OnlineWelten Artikel zum Onlinespiel Jumpgate Evolution

OnlineWelten: How will Jumpgate Evolution differ from other current MMOGs, especially from other Sci-Fi-MMOGs like EVE Online?

Hermann Peterscheck: This is always a difficult question because on the one hand you want to be different and distinguish yourself, but on the other hand you want to be familiar so people aren't driven away. With regard to EvE Online, we are taking the approach of making something that is more directed towards space flight... that is the big differentiating feature is that in Jumpgate Evolution you fly the ship the way a pilot would. Aside from that we are trying to make a game that is easier to get into. I like EvE Online a lot. It's the best empire building game I've ever played, not to mention it looks fantastic. However, I think that it demands a lot to get into and sustain, and so we want to try and make Jumpgate Evolution quicker to just sit down, starting playing, and have fun for as much time as the player wants. That's not to say that the game won't be deep. We want to provide people with tons of entertainment value, but we want to ease people into it as well and not make it so complicated that it scares people away. I think Sci-Fi games tend to have a reputation of being "hardcore" and therefore not playable by a large majority of players. It's really the same thing when you think about Everquest and World of Warcraft. They are, in many ways, the same game, but World of Warcraft is much easier to just get in and play and that's the kind of game we want to make. The thing I tell people is that it's ok if people don't play Jumpgate Evolution because they don't like it, we can hopefully fix those things that cause dissatisfaction. But it's not OK if they don't play it because they can't figure it out, or for being too complicated, which can't be easily changed.

OnlineWelten: At the moment the complexity of most of the new MMORPGs diminishes, the trend is to make a MMOG first of all suitable for beginners and to make it not too complex. Will you follow this trend with Jumpgate Evolution or will you keep focusing more on complexity?

Hermann Peterscheck: The short answer is yes. As developers we need to keep in mind that our job is not to "beat the players." Our job is to provide fun and entertainment. That's what people pay for. No one wants to be kicked in the teeth over and over again, especially if they don't know why, and I think too many games do this. Also, many times "complexity" is simply bad design. If I make a confusing and incomprehensible menu system I can say "well, the game is complex" but in reality I could have made it simple to understand if I thought about it a bit more and tested it on people who didn't make the menu system, all while maintaining the enjoyable aspects of the game. This is the trick with games like World of Warcraft. People talk about how easy it is to jump in and play, but how many people have completed the last instance? Maybe a few thousand out of the nine million players? That is hardly an "easy" game. It's still accessible to almost anyone, yet challenging and deep. So the goal is not to make something easy or simplistic, but the goal IS to make something accessible and understandable. Making a game suitable for beginners doesn't mean that you make a game that is not interesting. I can teach someone to play chess in about 15 minutes but after 40 years they probably still don't know everything.

OnlineWelten: Do you think that you have learned from your mistakes with Auto Assault? If yes, how will this knowledge affect the development of Jumpgate Evolution?

Hermann Peterscheck: I think if you don't learn from each project, then you haven't thought about it long enough. We learned a lot from both Jumpgate Classic and Auto Assault; the development process, the maintenance, the community... and I'm sure we will learn a lot from Jumpgate Evolution as well! There are a few key areas that I think we really have improved upon. The first is that you have to maintain a stable and well running game. Throughout development the frame rate should be high, the visuals should be compelling and the game shouldn't crash. There is no time to polish at the end. If the game isn't polished early it will ship in an unpolished state. The other thing we learned is that you should work on a small area of the game and make it as good as possible before making tons and tons of content. The reason is that you really don't know what works and what doesn't work until you have an area of the game that is basically finished. If you make tons of content you end up remaking it all which is time consuming and expensive. Those are probably the biggest two lessons, but there's about ten thousand more from our experience that I could talk forever about :). OnlineWelten: The released pictures of Evolution are looking great so far. Does this graphical improvement mean that players with older hardware won't be able to run Jumpgate Evolution smoothly? What are your goals regarding the hardware requirements?

Hermann Peterscheck: Graphics were the area where I had the biggest fear. People like to talk about how graphics don't matter, but the reality is if something isn't visually attractive most people won't even try it. We knew we had to have good graphics, but we also knew that we had to run on lots of hardware. Thus, our poor engineers and artists were given two conflicting goals: "Make amazing graphics, and make them run on lots of machines." Somehow, they did it. It took a lot of time to get it right and there were some frustrating days and weeks, but it certainly paid off. What we have now is knowledge on how to make things look good within a strict polygon and texture budget. Our target minimum spec is the same as World of Warcraft - although the current game runs even below that spec. We feel this is a good target since a good number of people are able to play that game :). Of course, the game will look better on higher end hardware, but a reasonable machine will be able to run Jumpgate Evolution just fine and still look really good!

OnlineWelten: Will long-time players of the original Jumpgate get the possibility to keep their achievements or will they have to start from the beginning like everybody else?

Hermann Peterscheck: Initially we were not sure if we were making a massive upgrade or a whole new product. Because of how things are shaping up Jumpgate Evolution will be an entirely new product and thus there isn't going to be player transfer, or something like that. Having said that, we will be rewarding our long time players in some way - giving them some recognition for so many years of dedication to the product. It's as much their game as it is ours... maybe even more, and we believe that has to be respected.

OnlineWelten: Are there any plans for a German localisation so far?

Hermann Peterscheck: Yes. Our current plan is to localize the game for the German market, hopefully using my fluency in the language!  The original game was localized and we had a lot of dedicated players from there, so we're really excited to bring Jumpgate Evolution to the market.

OnlineWelten: Can you give us some more concrete information concerning the release date of Jumpgate Evolution?

Hermann Peterscheck: We have tentatively scheduled a second half 2008 release. Of course, we don't want to ship the game until it is ready, so all dates are subject to change.

OnlineWelten: Thank you very much for taking the time and answering all of our questions! We really hope to get the chance to play Jumpgate Evolution soon.