Drakensang Online Developer Diary #3

A third developer diary for Drakensang Online has made its way onto the official forums, and this time it’s Bigpoint Berlin’s (formerly Radon Labs’) Bernd Beyreuther discussing the challenges they’ve had to deal with in order to go massively multiplayer with the Das Schwarze Auge license.

In past interviews and talks with fans, I was repeatedly asked about taking Drakensang online and introducing co-op modes, but I was forced to answer: (No it’s just not in our budget). The original parts were, due to circumstances, very classic and almost old-fashioned, story-based single-player RPGs. Despite my attempts to say no, I was routinely asked about co-op possibilities, but once we became Bigpoint Berlin, the opportunity to make our long-held dreams of going online and having co-op gameplay was immediately there. Now, not just with three or four players at once, but with hundreds! Even thousands!

It suddenly became clear to us that we had to turn the game inside out. We could feel it in the air. Now was the time to act to do something completely new!

Our team sat down and brainstormed for several days, putting our years of experience and teamwork to use. We thought about what game we wanted to make; what the strengths and weaknesses of the old Drakensang games were and how we could make them more fun; how we could further optimize our strengths; what the new medium’s requirements were; and what technical hurdles stood in our way? Hundreds of notes, post-its, doodles and diagrams were plastered on the walls. 30 to 40 people pulled together, some sitting on the floor, some working in smaller teams or all gathering together to discuss different aspects. From this massive reservoir of ideas, we were able to distill the central ideas of Drakensang Online.

This process revealed to us that the entire team’s vision was very similar to some of the original concepts used in the older Drakensang games. While designing the old games, production difficulties, external influences, etc. often got in the way and forced us to stray from our original plans. The co-op mode was always at the top of our wish list but was always too complex for us to realize. Other aspects, which provided similar difficulties and even sparked criticism of our older games, were the player/camera perspective, the breadth and complexity of the game dialogs, long loading times, excessive distances and much more. In many ways, this concept for a new game was ultimately a return to our first aspirations for the series, despite being independently developed.