Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper

This week, we once again dip into the Level Up Interview Vault to bring you our extensive multi-part Q&A with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper. Roper's place in game history is already secure, having worked in various producer roles at Blizzard on a slew of products--Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Diablo, StarCraft, Diablo II, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal and StarCraft: Brood War--ultimately rising to vice president of Blizzard North and a director of Blizzard Entertainment. For his second act, Roper and a handful of Blizzard vets formed Flagship Studios, and their first product, the Diablo-inspired action-RPG for PCs called Hellgate: London, arrives in stores next month courtesy of publishers Electronic Arts and Namco Bandai.

We spoke with Roper twice this year; first at January's Consumer Electronics Show, and subsequently in June after some fans had begun to grumble about Hellgate's tiered pricing model. Our first interview, conducted in the gaming area of Microsoft's CES booth, began inauspiciously when the PC running Roper's Hellgate demo overheated. So we began with some small talk, but by the end, we were engaged in a fascinating conversation about the extent to which Hellgate is breaking new ground with its pervasive use of randomization.

So you're here for the whole show, or are you just in for a couple of days?

No, I'm here for the whole show. I leave Thursday afternoon. There's a lot to see. I haven't been to CES in a long time.

Are you going to get some time to walk around and check stuff out on the show floor?

I think Thursday I have some time.

So what kind of gadgets are you personally into? There's some game stuff here, obviously, but this is pretty much a gadget show.

I'm a movie wonk, so of course it's like, "Ooh, a hundred and three inch TV--that's nice. How about I get one of those?" Which is insane. If it's next to a sixty five inch, I'm like, "Oh, look at that tiny little sixty-five inch television." [Laughs.] Which is bigger than mine; I've got a sixty-three. But I'm like "Oh my God, that's insane."

So when you see a hundred-and-three inch TV out there, does that motivate you to work even harder on Hellgate?

Oh yeah. I'm like "How do I even afford that?" Becaue that's what I want. And of course, then you always want have a place big enough to actually put that TV. So it kind of all goes together. I mean, I'm a big music and movie guy, so I need a full room. It's kind of funny, because this is the same time as Macworld's going on back home, right?

I'm just blown away when I just walk around and look at stuff. Even if it's not something I'm into, I'm just like "What is that thing?" "What is that doing?" And the eighteen thousand different types of speakers, which I thought was really funny too. Just walking by these things. I mean, we've got these Darth Vader, JBL speakers on here. And then I walked by some other thing and it was more of a kid's game; it had these little flower looking speakers. Everything is so customized, so long gone are the days of just a big, chunky, horrible, PC brown--you know, that nice, neutral tone, block speakers. I love the fact that you can come to this show and you see all this technology. It's obvious that the people here, they are motivated to make something that isn't just functional, that looks good in your house, and you feel good about having. It really shows stuff off. And that hundred and three inch TV. That's the really--that's the one I want. I'm sure my wife will kill me if I come home with it. But you know--

But if Hellgate does well, then everyone wins.

That's right. Yeah, my goal is to buy everybody in the company a hundred and three inch TV. That would be good. That's the new goal.

So in Hellgate: London, we have three different factions. The factions are--within the context of the game world of the story--the different philosophies and backgrounds of the characters. They also present the three different gameplay mechanics, base mechanics that are in the game. So we've got the Templars which are sword-wielding, shield-bashing, melee characters that get in there and do a lot of the physical damage up close and personal with the demons. There's the Cabalists, which are our magic users, turning the dark powers of the demons against them. They can summon demons as pets; they can transform parts of themselves into demons. They also can channel dark energies through these devices they have.

The Hunters are kind of the super high-tech, wetworks, black ops, Area 51 technology agents that are out there. Part of the idea behind the world is that we're in a 2038, near-future, post-demon apocalyptic London. A handful of survivors that have kind of been underground for about twenty years are now trying to reestablish a foothold against the demons that have pretty much taken over the vast majority of the city. The underground stations are our safe havens--I won't get too world background-wonk on you about it, but it all does tie into like how actually the underground stations were created and the Freemasons, all that kind of stuff. So we've done a lot of research to make sure the game actually has--even our strange alternative future has this basis in reality that kind of lend it a real--a real sense that you're there.

Between Resistance: Fall of Man, Hellgate: London, "28 Days Later" and "Children of Men," what is it about London and the apocalypse?

