RPGVault has conducted another interview [archive.org backup] with Feargus Urquhart of Black Isle Studios, talking mostly about CRPGs in general and where he’d like to see Black Isle in the coming years:
Jonric: Since you’ve touched on how games evolve at Black Isle, what evolutionary developments during the past five to 10 years do you consider particularly significant within the CRPG genre in general?
Feargus Urquhart: The most significant thing about the evolution of the CRPG genre is that it has been getting closer to the use of more up to date technology than in years past. I think this has really helped broaden the group of people who are interested in playing them. Most CRPG players will say that that they don’t need the most modern graphics – they just want gameplay. However, when an RPG is delivered that is not more visually stunning than other games that may have come out in the last six months, then the game can be received fairly lukewarmly.
Also, I think that we’ve seen a greater deal of actual role-playing added to a lot of the CRPGs in the past few years. Most of the early CRPGs like Bard’s Tale, Might & Magic, and Wizardry were pretty much dungeon crawls with very little interaction with other NPCs in the game world. One of the biggest draws of the original Fallout was that a lot of the NPCs in the game world had something to say and acted in some small ways like real people. This was advanced even more by Torment and the Baldur’s Gate series, particularly BG II, in that characters in a player’s party had personalities as well. These things have helped players feel that the game worlds are more alive and drawn them into the games to a greater degree.
As the original source is no longer avaialble, we’ve reproduced the interview here for posterity’s sake:
Black Isle Studios Interview, Part 2
October 12, 2001
During the past half-decade, CRPGs have experienced a remarkable revival of interest. Five or six years ago, a number of industry observers regarded the category as dead or dying. Fortunately, their vision proved to be more than a little clouded, and RPGs have bounced back strongly, with more and more titles making their way to market. Probably more important than the actual number of games is the fact that quite a few have been top quality releases. There can be no question that the RPG division of Interplay, now known as Black Isle Studios, has been at the forefront of the genre’s resurgence. As a developer, it has produced a notable string of games including Fallout, Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale, and if that weren’t enough, it has also contributed to the Baldur’s Gate titles developed by BioWare as their publisher.
Despite the tendency of some fans and media to attribute titles to individual developers, these hit games and Black Isle’s rise to prominence are the products of the combined talents and efforts of many different people. At the same time, however, they are all linked to Feargus Urquhart, who has headed up Black Isle since before it was officially named. From our experience with him over the past few years, we know Feargus to be a friendly, knowledgeable, hands-on game maker with many interesting opinions. Several weeks ago, he shared some thoughts with us about the division and its track record. In this Black Isle Studios Interview, Part 2, we have the chance to find out how he feels about CRPGs in general, the future of the genre and of Black Isle, and various other related topics.
Jonric: Last time, our main topic was Black Isle and its games, which have certainly contributed substantially to the current strength of the CRPG category. To continue from there, do you think the genre will maintain this status, or is it possible we might see another quiet period for RPGs like several years ago?
Feargus Urquhart: In my mind, it is all dependent on the games. If the current CRPGs can continue to evolve and not just stagnate as they did in the early ’90s with the Gold Box games, then I don’t see why they can’t continue to do well. This is in some ways connected to BioWare’s and Black Isle’s continued use of the BioWare Infinity Engine. While the engine might have another four or five games in it, I think that doing that many more games with it could really help to shrink the number of people interested in CRPGs and turn it into a smaller niche – much like what I think happened in the early ’90s. However, if all of us making CRPGs right now continue to keep in touch with technology and the how modern games are made, I don’t think we’ll see another low point in the cycle – or at least not as low as it was in the early ’90s.
Jonric: What are the qualities or elements that define a game as an RPG, and how tight or loose is your personal definition? How important and useful is the RPG genre label to you?
