Interviews:TenTonHammer chats with Joe Ybarra
From Stargate Worlds Wiki (SGW)
Interview at TenTonHammer.com
Joe Ybarra, VP of Product Development for Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Stargate Worlds project and all-around pleasure to talk to, sat down with John “Boomjack” Hoskin and myself during GDC 2007 last week. Both of us are fans of the two Stargate shows currently on the air- the IP seems to be a compelling and wide-open canvas for the fundamentally open-ended medium of an MMO – and we were excited to get the latest news of Stargate Worlds development progress.
One of the many things CME was exploring when last we talked with them was the backstory and where in the Stargate timeline Stargate Worlds fits in. “When we first started the project back in July of 2005, nobody knew whether Stargate was going to be renewed for season 10. We were scratching our heads, trying to figure out where we should set the plot. Originally what we decided to do was to set it at the beginning of Season 9. Well, that was a mistake,” Ybarra said, laughing. “As events were to unfold, we were on the automated script delivery system from Wright and Cooper and the [Stargate SG-1] production staff, so every time they'd produce a script, we'd get an electronic copy. So about July or August of [2006], we got the last script of Season 10 [the last episode of the series]. We read the script, and everybody turned white – 'Oh my God! Look what they did!' So we pressed a big reset button.”
How much did that monocle-popper set the team back? “Not much at all. It won't set us back unless we've actually built something. The problem that we ran into is that we can only build stuff as fast as the programmers can write us the tools and get the codebase up and running. We can come up with all these great quests, but there was no way to get it into the game. That's about to change.”
“With the cancellation of the SG-1 show, in subsequent months after that, MGM announced that they're going to produce two direct-to-DVD movies. And, just in the last few weeks, we found out that Wright and Cooper are going to be starting up a new series. Now our decision-making about setting became even more interesting. Nobody can tell us what's going on with the new content because nobody knows.”
“The game is going to be set roughly before the beginning of Season 3, and ending roughly before the beginning of Season 8... We end our game right at the point where they forked the property into two different series. They actually did a lot of things to wrap up stuff at the end of Season 8. The Anubis wars, the replicator wars, the Jaffa rebellion, the humans figure out how to build starships, the rise and fall of the Tok'ra...”
There's yet another good reason to span this portion of the IP timeline with Stargate Worlds. “What we discovered by accident when we went to a Korea last year is that today, they're airing Season 5. They're 5 seasons behind us. So we're scratching our heads and thinking, 'Man, it's a good thing we picked that timeframe.' Everything's out of phase with the United States.” But lest you think that Joe Ybarra and the CME team are locked into MGM's way of doing things, the producers of the longest continuously running sci-fi show in TV history have given the devs plenty of leighway. “Brad Wright and Robert Cooper are encouraging us to add new content,” Ybarra intimated. It's a two-way relationship, though. “That's what's exciting about working with the production team, as they begin figuring out new stuff they want to do, we can start dropping it into the game.”
Ybarra also described recent deliverables of internals spaces (including an Asgard ship) rendered in full 3D, expressing his excitement that game design has evolved to such an extent that so much is available to designers during the early conceptual phases of the game. We also saw concept art detailing a city before and after the Go'auld nuked it from orbit. Players would visit the area before and after the attack by way of a timeshifting mechanic uncommon in the typically frozen universe of most MMORPGs.
How long could players expect to spend in each world? “It's going to vary from world to world. My guess is (and this is just a wild ass guess) is that, depending on how frequently you come back to it, you'll be able to get about 10 hours out of each world. But you won't be there all at one time. For example, the tutorial worlds (the level one to five areas), we expect you to be in there for two hours. Some of the worlds I've seen, there's enough content to take you up to 33 hours of gameplay. But that's not the spirit of the game. The spirit of the game is to keep you moving. I like the quests that kind of ping-pong you back and forth between worlds.”
We asked Ybarra about the challenges CME is currently facing in making not just a great game based on Stargate lore, but also an MMORPG designed to compete in today's market. First, much of the action in the series is squad-based, but gamers expect a hefty measure of solo content. Will the game be primarily soloable or group-based? “It's actually designed for solo play, but it's different if you have a group. We really want you to play in groups of four. There's different things that we'll do, XP bonuses, squad specific items. We're encouraging it, but you don't have to.” Fostering high and low level player contact, to give the game a sense of continuity, is also a challenge. “One of the great things about World of Warcraft is, as a new player, watching all these level 70s go with all their gear by and 'ooo, I want to be one of those.' How do you do that when there's a stargate, right? There's no big area where you'll be able to see these players go by. We have to find strategies that give us that ability but don't destroy the game.”
Will Stargate Worlds have fewer, larger worlds, or many smaller worlds? “Dan and I prefer to have a lot of 'middle' worlds. Our designers push back and say, 'No, we want fewer, bigger worlds.' So we kind of compromise. That's why on any given day its 'How many worlds are we going to have?' 'It's anywhere between 35 and 58', it depends on who's winning the battle that day. But obviously we have a lot of worlds spec'ed out... I think ultimately the problem is, how many of these worlds can we get tested.”
Finally, a progress report on the game. Joe Ybarra reported that CME has just started getting into full line production, with the first 3 playable content-packed worlds scheduled as an end-of-month deliverables for March 2007. Also included is the game's first “story quest,” which Ybarra described as “really exciting” for the CME team. From a publicity standpoint, Ybarra conveyed that CME is currently doing everything they've been talking about for a while now, and will have much more to show at the summer 2007 conferences.”
