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?
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