Feargus Urquhart: Character development, solving quests, and killing things. 🙂 While that is a very succinct way of putting it, that is how I see CRPGs. I guess when I think about what should be in our next game, I don’t focus so much on what is an RPG according to a strict definition of the genre, I more look at what consumers have been asking for and what suggestions they have had about our previous games. I also look at where all other games are going – their graphics, interfaces, on-line components, multiplayer aspects, dialog, etc… and see how those things could be incorporated into the games that we are making, which happen to be CRPGs.
Jonric: Since you’ve touched on how games evolve at Black Isle, what evolutionary developments during the past five to 10 years do you consider particularly significant within the CRPG genre in general?
Feargus Urquhart: The most significant thing about the evolution of the CRPG genre is that it has been getting closer to the use of more up to date technology than in years past. I think this has really helped broaden the group of people who are interested in playing them. Most CRPG players will say that that they don’t need the most modern graphics – they just want gameplay. However, when an RPG is delivered that is not more visually stunning than other games that may have come out in the last six months, then the game can be received fairly lukewarmly.
Also, I think that we’ve seen a greater deal of actual role-playing added to a lot of the CRPGs in the past few years. Most of the early CRPGs like Bard’s Tale, Might & Magic, and Wizardry were pretty much dungeon crawls with very little interaction with other NPCs in the game world. One of the biggest draws of the original Fallout was that a lot of the NPCs in the game world had something to say and acted in some small ways like real people. This was advanced even more by Torment and the Baldur’s Gate series, particularly BG II, in that characters in a player’s party had personalities as well. These things have helped players feel that the game worlds are more alive and drawn them into the games to a greater degree.
Jonric: Peering into your crystal ball, how might we see CRPGs changing or evolving over the next couple of years? And would you care to guess how the future may look beyond this time frame?
Feargus Urquhart: Eventually, I would like to see most CRPGs progress to being 3D. I don’t think this is necessary because everyone will have GeForce 8s in his or her computer, but rather I believe that 3D will eventually let us make more believable and changing worlds in CRPGs. A 3D engine gives a game more ability to change the world and the looks of the characters in the world without the gobs and gobs of CD space that a 2D game requires to do the same things. We are often restricted in 2D games by the amount of hard drive and CD space that we have to take up – which restricts us from doing more of the world changing and creature variety that we would like.
Beyond the next few years, I think that many CRPG developers are going to have to figure out how to model increasingly complex and realistic worlds. At some level, each game we create should have more complex NPC interaction than the last one. At some point it might be interesting to see if we could model a world in a way like PopTop did in Tropico. If we could give the populace groups of needs, wants, and desires then we could see the world play itself out in a very realistic fashion.
Jonric: How does Black Isle fit in this picture, and what are your plans and key goals for the next two or three years? How realistic would it be to expect Fallout 3 within this time? Is it likely you’ll make more D&D-based; games?
Feargus Urquhart: Over the next two or three years, the goals of the division are really to keep on creating and producing the CRPGs that people have been buying over the last five years. I hope that we can evolve what we do in such a way that we can keep on making these games with enough newness in them that people will enjoy each one without us having to write a new engine every single time. This will really let us continue to make games quickly and hopefully not have to let people wait years for the sequels to some of our games like Fallout.
As for the timeline of Fallout 3, since we are not currently working on it, it’s hard to say when it is going to come out. I hope that we can start production on it within the next six months or so, and then get it out within a two-year time frame from that. I don’t want anyone to take that as a promise, because as I said, we are not currently working on it. Now for D&D; games, most of us still really enjoy working with the D&D; system and the Forgotten Realms, so there really would be no reason other than business ones where we would stop making those kinds of games as well.
Jonric: Looking at the longer term, how would you like to see Black Isle evolve over the next three to five years? Do you see the division expanding into an online world or getting more involved in console games?
Feargus Urquhart: Well, Black Isle loves to make CRPGs pretty much in every form that they exist in. I would love to see us expand in to the online world with a massive multiplayer game, but that is really going to be up the finances of Titus and Interplay, and whether everyone in Black Isle wants to take that shot. As for console, we are looking at a lot of different possibilities right now. There are people in the division that think it would be cool for us to do PS2, GameCube, and Advanced GameBoy titles. Each of us plays all types of games, so it’s possible that we might be pretty good at making games for those other platforms as well.
