Hellgate: London - Bill Speak Pt 2 Feature

Following last week's look at Hellgate: London, Bill Roper continues (we couldn't stop him) his insight into the forthcoming MMO/FPS, discussing everything from the hotly debated subscription model to the chances of seeing expansion packs from other cities.

TVG: You've announced the Elite subscription as a means to accessing content updates, can you elaborate on this with regards to regularity, length, themed tie-ins?

Sure, the big thing for us is that we always want to remind people is that you're getting more than you actually got with Diablo 2, you get the [online] game for free. There seems to be a big hang up which people have where they feel somehow we must be doing something to screw them, which I don't understand at all. Players make this big deal about the fact that when you get the game in the box you get 40-50 hours of standalone play, and that's obviously the first time you go through it, but with the character classes and randomisation you're going to get really different gameplay as you go through several times. Then you can go online and have that same experience with your friends in a secure server environment for free, we also give you stuff for free that we were never able to do in Diablo like being able to be members of guilds, auction houses, in-game e-mail and all kinds of things like that. So you get that Diablo 2 experience plus and we've worked very hard to ensure that we can do that for free. Then for the gamers that want to keep going with that experience, and that was definitely something that we had a lot of requests for back in the Diablo 2 days, players wanted to get more, they wanted more stuff, more items, more spells, more monsters, more areas, on and on and on. But we were able to do one expansion set then another year and half went by and there was another content patch, but that was really it. We did not have a dedicated staff on the project, we had no ability from a supportive model or from an engine/technology standpoint to really be able to do that continuing content. So with Hellgate that was really, really important to us, and of course maintaining a team to create this kind of content, not just do things like fix bugs, but make substantial new content which we can release on regular schedules, we have to pay for that somehow.

So that's why we focused on having that as part of the service to players. The goal of that is we're constantly bringing updates into the game world, which aren't really scheduled in that way. There are some things that are scheduled, we want to be doing things like themed events around different days, we'll have some days that people wouldn't necessarily think of normally, for example we want to have stuff for Guy Fawkes day. We have some interesting discussions at work about what are we going to do for Thanksgiving, and I say "Well it's not really celebrated that much in London so maybe nothing." Or we might do some Fall/Harvest thing, we'll do something around that timeframe just because we know there are a lot of players that would like something special to do because they're going to be home. But some holidays we might not actually address the holiday and we'll address some celebrations or recognitions that would be very London specific. For example, those are the type of things we can turn on for 4-5 days and turn off again, I don't even count things like bug-fixes and balance tweaks because we're going to be doing those things all the time for everybody anyway.

But in terms of subscription, doing things like flowing new items into the world, new monsters, new special events, and then what we want to do, every three months, I can't give you an exact date right now, but in about three months after the game launches then there will be a big content dump and that would be for example adding new areas, which involves a lot of new artwork, adding new monsters, new weapons, that can include new damage types, new gameplay modes, even up to where we're going to add new character classes. The things that you would normally find in expansion packs we want to flow out to people that want to subscribe. One thing that I read a couple of times online that I don't know where it came from, but somebody posted this article online that Roper's favourite quote is saying "it's like getting an expansion pack," and they react, 'but that means I'm paying $120 for an expansion pack', which I don't believe I've ever said . If people want to equate it to an expansion pack, I don't really think of it as 'oh they're getting an expansion pack', they are going to be getting substantial content pushes every three months, but also tonnes of stuff in between, it's happening all the time. We're really approaching that online subscription part much like an MMO, where there's always things happening, updates are always occurring. We'll push parts of that to people that don't subscribe, things like bug-fixes, balance changes, you've got to push to everybody because you can't have a balanced changed Guardian because he's a subscriber playing with a non-balanced Guardian. Things that affect subscribers and non-subscribers, fixes and that are going to affect everybody so we make changes as we go along, as we continue to mature guilds and other changes, a lot of those will be pushed to both.

