Hellgate: London

Hellgate: London is the first game to emerge from Flagship Studios, the developer founded by former Blizzard North employees - including Bill Roper - following their departure from the WoW developer in 2003.

Blizzard North, of course, was responsible for the Diablo series of games, and as such action-RPG Hellgate has been surrounded by plenty of anticipation.

It's due out next month, and we caught up with Flagship CEO Roper prior to launch for a little chat.

When you first started to put Hellgate together, what was your original vision for the game and have you achieved that goal?

Bill Roper: I really do think we have. The original, very high level concept was being a mix between Diablo II and Half-Life. We wanted to have that randomisation. Having these elements that were so popular in the Diablo series, but then mixing that with a true 3D engine.

Being able to craft some of those experiences and having those moments when you jump out of your seat when you're playing in first-person.

I think the team has done a very good job of staying true to that and really making that the core thread of the game.

Was it always your plan to have a game of such huge scope, or is that something that's evolved during development?

Roper: Both (laughs). For better, for worse. Maybe years down the road we would have bit off a little less. But to be honest, that's something we've never done. We get an idea in our heads and then say, "Right, how do I really want to do it?"

We've worked extremely hard. We've done a lot more than people will realise. A lot more even than we realised we were going to be able to do.

It is a big undertaking. We knew we wanted to do a triple-A game from the beginning. But I think that as time went on we just elected to take more and more things into our own hands to make sure they got done to the level we wanted to have them at.

Do you think there's not enough creative risk being taken in the industry?

Roper: It's a difficult balance to strike. Games are gigantic, expensive endeavours for the most part. Functionally I think a lot are pushed towards more casual games that have smaller teams... smaller budgets, and they're able to take more leaps of faith and more risks.

But when you're making something of a very large scope, that millions and millions of dollars are invested in, for the people with the money - which for the vast amount of time is the publishers - they're rolling expensive dice and they want to make the surest bet they can.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the way that they make that sure bet is to say, "Well, why don't we use a well-known license" or "Why don't we use this very specific game mechanic that everyone knows", and not venture very far outside of that.

Because of the size and scope of then industry and the amount of money they put into the games, and the fact we're doing worldwide global releases - when the money goes into that from the publisher side, they do tend to push towards, "Let's try to make this as safe a bet".

A lot of times if you have this crazy idea you kind of have to fight a lot more for it.

In that respect did you have a hard time pitching Hellgate: London, especially as a PC exclusive?

Roper: Yes and no. There were some people that saw the potential and got what we were going to be doing. [But] there were also a lot of people that had concerns about PC-only or didn't understand the game concept.

Really for us that was fine. There were enough people that got it so we didn't really have to really worry about saying, "No one understands this, what are we going to do?".

We wanted to work with the people that intrinsically understood what, fundamentally, the game was about but also what our studio was about.

I think we were fortunate from the standpoint that we came in. Even though we were a start-up company, our core team has a lot of experience, we've shipped a lot of products together - and we're very conscious that that's a different thing than a lot of start-ups.

But we had to sell our idea as well as the team, and there were definitely challenges. We talked to a lot of people, not just publishers, and some people got it and some didn't and you have to move forward with the ones who get it and be okay with the ones that don't.

What's the most controversial decision you've made with the game?

Roper: I think the most controversial decision is the one we didn't think would be controversial. That was having the subscription element. The way I look at it is people, for some reason, expect the worst (laughs).

So that made is controversial to some people, when it really isn't and shouldn't be and I get a little confused as to why that is.

You can buy the game as a stand-alone product, you're going to get 40 to 50 hours of story-driven gameplay. And that's the first time you go through it. You can go through it again as a different character class, and it's going to play extremely differently.

Also there's the fact that everything is randomly generated, randomly created - it's going to be a very different play experience.

Then you can go online and have that same experience with friends - and more - for free. That was something we really wanted to do and something we knew there was going to be a level of expectation for because of Diablo.

Then for players that what to then continue growing the game, they want more stuff - we want to be able to grow the game constantly, to be putting out themed events, putting out different contests, new content flowing in on a 'as soon as we can get it out' basis.

And then every three months we want to have much bigger content dumps. Things where you're not just getting gameplay mechanic changes or events but you're getting entirely new artwork, new areas, new monsters, new skills and items, even things as big as new gameplay modes - new damage types that alter the way the game is played - even things as big as new character classes. Things you only usually see in expansion sets.

Being able to push those things out, obviously we have to be able to maintain a full team to do that.

We want to be able to do that, and for people that want that, then they can subscribe. But they don't get less of the game because they don't, they just don't get it moving forward.

You've got plans to develop and support the online side of the game after release. But where does that leave the Hellgate property in terms of single-player? Do you have plans to continue to develop that side of the game, are there more Hellgate stories you want to tell?

Roper: Definitely. For us, one of the reasons that the game was Hellgate: London is that we wanted to talk about.

Well, it's two-fold. One, the city itself is very important to the game, the architecture of the city and what lies beneath the streets of London - giving elements of London itself that are part of a story and part of the gameplay as well.

But for us been looking and saying, well these are the stories we're telling in London, this is what's happening now in this place. We would love to be able to then explore what's happening in other places during this time. So is it touch, or not touch?

It is a thing where we really look at this as being a story that we can look at very many different facets of it.

It's kind of, if you were looking at any point in history, what happened during WWII in Japan versus Germany versus the US versus England... you could theoretically look at a lot of different areas from the same world-changing event.

For us it's that same type of idea. Hopefully we'll get that opportunity through games, through other properties - like books and comics - and be able to look at those things, and look at other parts of the world and explore what happened.

And we really do hope we get that chance to do it with more games. If the game's popular, if people like it, then I guess there's a chance we can do more.

Stuart Bishop