Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Questions by Cody “Micajah” Bye, Managing Editor
Answers by Hermann Peterscheck, Producer, Jumpgate Evolution

Have you ever wondered what goes into building an MMOG? How the developers come up with those crazy ideas that you encounter in your virtual world? Some of those questions may be answered in our latest interview with Jumpgate Evolution’s Hermann Peterscheck as we took a behind the scenes look into what kind of development process the designers at Jumpgate Evolution are going through. Check out the interview, then make sure you head over to the forums to comment on this intriguing interview!

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Ten Ton Hammer: What kind of work schedule do you guys have on the Jumpgate Evolution team? Do you all have different times that you come in and work, or do you have a strict schedule system?

The Jumpgate Evolution developers work on an organic schedule.

Hermann: We have what I like to call an “organic’ work schedule. Basically people know what they have to do and when they are trying to get it done by. They also generally have a good idea as to who needs to do what in which order, which is largely a just in time kind of process. Thus, as long as there isn’t any blocking going on, people come in and leave at various times of the day. That being said, there are core work hours which are generally between 11 and 5. We have our daily scrum meetings at 5PM instead of in the morning as that is when everyone is around. I don’t like policing people and saying “be in by 9AM or I will write you up” or something like that. In general people work much more than a normal “40 hour work week” which is fairly typical of the gaming industry.

Ten Ton Hammer: How many designers are actually a part of the JGE team? What are your areas of focus and how do those separate focuses work to create a cohesive product?

Hermann: Designer is probably the hardest position to fill. I never really understood what it means, actually. I mean there are designers who come up with feature details, then there are people who are good at systems and balance, then you have people that can build maps or crafting systems. On the other side you have people that can write stories, quests and all kinds of other fiction. On JGE we have a dedicated writer and then a person who spends about 50%-70% of their time on specific systems balance (that means things like AI loadouts, equipment stats and things of that nature). Beyond that, everyone is a designer of sorts. We try and play the game a few times a week as a group and almost daily as individuals. Everyone is encouraged to find things they like and “stuff that sucks.” I think a lot of good game design is good implementation. People tend to have lots of good ideas and then it takes several days or weeks to make it work just right. We try lots of different stuff and then test it, polish it and test it again until it works right or it gets axed.

Ten Ton Hammer: Making decisions in the creation of an MMOG is an incredibly and fundamental part of the development of a game. How does the JGE design team decide go about choosing whether to include certain elements in the game, like whether to be able to walk around outside your ship or not?

Hermann: I like to say that game design is deciding which feature you don’t want to do. It’s very easy to come up with a huge list of “critical” features and then come up with another list and another. Choosing which ones to try is a tricky thing. Basically what you do is design a strong concept first. With Jumpgate Evolution it’s pretty easy. You look at other games that you loved, look at popular space fiction movies and then try and come up with ways of recreating that experience in a way that is appropriate for the MMO world. Then comes the next part which is determining which of those things are the most reasonable to do within the given constraints (time & people). If you imagine a graph with time and labor along the bottom and “coolness” of feature along the side, you want stuff that is the coolest that represents the least amount of time and materials… i.e. bang for the buck, to quote a silly phrase.

This is, of course, a gross simplification. There are times when you have something that you just have to add even though the schedule and cost goes against it. That is where experience and gut feeling come in. The other huge issue is remembering what is core to the game experience. It’s very tempting to play the me too game and put every feature every other MMO has into your game so that you can fulfill the checklist. The problem with this strategy is that people don’t play games as a series of disconnected features, they play experiences. Thus, instead of comparing your game feature by features, you should compare it by experience. Does the game give me a great and memorable experience or not. If it does, I’ll come back for another, if it doesn’t, I’ll play one that does. So when doing feature evaluation it’s all about adding up pieces to give you that experience.

The final piece is implementation details. I think this is where most games fail, actually. Little things like: fonts being too small, tab not going from text field to text field, buttons not responding correctly, camera controls that seem obscure and annoying. That is where things really fall apart. Those things tend to not be on feature lists and yet in many ways they are critically important. You find those things through playing the game and watching testers play the game. At the end of the day, those small things add up to fun or crap, it really is that black and white I think.

Design decisions in MMOG range from incredibly easy to terribly complex.

Ten Ton Hammer: If the JGE designers could pick one space combat video game to play for the rest of their gaming careers, what would it be? Why was it important? (You can’t pick JGE!)

Hermann: That’s all over the place. I think a lot people would actually point to Elite actually since we have some old school gamers around here. I would have said Freelancer a year ago, but I think that Freespace 2 is climbing the charts really quickly. That game feels so good to play, it’s a perfect example of what I talk about with the “experience” monologue above.

