they play and if that drives them to watch the DVDs, that’s a wonderful thing. But the game isn’t just made for the Stargate geeks; it’s for everybody.
Jeremy: From a marketing decision, we wanted to communicate the kind of gameplay that Chris just talked about. We want people to know that we’re very accessible as an MMOG. The whole MMO genrPlanet Agnos 3e, in general, has been more about more intensity and complexity, and we want to community that we have a very accessible gaming message.
Chris: WoW certainly taught everybody a lesson in that simple and polished is better than overly complex if you want to build a large audience. We’ve played WoW, and we heard that message loud and clear.
Ten Ton Hammer: Speaking of consoles, are you considering giving Stargate Worlds the console treatment as well as having a PC version?
Jeremy: Not at this point. It’s a PC game, that’s what we’re focusing on. If other avenues present themselves in the future, we’re definitely open to other options. But for right now, we’re focusing on finishing the PC version.
Ten Ton Hammer: From an art direction standpoint, the game looks great. However, when I initially saw the trailer, I was surprised at how vibrant and stylized the game looked. I had expected more of a “realistic” feel to the game. What drove this decision?
Howard Lyon: We really made a conscious decision to go the way that we did. We do have two of our most vibrant worlds in the game exposed in our trailer. Not all of them are going to be as bright as the pair that you see from the video. We did pick a couple of very colorful worlds to be in the trailer.
However, we want a game that will be both realistic and vibrant, so that when you’re in the game and running around in it that the world itself will be easy on the eyes. We want each place to be easy enough on the eyes that you’ll be comfortable playing in it for hours at a time.
There are definitely other worlds where you might find a place devastated by volcanic activity with lava and brimstone shooting everywhere. We understand that that – even though the mood is dark on that particular world – it will still need to be a place that is visually compelling.
We decided not to go with the ultra-realistic look because we want to offer something new. The stylization that’s in the locations and the characters offers a different kind of interest than what you’d find in an ultra-realistic game. There are a lot of photo-realistic games out there for players to enjoy. I wouldn’t say that our look is necessarily “cartoonish”, but I think it is somewhere between photo-reality and that stylized look you might find in some other games.
The overall goal is to create a game that’s really appealing to a large audience.
Chris: Brad Wright and Robert Cooper told us exclusively to “Do the things that we can’t do on television!” I fully agree with Howard in that the way to go here is to deliver a beautiful and fantastic vision for the players to enjoy. We don’t want to be creating their world over and over again.
Howard: However there will still be elements that are familiar. The SGC is going to look like the SGC. It’s not like we’re going to take the locations the show knows, tear them apart, and redo them. That’s not our goal.
On the worlds where we can be a little more fantastical – as long as it sticks within the fiction of the universe – lets go for the gold here.
Another thing that I think the players will appreciate is the diversity we have between worlds when you go from Stargate to Stargate. You’ll have a completely different visual experience. You may be going from a lush, rich jungle to a barren desert.
Or you could be going to a world like Agnos (Editor’s Note: This is the initial world seen in the trailer.), where there are huge crystalline formations and these huge plasma seeds with energy coursing over them.
Being able to go through twenty-some worlds in the game is going to be a very different experience for the player.
Ten Ton Hammer: Do you guys have a set number of worlds that you plan for launch?
Jeremy: We do have a set number, but I don’t think we’re ready to define what that is right now.
Howard: We want to have a lot of variety for a player to go through. We want players to be able to go through the gate and explore the galaxy.
Ten Ton Hammer: Will the characters have a home base that they go back to often? Like the Stargate Gate Command on Earth?
Chris: Each side will have a home base where a lot of mission work and training will be done. The SGC is a story-related location in the game, and you will go back there, but not as your home base.
We want to do the same kind of thing the show does, where encounters and battles happen in the SGC. The best way for us to do that was to make your actual hub of activity a different place.
The SGC is very confining, right? There are a lot of tight hallways with not a lot of room in them. You certainly could have built the area so that the elevator connects you to 500 different rooms, but that visually isn’t as interesting as doing something else.
Ten Ton Hammer: Since you’re doing things off-world for the good guys, does that allow you to make the home base the essential social hub for the characters? Are we going to see all the player characters in this area socializing?
Chris: That was the idea of trying to move the home base out of the SGC. There will absolutely be lots of socializing done there.
Ten Ton Hammer: Will Stargate Worlds be using DirectX 10?
Howard: It’s still up in the air on how we’re going to be using Dx10 to beautify our world.
Chris: Right now our focus is definitely getting our game to run on as many systems as we possibly can. We’re definitely going to be looking at how we can implement some of the amazing features you find in Dx10.
Ten Ton Hammer: The game has been rumored to be linked to a particular Stargate series, one that’s expected to be announced at some point this year. Can you guys shed any light on that rumor?
Chris: What I’ll tell you is this: From the very beginning of this development, the executive producers of the show and I discussed the links between the game and the television show. It may not be public knowledge, but Brad has always endorsed what we’re doing in the game. As far as he’s concerned, we’re one big universe. The only difference is that he tells stories on television while we do it online.
As far as links between the content, we’ve discussed many things, not only on the TV show but on other things beyond just TV. This isn’t the conversation to talk about that just yet, but we are indeed the same universe. It isn’t like they don’t know what we’re doing.
Ten Ton Hammer: How’s your time frame working out for the 2008 launch? Do you have any dates you can give the readers?
Jeremy: We’re definitely going to be tapping into the community a lot more in the next couple months to test certain areas of the game and that sort of thing. The timeline is still flexible because we want to make sure we ship a great game first and foremost rather than boxing ourselves into a particular date.
We’re definitely going to insure that the quality is there, because we don’t want a game on the shelves that is anything less than top notch.