For us, the subscription model is a way that we can have the ability to grow the game and make changes to the game through the addition of new content. We can make sure that the players who want more and more have a way of getting it; that we can do it with a full team; and really make big, fun, substantial changes that people want. If they don't want it we don't ever force anybody, if they don't subscribe, which they will because they'll see all of the fun and cool stuff they can have, I'd like to think we've figured out someway to try and give everybody what they want. Hopefully, people see that as opposed to trying to figure out somehow we're trying to get them, I never know why that happens.

I've seen where people say 'they're going to be making lots of money when the game ships, so they should be giving this stuff to us for free,' but well the only problem is, like many developers we work out a publishing/development deal where you pay to create the game based on advances against royalties from the publisher. We have to pay all of that money back, so all this quotable money we have to pay back and then after that maybe you see some profits. Moving forwards it's not like we suddenly have all of this money to be working on content, and you do have to maintain that team going forwards. It's a different model, maybe the confusion comes from 'well Diablo 2 was free, but now I have to pay for part of it,' and they make an assumption that 'well they must have held stuff back,' or 'I'm not getting the full experience'. No, you're getting the full experience, plus moving forwards we're going to make more stuff and if you want it, as opposed to waiting a year and buying the expansion pack, you're going to be getting big content dumps all the time.

It's just a way to be able to support and update and mature the game in a much more iterative fashion, which is how we really like to develop. It's a great way for us to respond to feedback from players. They're playing and they're going 'this is really cool but I'd like to see this,' we can say, 'that's a really cool idea, it'll take us a month to implement, let's do it,' as opposed to what a cool idea let's put it in the expansion pack that they'll see in a year.

TVG: Just to clarify, there's been some suggestion that expansion packs might be available to non-subscribers that would feature any content updates, is this true?

If we did expansion sets I would think we'll be doing things that are entirely new, I doubt we would take all of the subscriber stuff and somehow fold it into an expansion pack for a couple of reasons. For one, that's the stuff the subscribers got onboard for, so I guess you could have the argument that they those guys got it early, but I don't know. If there were some core functionality things that we would like to introduce to a broader range of people maybe we would do that. I would think that any kind of expansion project would be to introduce entirely new things for everybody, you buy the expansion and everybody gets that. What we're growing in terms of the gameplay experience and events for subscribers would really be those things that they're getting. It would be a very different thing if we did an expansion, at least for us that would be the expectation.

TVG: Speaking of expansions, the title Hellgate: London seems to lend itself to the possibility of extending into other cities in the future, is this an idea of the team's?

I think it's something we would love to do. For us the city of London was a big part itself for development of the game, the fact we had the great architecture, the gothic style, and the mix of styles. Being able to have those landmark locations like the Tower of London, the British Museum, Covent Garden, the different areas that we were able to have the places where people will explore that are iconic. The fact there's a city beneath the city, there's all these cool subterranean areas that we get to explore and expand on. So that was an important part of it, that it was London itself, also we had to do a lot of research into the culture, the heroic archetypes, and what are demons, in the UK specifically what are the concepts of horror, what is evil.

The idea was we're telling the story of what's happening in London at this time, and I would love to be able to do that in other areas, to be able to look at that in other parts of the world, look at their archetypal heroes, their beliefs, how magic works and all those types of things. So that's something I do hope we get the opportunity to do, because it was a lot of fun to do with London.

TVG: Hellgate: London is a unique title in the fact that it's neither singularly an MMO or a single-player game, so are you judging success from X million copies sold or X million subscribers?

Happy players. Hopefully we'll sell our copies, hopefully there's players onboard, having a great time subscribing. But really it's about getting out the best game we can make, having people that can really enjoy it whether they're people that only play single-player, ones that play for free, ones that want the additional content, the hope is that we get some of all of that.

For me, as long as we're talking with gamers and they're having a great time, it's a quality experience and a game we're proud of, for us that's how we measure success.

TVG would like to thank Bill Roper, Chris Clarke, and Jodie Van Hibb for the Hellgate: London interview. Hellgate: London is unleashed across Europe on November 2nd, so keep your eyes peeled for further details.