Champions Online Interview
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How did the disappointing performance of Hellgate London and Flagship's closure affect you, and what have you taken from that?
Roper: It was really difficult. I think the biggest problem with Hellgate London was that we tried to do too much. We had a single-player game, that was also free multiplayer, but also had a subscription element, it shipped in 14 languages simultaneously, and there were all these different versions on different operating systems. Then it also had really top-end graphics but we also did low-poly versions of everything.
The list went on and on and ultimately it just meant that we were spread far too thin, we didn't have nearly enough time to really do what would have probably been the more important things in the game.
So at Cryptic I take that and I now ask what parts are actually vital to the game - throw away the parts that aren't important. Don't worry about supporting all these varying elements - things that can seem like a really idea at the time, but add a lot of distraction to the game.
I think the other big thing that I learned was that my career, while important, isn't my life. I was very personally invested into flagship. When the game didn't perform as well as we wanted - considering all the hype around the game and company - I think people took that incredibly personally. And when the company could no longer be sustained, I saw that as a failure of me, not the company. Most companies fail, and we'd surpassed most start-ups because we'd actually shipped a game.
What I really learned is that, what we do [as games developers] is great, it's fun, and we should be doing everything we can to make the best game possible. But we're not curing aids or sending someone to the moon. We're making videogames. It's okay to go home at the end of the day and not be obsessive over your job. You can make good games without it becoming your entire life.