You know, one of the reasons we chose London, there's actually a couple of reasons. One, it's always been this epicenter of huge struggle. It was founded by druids originally when it was Londinium. Then I mean it's been taken over by the Vikings; by the Romans. There was the Blitz in World War II. It always seems to be this center for people wanting to take it. And for huge apocalyptic events happening. The Great Fire of 1666; the plague; the fact that it was just pummeled in World War II. When we were talking about where to set the game, that was really one of the big draws for us. We wanted a city that had a really good history to it, that had a foundation in mythology, and had a more mystical setting, which it does. I mean there's the fact that it was founded by druids. It's you know, built on lay lines, magical lay lines, and there's so many things about London that in reality, lend itself to being this kind of focal point for building stories. It just drew us there.

The other thing to be honest was the architecture. It's got this very unique look to it. Because the city's been through so much turmoil, it's kind of like a phoenix, risen out of the ashes over and over again. And they just kind of rebuilt next to and on top of, so you get this kind of Gothic architecture next to really modern stuff, next to Victorian. You get all these great looks. Also very important for our game, is that London has an entire city beneath the city. Everything from the underground stations to Victorian-era hospitals that were built underneath; the plague pits that were done in the 1600s; World War II bomb shelters; the sewer line. There's actual other brother and sister rivers to the Thames that run under there. There's a separate mail train system that's underneath London. There's all these things that are down there and we really wanted to be able to have the game take place equally above ground and below ground. We wanted it to have a place that we could build a modern dungeon crawl out of. London is perfect for that. And it's a great excuse to go to London, to research stuff. That's the other reason we wanted to go. [Laughs.]

Right.

So here, I'm playing the hunter right now which is kind of the most FPS-oriented of all the factions. The game, because it is an action RPG, is really based around the items that you're finding; your leveling; the level of the monsters that you're fighting to have success. With a Templar and the Cabalist, we do a lot of things like auto-targeting, auto-aiming, arcs of fire that really make it so that's all you're really concerned about.

But because we have this really great 3-D engine that's been designed since day one to be used first-person, as well as third-person, we wanted to build a faction of characters that were really centered around that first-person mechanic and that gameplay. So aiming does matter for the hunter. I do have to take that into account though all of the other RPG elements still apply. Here, I've got an enemy selected, he's up here and he's within range, but he's not in my radius of fire. If I was a Cabalist, my shots would actually be arc over and hit him. Here I actually have to get him in my sights to do that. All of the skills that are designed for the--some of the classes and the hunter faction, take it and really focus on that, and you'll get better range and better accuracy, but you lose movement. All the weapons are built much more around that concept.

Can we talk a little bit about the level design? You talked about the architecture, but looking at this level right here--I've seen a lot of like war-torn cities that are World War II-ish, and they all start to look the same. This feels interesting and unique and fun. It has a really good sense of place. It's familiar, but it doesn't look like a lot of those World War II games which have a same-y-ness in the way they look.

Well that's one of the big things that has been a challenge for us in terms of using such a well-known city. A real strength of Hellgate: London is the fact that every time you go out into an area, every time you go out adventuring, you're going to a randomized dynamically generated setting. So it's not like we actually map out London specifically. But what we've done is we went to London, took photo reference for textures and everything, so when you're in different parts of London, it's built out of things that feel right for that section of London. However, the actual layout that we're going through is completely randomly generated. The huge upside of that is you never lose the sense of exploration that you lose in a lot of RPGs, "Oh, I've been through this area before. I know where everything is. I know what items they drop. I know where to hunt for them." Here, the monsters are different. The items they drop are different. The layout's different. You never know what you're going to get. And depending on where you are in the game--

But that's even more impressive. I remember reading that it was randomly generated, but I'd forgotten obviously when I was asking the question. I mean it's randomly generated, but it doesn't look lame, though.

Yeah. And that's--I mean it's a real tribute to our background guys. The background artists and our programmers do these things we call DRLGs, Dynamic Random Level Generators, to design pieces that flow together naturally and look right; that care about how many phone boxes you're putting on the street. We do a lot of variation as well. That's the key is to do, like this little piece that has the car here that I've blown out. This is a variation of this smaller tile chunk, and there's fifteen of those, or twenty of those, or you know, as many as we can make, that have boxes or ladders or blown out buildings or different cars. And we're putting more and more and more of those in. There's a ton more in this game than I even have in this demo here.

The first batch of automobiles they started putting in were more like you know, public transportation vehicles and cars people own. Now the stuff we're putting in is military vehicles to show that there was this big struggle that went on. And really the goal is that we want you to go through the game and no matter how many times you've been through a certain kind of area, it should never feel like "Oh man, I'm just seeing this same old thing over and over again." And it is really difficult. It's a very, very difficult task, but the payoff is great because then you get all the replayability. You can keep going through the game, it always feels fresh, it always feels new. But you don't get that sameness feeling. It is really difficult.

