Flagship on Hellgate
Schaefer Interview on Eurogamer talks with the Flagship cofounder in a
conversation that mostly centers around Mythos, their upcoming MMORPG. Towards
the end of the article a question about lessons learned from Hellgate: London
prompts a confession that they bit off more than they could chew with the
action/RPG: Oh yeah! [laughs]. If we made a mistake with Hellgate, it was
trying to do too many things for too many people. We wanted a cutting edge
graphics engine, we wanted multiple business models with subscriptions and free
play, and single-player, we wanted to combine third-person play with
first-person play, we wanted to do random 3D levels, and when you're starting
with a brand new game studio with very limited budget and no existing
technologies, that was probably biting off too much. We ended up rushing it to
market and not keeping it in the oven long enough, just out of necessity.
We learned from that, and going forward as a studio, it's a new emphasis of ours
to do things that are more efficient and better-planned, and smaller teams on
smaller projects so we can get more ideas out there. With Mythos we're
definitely taking our time, we're well within our budget and our means to make
it. It's a little bit of a turning point for us - don't try to do everything for
everybody. Just be more realistic about your design goals. Bring it back to nine
tenths instead of ten tenths and things will go much sooner.
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