Jonric: What’s the likelihood of Black Isle growing beyond its current size, or perhaps even being spun off into a separate company?
Feargus Urquhart: Right now, we are at about 50 people, which is enough for about two internal projects at one time and for us to manage about four projects being done by external developers. I would be fine with us growing by another 10 or 15 people at some time, but I’d like things to settle down with what is going on with Interplay and also for the whole X-Box, GameCube, PS2 thing to get figured out. I have a feeling that someone is going to lose a lot of money in the next twelve months, which could possibly hurt everyone in the industry – even those people not focused on console games.
As for Black Isle becoming a separate company – you never know. This has been something that has been banged around for five years or so. Personally, I am fine with us not becoming a separate company. This is because I realize that I don’t have to think about a lot of things, which I might have to start thinking about if we were a separate company. Things like having our own HR, Legal, and IS departments.
Jonric: Backing up a bit to your earlier comments on technology, how do you feel about the rapid advances in CPU speed and graphics cards as well as the associated benefits and pitfalls? And how do you balance using this technology against potential players who don’t have the latest hardware?
Feargus Urquhart: Inevitably they almost have to increase faster and faster, since each new CPU or graphics card has to be twice as powerful as the last one. So if you are even two generations behind then your system can only do a quarter of what the newest systems can – theoretically. The benefit to things speeding along so rapidly is that in some way, our jobs get easier with less stringent polygon limits and less complicated ways to get a special effect to run quickly in a small amount of memory. However, it means that we have to constantly think about how are games are going to run on lower end machines – machines that a majority of our fans might have. Ultimately, we really have to figure out how to give the person with the average system about 90% of the cool features of the game, with a few things available to the person with the newest GeForce card.
Jonric: Although community development is a phrase that’s usually linked with online worlds, Black Isle has always been very active in this area. How has the division from its efforts to build and work with the RPG fan community? Has it been worth the time and effort?
Feargus Urquhart: I’ve always felt that because of the nature of the CRPG community that it has always been necessary for Black Isle to make as much effort as possible to be online and sharing whatever we can with our fans who are online. I’ve gotten into a number of very heated battles with other executives at Interplay because of my beliefs. I have often had to go out on a limb and pay for things from my own pocket because of politics at Interplay. The URL that the Black Isle Message Boards were on previously was paid for with my personal funds along with all the costs associated with getting them set up. I’m still going to try to work it out with Interplay to get those things paid for by them – but we’ll see.
Even with all of that, it has been totally worth it. We get tons of feedback from the people who love our games – which really keeps us honest. Sometimes we can be tempted to half-ass something, but it is always in the back of our mind that we are going to have to deal with that on the boards once the game comes out. Our community is almost like a second conscience.
Jonric: With Black Isle having achieved a solid reputation and standing within the development community, what motivates the studio as a whole now, and you personally?
Feargus Urquhart: Well for the past couple of years, it has been survival. With the situation that Interplay has been in for the past few years, most of the decisions energy has been focused on making the best games we can as quickly as possible so that Interplay – and therefore Black Isle – could remain afloat. The hope is that over the next six months a lot of these things will get resolved and that we can actually think about what is going to motivate us from here. 🙂
Jonric: Black Isle has shown that an internal development group with a tight focus on CRPGs can be a successful alternative to independents. Do you have any thoughts as to why other publishers haven’t followed your example?
Feargus Urquhart: That’s a really good question, and I don’t necessarily have a good answer. I think some of it has to do with keeping a certain amount of your staff around from game to game, which Black Isle has been able to do over the last five years. However, I don’t think that many publishers are going to follow suit over the next couple of years, since it has become somewhat unfashionable to be both a publisher and a developer. A lot of publishers have bought developers, but they are still treated as external developers in a lot of ways and don’t seem to be managed the same way an internal development staff is managed.
