Torchlight Interview

Gamasutra recently sat down with Runic Games’ Max Schaefer for a quick interview about the team’s upcoming single player/massively multiplayer action RPG, Torchlight.

The Torchlight team, comprised largely of Mythos vets “plus several new people,” is up to about 22 staffers, says Schaefer, and the team size helps with efficiency, focus, and making good tools.

All the staff works together in the same open room: “Instead of having to schedule a meeting, you just kind of turn around and talk,” Schaefer explains. “You can really only do that with a small team — with 30 or 40 people, it’d be too chaotic. But it keeps everyone tight, keeps everyone really engaged and involved, and we save a lot of time.”

“It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in my game development career.”

All the comparisons to Diablo do prompt the question of whether the Torchlight team sees competition in Blizzard’s upcoming major release of Diablo III. “All of us are really excited about Diablo III, also,” says Schaefer. “We can’t wait to play it.”

“It’s not really [competition],” he says. “Obviously it’s the same style, but again, they’re working on an established IP that has its own look, and its own story and its own tone, and they’re not doing, as far as I know, a traditional MMO… [it’s] more in the BattleNet style that Diablo II was in.”

“We’re doing a straight single-player and then a true MMO,” Schaefer says. “We’re kind of working around Diablo III in that sense; it’s a little different model that we’re pursuing.”

Schaefer notes that with so many Diablo veterans on the Torchlight team, “there will be some familiarity there for sure,” but that there’s plenty of room in the marketplace.

“There are not many action-RPGs out there,” he says. “People do more of the traditional stuff — and we definitely don’t want to aim at World of Warcraft either. That’s a fool’s game.”