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Ten Ton Hammer: So more along the lines of gameplay ‘enhancers’ rather than ‘replacers’.

Bill Roper: I even hesitate to use the term ‘gameplay’ because I think when you use that word people immediately equate that to damage dealt or armor and experience point gain or that kind of stuff, and there’s nothing on my list that’s like that. I think those are valid things to be part of a micro-transaction game, but one that is solely a micro-transaction game. If you’re looking at a game that’s free to download and free to play and its business model is supported by micro-transactions, that’s really where their bread-n-butter is made because it’s more like, yes, you can play the game and be successful but if you really want to kick up the experience gain and do things better or faster you can pick up those kinds of items.

But that’s not Champions Online. That’s not the way the game is structured, that’s not the emphasis for the game and that’s not the desire for us with micro-transactions.

Ten Ton Hammer: With the items that you’d be able to earn in-game that would also be offered through micro-transactions, will you be giving players any kind of information or description within the store for how they could earn that item if they don’t necessarily want to pay for it?

Bill Roper: So the idea with that would be for something that had an in- game effect. Off the top of my head I don’t know that there’s anything like that on the docket, but I think that might be a good idea to do that, or at least have a place for players to find that information pretty easily. But since that hasn’t really been an issue yet that’s not something we’ve looked at.

Ten Ton Hammer: You mentioned in the latest “State of the Game” that by offering Cryptic Points as part of pre-order programs it will allow players to essentially choose their own rewards for doing the pre-order, which is a pretty cool concept I think. Do you plan on revealing what will be available in the Cryptic Store to coincide with launch, or is there a chance we’ll get a sneak peak at what will be offered during the open beta?

Bill Roper: I don’t have a specific date for when we’re going to be opening that – I still need to coordinate some things with marketing on that as well as the web team working on the store – but I would guess that we’ll have the list of items that will be available at launch out there before the game comes out. So the players who are going to go out and get an in-store campaign that has Cryptic Points associated with it would be able to say, “Oh cool! This is what I’m going to plan to get” – they’ll be able to look at that stuff. So again, I can’t say specifically when they’re going to put that info out, but my guess would be that it will be sometime before launch.

Ten Ton Hammer: Will players be able to access the store from within the game, or will that be something that’s separate or web-based?

Bill Roper: It is web-based, and I also believe you can access it from inside the game, though I’m not positive. I think that depends on how our in-engine web browser support goes since it all gets run through the web browser. I don’t believe we have an in-game interface planned for that, at least not at launch, but at the very least we would have a place that you could go that would launch the web browser externally. I know they’re working on that now, but I don’t know that they’re going to get the in-engine component done on that for launch.

Ten Ton Hammer: You mentioned a bit earlier how the concept of DLC has been embraced a bit more on consoles, and while I know that there hasn’t been an official announcement regarding a console release for Champions yet, do you expect micro-transactions or DLC will play a more vital role for a console release more so than the PC? Or do you expect you’ll be offering the same items for both platforms?

Bill Roper: We haven’t even planned that far ahead really. Certainly I think people are more used to it and there’s more of a standardized interface, like on the 360 for example. So anything we do is going to coincide with player’s expectations and what they’re used to. But again, we haven’t planned anything out though I don’t imagine it would be vastly different than what we’re currently doing. And again, micro-transactions is not the core focus of the game.

Ten Ton Hammer: That about wraps things up for now, but thanks for your time!