Ten Ton Hammer: What sort of components do the designers of JGE need to think about when designing a “sky box”? Why are these elements all crucial to the design of an area?

Hermann: It’s pretty easy actually. Does it look awesome. Seriously though, there’s lots of stuff that goes into skyboxes since it’s kind of the terrain of space. There’s the basic colors and patterns which are sometimes a result of a sector needing a certain flavor and sometimes just the artist playing around with ideas. The other piece, of course, is lighting as that changes the entire mood of the area. There’s also lots of little details like stars, random objects in the distance and so on. Planets also add a lot and our artists spend a lot of time making those feel really special. You know you have a good skybox because people stop and look at it while it’s still being developed. The goal is to give you that feeling in your gut where you say to yourself “Wow, that is really badass!” Then it’s just a question of making enough variation that people don’t get bored.

Ten Ton Hammer: How long does it take the JGE designers to come up with a ship? What do you focus on and how does that affect the final gameplay of the ship?

Hermann: It depends if it’s a player ship or not. Player ships take quite a long time to get going. Visually we go from concept to in-game in about 1-2 weeks. However, to get all the effects, hardpoints, handling, and loadouts right may take many more weeks. That part is really an ongoing process in any event. The goal, like most other things, is to create strong choices. People want variety so a ship that is hauling tons of cargo around needs to feel different than a little fighter ship. However, it needs to feel just as “good” just different. This is the hardest thing to nail as it’s critical to the game’s success. If people find the control too easy or too hard, or too touchy or not responsive enough, they will quit. Not everyone will like every ship experience of course, but they should like at least some of them!

Ten Ton Hammer: Did you (the designers) play a lot of Jumpgate Classic before you were brought onto this project? If not, have you put in some time since then? What elements were done really well in the Classic game?

Hermann: I personally did. In fact I did some work on the first game so I played it a lot. After JGC’s launch I didn’t’ play it much anymore as I moved on to other projects, but we tested it quite a bit before starting on JGE. The best thing about making a game like JGE is that you have a test case to work from. You can take people and have them play the original game and work out what they like and don’t like. It’s really quite a different game so it’s hard to compare the two. I think a lot of this is because the entire MMO landscape has changed since JGC was developed. Compare things like Ultima Online to Age of Conan or something… I mean UO had NO grouping mechanics when it launched. It just wasn’t something that people had thought of at that point.

I think what the classic game did well is to create a complete and believable space game that people could interact with. That is, and will always be, the core of Jumpgate. Just like a game like Diablo is Kill->Collect, Jumpgate is essentially Fly->Shoot. The rest is just deepening and expanding on that core mechanic.

Ten Ton Hammer: How are you trying to improve upon the original Jumpgate Classic model to make JGE an amazing game? Which area needed the most work?

When you're making an MMOG, it's important to put your ego aside.

Hermann: My personal take on this is that you have to take your ego out of it. There are things that I like and don’t like, but at the end of the day you need to get players into the game. The way to do that is to watch them play and see how they respond to your guesses – and they ARE guesses. My voice is just one in the crowd. A really good tactic is to get people who don’t like the game, but like the genre and ask them why they don’t like it. It is very difficult to steal people away from other MMOs so you are much better off going after an underserved market. There are a huge number of Privateer, Wing Commander, and Freespace fans out there who never played Jumpgate Classic. Why not? What was missing? What would make them play? If we can reach those people we will create an entire new market. I think that almost every major successful MMO out there has done this. WoW added soloing, AoC added a kind of seriousness, EQ added an immersive experience and group play, EvE created a single rich universe with tons of depth and so on. It’s not that hard really, you just have to ask… the trick is listening and knowing what the answers mean.

Ten Ton Hammer: Fundamentally, what’s the biggest difference between designing a game like JGE compared to a typical fantasy MMOG like World of Warcraft or Age of Conan?

Hermann: I don’t know, I didn’t work on those games J. I would guess that many things are exactly the same: networking architecture, database issues, latency, exploit protection and so on. Then you have basic mechanics like combat, crafting, advancement, grouping, social features and so on. Where I think there are core differences is that in a game like JGE we have three dimensional space and momentum movement. This means that when you take your hands off the keyboard you are still moving. It also means that it’s harder for people to get a sense of location – for example “I’m behind you” is a different thing to express when you’re in space. This means that you have to tailor things like grouping features, UI, chat and so on to respond that difference. Thus, you have to play the game with a bunch of people and see what sucks and fix it. My guess is that in the end it’s not all that different. If you want to make a good game, pick a strong idea, implement it, then add stuff you think you need and test and polish until it’s great.

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you have any little tidbits you could share with Jumpgate Evolution fans and the Ten Ton Hammer readers?

Hermann: 4km long battleships look really damn cool.