Jonric: Speaking of staff, you seem to be pretty successful in retaining key team members. Do you think this is actually so, and what are your secrets?
Feargus Urquhart: Our retention rate seems to fluctuate all over the place. Sometimes we won’t lose anyone for twelve months, but then we’ll lose five people in a few weeks. However, I do think that we have a really good environment that makes people want to come into work every day. As for secrets to doing this – I’m not totally sure. We let people do pretty much what they think is the best thing to do, but we also try to constantly focus them on getting projects done. Ultimately people are the most happy when projects ship – so, if we can ship things relatively quickly without killing people in the process, I think that people will want to stay around.
Jonric: Do you see anything in the industry at the moment that truly interests or excites you? And on the other side of the coin, are there things that make you feel wary?
Feargus Urquhart: This may sound silly, but I am pretty much into making CRPGs. Professionally, it is pretty much all I focus on, so I don’t really get caught up in a lot of the other “cool” things that are being done all over the place. However, I think the advent of Counterstrike really livened up the whole multi-player first person shooter – and I’m still trying to think of ways to take that play mechanic and add it to one of our games. The multi-player demo of Wolfenstein has taken that even farther – which is the current addiction in Black Isle.
Now the biggest thing that makes me wary is really the cost that it takes to make games, and the fact that the price we sell our games to the retailers – the wholesale price – has not gone up much at all in the past ten years. This really means that we now have to sell between two and three times the number of games to just break even as compared to where we were 10 years ago. This worries me from the standpoint that it seems like gamers are not willing to pay more than what they are currently paying for games, while it costs us at least 10% or 20% more each time we go and make a new game – compounded over a few games it seems like we have to spend about 50% more on games every three or four years without a increase in the price of games.
Jonric: And since it interests many of our readers, do you have any words of advice to gamers who want to pursue careers in game development? What qualities do you look for at Black Isle, and what can people outside the industry do to improve their chances of getting in?
Feargus Urquhart: In some ways it’s a simple formula. Get a degree in something somewhat close to what you want to do, and then either get hired in as a junior employee, or into the QA staff of a publisher or developer. If you go the QA route, make sure that you get yourself in charge of a product or a part of a project as quickly as possible and work your ass off. The people that make it into Black Isle from QA are those people that we see working on Sundays and who write up the best bugs and answer our e-mails quickly and intelligently. Plus, it is very important to have a thick skin. Game development can often be characterized by a bunch of guys sitting around a table looking for each other’s Achilles heels and the clipping it when they find one.
Unfortunately, there’s no simple formula that will generate the kind of consistent excellence Black Isle has achieved during the past few years under Feargus’ guiding hand. Again this time, we thank him for allowing us to peek into his feelings about the division, its games, CRPGs and the industry as a whole. And while we know he’s a very busy man, we’ll try our best to make sure it isn’t another two years before we do so again.
Selected Links
Black Isle Studios Interview, Part 1 – August 31, 2001
Heart of Winter: Trials Of The Luremaster Review – July 20, 2001
Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal Review – June 27, 2001
Icewind Dale: Heart Of Winter Review – February 21, 2001
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows Of Amn Special Report – December 7, 2000
Icewind Dale Special Report – August 3, 2000
Planescape: Torment Special Report, Part 2 – February 14, 2000
Planescape: Torment Special Report, Part 1 – February 11, 2000
Baldur’s Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast Review – July 2, 1999
Feargus Urquhart (Black Isle) Mini-Interview #2 – April 26, 1999
Feargus Urquhart (Black Isle) Mini-Interview – April 23, 1999
Baldur’s Gate Review – February 11, 1999
Fallout 2 Review – December 3, 1998
Interplay ’98 Interview, Part 2 – June 11, 1998
Interplay ’98 Interview, Part 1 – May 13, 1998
Richard Aihoshi – “Jonric”
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