Runic Games Interview

The last month hasn’t been kind to Flagship Studios. When the company ran out of money, a vast majority of the employees were let go and the Hellgate and Mythos IPs went into limbo.  Flagship Seattle, the team responsible for Mythos, has since reformed a new company called Runic Games in order to continue the task of building a free-to-play massively multiplayer action RPG. To get a better idea of what the company’s goals are and what we can expect to see from them in the future, we chatted with Runic’s Travis Baldree and Max Schaefer:

GB: Take us through Flagship Seattle’s history. When did development on Mythos actually begin and where were you at prior to the beta server being taken offline? How much more time did the game need before it could have potentially been released to the public?

Travis: Mythos began as a test project for the Hellgate:London network infrastructure in October, nearly three years ago. At the time, I was the only person active on the project, and started development in earnest from the Hellgate codebase. After a few months, it became apparent that the game that was emerging was pretty fun, and could succeed on its own, so I was given the green-light to slowly build up a small team. Two and a half years later, and through slow and careful growth, we reached Mythos’ last milestone – the release of a contiguous shared overworld. We were in closed Beta, with an Open Beta imminent in October – commercialization was targeted at approximately two months afterward. There really wasn’t that much ground left to cover.

Max: We were close enough to see the finish line, and the worst part of it all is that it was already a great game that people were having fun playing.

GB: In your honest opinion, what went wrong? What mistakes did Flagship Studios make that contributed to the company’s fall?

Travis: It would be easy for me to armchair quarterback here. I think a lot of factors contributed to this, and Flagship’s founders went to great lengths to save the company. I’ll probably let Max answer this however, as he has a better handle on it than I do.

Max: I could go on for days answering this question. The shortest version is that we ran out of money. There were many factors that contributed to that, some of it our fault, some of it unfortunate circumstance, some of it other people’s malfeasance. I’ll focus on what we did wrong. Since Mythos was originally designed as just a test, we were under-capitalized by the time the international rights were established. What started as a free network test had blossomed into a fully-featured casual MMO, and we just didn’t secure the necessary funding to complete it, though not for lack of trying. And when Hellgate: London didn’t do as well as hoped, our fate was sealed. We’ve learned a lot from this experience, and made mistakes we’ll never make again.

GB: Mythos was going to be free-to-play with a microtransaction system in place as a source of revenue. Do you believe this is still the most viable business plan for a game of this type? Would you choose to go that route again?

Travis: We still think this is an excellent way to approach the market – free-to-play games really allow more people to give your game a chance, and we don’t think a microtransaction model has to be overly aggressive to be successful. We’d definitely consider that as a viable route for our project.

Max: We still believe this to be the case. We think the traditional box product model is dying, and if Asia is any indication, so is the subscription model. Free digital downloads are such a relief to the consumer, we think it’s a great way to lower the barrier to entry. From there, a well-designed microtransaction model lets the player decide their level of participation, and there are myriad examples around the world that show that this can actually increase the per-player revenue substantially.

GB: What did you learn during the development of Mythos that you can now apply toward Runic’s projects?

Travis: At the outset, we kept straying back to old MMO staples – a slower pace, a punitive grind, stretching out playtime for the sake of retaining players. That really wasn’t the way to go for us – allowing fast, fun play with rapid advancement works just fine – people will replay if it wasn’t a chore to do it the first time, and you have an interesting alternate class to explore. We learned how important enabling player interaction was – making sure that people are around one another with things to do. We were initially heavily instanced, but in the end converted to a shared overworld space that allowed players to really interact meaningfully more often. More than anything else, we learned that the people who make the game and play it are the most important part of the equation – having a good relationship between your community and team helps overcome any number of obstacles, and I think was one of the key reasons that Mythos continued to become a better and better game.

Max: Another lesson we learned was that a good game doesn’t have to have all the newest bells and whistles. It’s more important that the game is well-designed and fun. And it’s extremely important that it run on the computers people have in the real world. Couple that with a good set of development tools, and you have a recipe for success.

GB: How big of a team do you currently have at Runic Games? Have you hired on any other former Flagship Studios employees?

Travis: We’ve hired all of the original Flagship Seattle team back on to form Runic games – there are 14 of us in all ( and Max ).

Travis: We really believed in what we were doing with Mythos. Mythos’ concept was one of a game that didn’t require enormous time investment, was fast, visceral, and immediately rewarding to play, and that could be picked up by anyone. We’d like to follow that same path with our next project, because we think there’s a real place for it in the market right now. We don’t need to compete directly with Blizzard for players – but maybe we’ll borrow them for a while as they’re waiting for their raid to start!

GB: How difficult will it be to develop and test a massively multiplayer action RPG without Ping0? Do you intend to create a similar network infrastructure for your own games?

Travis: Ping0 was integral to Mythos’ development, definitely. We’re considering actually releasing a singleplayer game on the road to the multiplayer title, which might have significant portions of the multiplayer core internally. It would be a shorter term project that would let us get a product back into the market, recover a lot of momentum after the sudden termination of Mythos, and give us time to hire the proper team to help complete the networking back-end. Peter Hu, who was the architect of Ping0’s network technology, is actually one of our investors and will be advising us there. The technology driving the back-end for Hellgate and Mythos was actually quite complex and robust, designed to serve millions of concurrent users without sharding – for a new project we’d probably choose a simpler and more traditional model to ensure that we could complete it in a timely fashion.

Max: This is where a good solid partner becomes so valuable. Ping0 was a terrific bunch of engineers, but it was never our plan from the outset to run a network services company. We are primarily game developers, and going forward we’d like to focus on that.

GB: Mythos and Hellgate: London were both exclusive to the PC. To stay competitive and reach a larger audience, would you be willing to bring Runic’s game(s) to console platforms as well?

Travis: We definitely would – it was long a desire of ours to get something like Mythos onto the 360 – and the other platforms have their compelling points as well. We don’t have immediate plans to do this, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.

Max: Worldwide, PC is still the king, and though it’s in a down cycle in the US and Europe, it’s not going away. We still think the PC is the best game platform for many reasons, but at the same time, we’d love to translate our action-RPG flavor to the consoles.

GB: Diablo III and Sacred 2 are only two of what will most likely be several upcoming competitors in the action RPG arena. With an action RPG/MMO focus, how do you intend to stay competitive with other big name releases?

Travis: I think it’s key for us to serve a different portion of the market. Mythos had started to tend heavily toward accentuating its social aspects, and more MMO features – auction houses, a shared overworld, crafting, and the like. While retaining our fast-action and hordes of enemies, we were becoming a much more community oriented game than we had previously been. I think that’s the space that Diablo III and Sacred 2 will probably skirt, and where we can succeed. Sticking with a free-to-play model with microtransactions could also be very important for us – there’s no lower barrier-to-entry than free!

Max: I’ll just add that as one of the creators of the Diablo franchise, all of us are very excited to see and play Diablo III. The Blizzard crew are a great bunch of guys and I’m sure they’ll do justice to the title.

GB: Although it may not be a concern of yours any longer, what do you foresee happening with Hellgate: London? Would Runic Games have any interest in obtaining the rights to continue development on it?

Travis: Hellgate is a big project, and there’s a lot of history there – it would feel a little strange to attempt to pick it up and work on it. Mythos, and that style of play was never really our focus, so I don’t think there’s probably any likelihood of anything like that happening.

Max: Yes, the greater wish for us is that somehow the Mythos project gets resurrected. At this point, however, it seems locked away in the iron grip of irrationality.

Thanks guys! We look forward to checking out your next game.