Obviously that random level generating approach that's well suited to a Diablo-style RPG, but as you're showing here, it was intended from the beginning to be done in a first-person engine. Having as you get closer to the end of the process, having been through all this and all this stuff you've learned, do you feel that there are some things you guys have learned on this that might be applicable to games that aren't RPGs like Hellgate?

Oh yeah. Definitely. I think that randomization is actually really underused. There's definitely a reason for that. It's hard. And the challenge is to do it, but make it look easy, to have it where people don't look at it and go, "Oh, you can kind of tell they tried to do randomization and it looks the same." It's a lot of work. You have to have it in mind when you start. But I think that you see it in bits and pieces in a lot of games. Even like you know, World of Warcraft has randomized, things that drop, and you're like "Oh, I found it," but they tend to be in smaller portions. With Hellgate London, we've tried to apply the randomization process in every single element of the game. To when levels are generated. To what monsters are spawned. To what items drop.

Along with that randomization goes rarity which is important. So you're not just finding--"Oh, I found this type of sword instead of that type of gun." It's like, "I found this sword and it's magical," or it has mod slots, so you can modify the weapon. It's a unique one, so maybe there's only twenty of them in the whole game. It's part of a set, so you want to build the different pieces of the set together. And all that randomization and rarity is in the same thing, it's in the background levels. When you go into a background level, it's a rare version of that level. Everything has a fire aspect. It has fire in the sky, fire damage, and every item that drops has some fire components to it. And maybe you only get that one in a thousand times. And that maybe has only certain types of unique items that will drop associated with that set.

We do the same thing with quests, where you'll be out running around in an area, and we have these things called chance events, where you'll get contacted on your PDA and there's a Templar who's wounded, and he's sent out an emergency beacon. And you don't get that every time you play. Maybe one in a hundred times does that happen. It really keeps you guessing. That's what I love about it. We play the game literally every day at this point, a little bit at least. I played last Friday. We have a play day every Friday now. There's tons of stuff that I've never seen before. One, because content is still jumping in, but even in areas where I've been playing for two years, like "Whoa, I've never seen that here before. What's that thing?" And it's really fun. That really translates so well to when when people are playing the game.

How then do you make the randomization approach work with the storytelling?

The story telling elements are designed to--basically, they're nodes that you get to. We do some randomization within those nodes. Here's a good example. When you go to the British Museum, which is an area that you get to fairly early in the game, that's part of a quest. The area surrounding the museum is all randomized. So the pathway to get there is randomized. When you get to the museum, the actual layout of the portion of the museum we have you play in isn't randomized. But where exactly--you're looking for a specific thing in the museum--where it is in the museum is randomly placed every time. So even though I know the layout of that area, I'm still not sure exactly where in the layout it's going to be.

The towns, for example, aren't random at all because you want people to be able to go to town and be able to sell items and things. There's places you want to have be static. But any place where you put some touch of randomization in is great because it helps create a bigger and broader diversity, and then on top of that, we plug in elements that players can use to specifically customize themselves. It's like modding weapons. "I found this random weapon that's really cool, but hey you know, I want to make sure it does extra fire damage, so I'm going to get some fuel cells, or I'm going to put this relic on it." So you kind of customize the weapon. Same thing with your character. The different pieces of armor all have these color features associate with them. I'm in bad light. I'm actually--let me move out here. We don't have our lighting thing working really well. So one of the things that players want to do is they--for that randomization, they find all these cool pieces of armor, they give them the best functionality. That's what they want, but they want to look good too. Everybody wants to look cool. And you want to try to look unique if you can.

So here, I've got some different piece of armor. I can use the color set from that armor, and so I'll use the color from the pants and apply it to the entire piece of armor. The chest, the shoulders. I can do that here. These are the color themes, and I'll swap over to that color theme. And now, my character has a very specific color look to them. With the randomization is that we can layer all of those things in. You might find this really uber-rare piece of armor, and one of the things about it that makes it so unique and rare is that it has this color theme that no-one else gets. We do color themes for certain times of the seasons, for certain quests that you completed. If you are a hardcore player which means that you get one death and one death only in the game--which is very unusual--you'll get access to looks and color themes. When you start a guild, you'll be able to choose the color theme of your guild and guilds will have their own set of color themes that only guilds can have.

It's an area where, even in the midst all that randomization, you can let people have that uniqueness. To me, that's one of the things that's so big, the players want it. They want to be in this world with you know, thousands and thousands of other players they interact with, but they still at the same time want to feel like there's something special about their character. The randomization really does help that a lot. So even when they're going on a quest that everybody else has been on, they'll have a different story about how they got to that same endpoint, and that's really important.

Bill, thanks very much for your time.

You bet. My pleasure.