Champions Online Interview

Game Reactor has dished up a quick interview they did with Cryptic’s Bill Roper about the development of Champions Online and his past experience on Diablo and Hellgate: London.

Hellgate: London had some great elements, but didn’t get the reception you were hoping for. Have you learned anything particular from the Hellgate-experience that you’ve brought with you to Champions Online? Any particular traps that you fell into with Hellgate that you’ll avoid with Champions Online?

As I touched on a little already, success teaches us many things, but there are so many more lessons to be learned from our failures. Something comes up each week where I draw upon both what has and has not worked in my past games. Perhaps the biggest lesson learned is maintaining a focus on what’s vital to the game. With Hellgate: London we simply tried to do too much and spread ourselves (and our ability to properly test and balance the game) too thin. Also making sure to have a solid base of social and community features is vital – as is constantly staying in contact with our players.

Finally, looking at what works both in terms of games and the business aspects of the game and building off of those as opposed to trying a slew of entirely new ideas without regard to how it all fits together is a big lesson learned. This doesn’t mean we won’t be doing some amazing new things for our players. We’re just setting those goals in reality.