Friends, Romans, Gamers....

Seven minutes with Stieg Hedlund, Perpetual Entertainment's Design Director of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising , in Part 3 of our video interview series

by Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle

June 13, 2007 - Stieg Hedlund is one of the more soft-spoken legends of the games industry. Maybe you haven't heard of Stieg, but you've probably played Blizzard Entertainment's vaunted RPG Diablo or its incredibly successful followup Diablo 2 (released in 2000), which was a highly successful online multiplayer game in it's own right. Stieg was credited with Lead Design Dirctor on both Diablo titles, so he's no stranger to great gameplay and compelling storylines. We talked with Stieg at the recent SOE Gamer Day about making the move into Massively Multiplayer Online Games (and a fresh new IP) with Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, and discussed his favorite design elements of this mythological MMO slated to release later this year.

Check out the other great video interviews in the Friends, Romans, Gamers... series! In part one, Chris McKibbin (President of Perpetual Entertainment) explained the premise behind the game and also one of the game's most unique features: highly customizable and controllable NPC groupmates known as minions. Continuing the series in part 2, Chris "Binky" Launius (Perpetual's Gods & Heroes Community Manager) was kind enough to sit down with us to share his thoughts about what will make each player visually unique.