Interview mit Ian Curry
Verfasst: 13 Jun 2001, 15:20
Hallo Zusammen, ich hab dieses Interview von CG Online kopiert
Zuletzt wird auch verraten wie es um JA3 steht
Musste ein bisschen kürzen, alles gibts auf
http://www.cgonline.com/features/010611-i1-f1-pg3.html
Viel Spass
Col. Kurtz
Ian Currie Interview
The man behind the Jagged Alliance series speaks out
by William Abner
Ian Currie has been in the computer game design business for over a decade. From adventure games to strategy games, most notably the Jagged Alliance series, his resume is an impressive one. Now as the Director of Product Development at Sir-tech software, and party responsible for the development of Wizardy 8, his passion for games is as strong as ever. We recently caught up with Ian to chat about games, hobbies, and the state of the industry.
How did you get you started in this business?
I became interested in computers rather late in life compared to most people. I was 25 at the time and adventure games were the big thing. I got my own computer and starting digesting every computer game I could especially the Sierra adventure games. I bought a bunch of books on programming and set out to make my own games. I've always enjoyed creating things and the very notion of creating my own game was intoxicating. I was a sponge and soaked up everything I could out of the books. My first few games were adventure and arcade games that I made mostly to practice coding etc, but I found that they were as much fun to play as to create.
What was the first game you had a hand in making?
The first full game that I wrote was a strategy-arcade game entitledChaser. I wrote it in Pascal over about nine months and sent it to various publishers. While I awaited a response, I developed an arcade game entitled Space Miner and then wrote a Sierra-influenced adventure game engine as a vehicle to learn the C programming language. This turned out to be good practice as I ended up landing a publishing contract to publish Chaser with Sir-tech Software (although it would later be called Freakin' Funky Fuzzballs), but they wanted the code in C, so that porting it to a console would be viable. I had three months to convert the code, create artwork for three video modes and music. Back then I did most of my own artwork, so it was a very stressful period. This was in 1990 and it quickly became evident that I needed a team of people if I wanted to pursue this career path. I learned a fair bit about the business, got to travel to the Winter CES show in Las Vegas, and meet a lot of game developers that I respected.
................................
And your least favorite part of the job?
I think the part of my job that I hate the most is dealing with a situation where a team member is not working out. You can imagine how many people are attracted to this industry; not all of them have what it takes to make great games. While you do your best to hire the most promising candidates, many times you never really know how well it's going to work out until some time elapses. It's not a pleasant situation. I think, after this, the other aspect that I like the least would be localization work (i.e. foreign language translations). There's very little (if any) creative work involved.
Aside from titles you have worked on personally, what are a few of your favorite games?
My favorite games are Space Quest, Wing Commander, Eye of theBeholder, Command H.Q. and Asheron's Call.
That's quite a varied list. Why do those games stand out?
Sierra's Space Quest was the first game I played from start to finish and completely hooked me on wanting to work in this industry. Wing Commander was a game that provided an adrenaline rush, a cool story, and fantastic rewards. Eye of the Beholder was the first RPG I played and I couldn't stop playing. It was so immersive, I would jump when the phone rang. Command H.Q. was the first multiplayer game that hooked me. I can't tell you how many times I've played this game. Asheron's call was the first multi-player RPG that hooked me; the seamless world filled with real players just fascinated me.
Has the computer game industry, in your opinion, focused too much on technology and not enough on making games fun?
Yes. We all know many games look great but are totally devoid of the "fun" element. I'm sure many of those games were results of situations where developers ran out of time (after all, you build the technology first). I'd like to think so, anyway. While I appreciate technology like anyone else, my games have never depended on it. The game designer in me wants plenty of opportunity to adjust anything in the game that isn't delivering entertainment to the player. That's what it's all about for meentertaining people. If something stands out to me in a negative way, I'm going to do everything I can to change it. The challenge of making sure a game is fun is the best challenge of game development. It doesn't matter if something works the way it was specified to in a design doc. If it doesn't feel fun, or worse, feels like work, then it either changes or disappears. I love to analyze either our own games or other games as to what were the fun, or addictive elements, what didn't work, etc. It's my passion.
If you could be any character from a video game past or present, who would it be and why?
Let's see...which one got the most girls? Actually, that would be probably that loser Leisure Suit Larry. Hmm. Seriously, all my favorite characters have died many times at my hands! In real life, I wouldn't want to be any of them because I wouldn't be able to rely on the LOAD GAME feature.
If you could work with anyone in the industry past or present, who would it be?
That's a tough one because there are a lot of talented individuals out there and I really like the people I am working with. I suppose I'd like to work with someone like Tim Cain (of Fallout and Arcanum fame) not only do I have a lot of respect for his talents, but I can also identify with his style.
If you were Lord God of Gaming with an unlimited budget and a team of anyone you wanted to work with, describe the project you would head up.
We'd build a MMORPG Star Trek type game. I'd want to create a game that was part space simulator (with combat), part planet exploration, and part political. We'd create so many unique worlds, filled with either non-sentient creatures or full civilizations and have valuable resources placed on many of them. I'd fill the game with great quests, and expansion would be easy in an infinite universe. Anything one could dream up would be fair game in a setting like this. Every day, a new world to explore, complete with the apprehension and wonder that a foreign planet could offer. Sigh...
What do your family and friends think of your profession of choice?
I'm sure they were all surprised that I could actually earn a living doing this, but they seem to accept it and take it for granted nowadays. None of them play games, so they can't relate very well.
Do you think that there is room in today's PC strategy market for turn-based games? Many developers have a tough time selling turn-based games to publishers. Is there still a viable marketplace for them? Or have too many publishers jumped on the real-time bandwagon?
I do think there's room for turn-based gamesespecially in Europe.However, real-time is becoming more and more important because multiplayer is expected to be a feature in every game these days (and sells products). Real-time is much more suited to a multiplayer situation, as there's little or none of the downtime that you experience in a turn-based game while awaiting your opponent's move.
Do you think D.W. Bradley's influence has lived on with the latest Wizardry game? Did you consult with Bradley in any way on Wizardry 8?
No, we didn't consult with him in any way, shape, or form. However, his presence is there, in a way, since he helped to define what Wizardry is. David made a fair number of changes to the series when he came aboard (for Wizardry 5). While we had to evolve the product dramatically because of the time lapse and gaming market changes between when Wizardry 7 came out in 1992 and now, it's still a Wizardry product. It's still going to feel like a Wizardry game to Wizardry fans and a lot of that is because of what we retained from previous versions. I suppose it would be natural to assume that we kept the "best parts" and changed what we think should have been changed.
Finally, will there by a Jagged Alliance 3? Has there been any discussion on the topic?
We've been working on JA3 for a while now; however, we're still not in heavy production. We've worked extensively on the design and we have a core team dedicated to the project, but we're currently negotiating with publishers before committing to any timeframes. While at Sir-tech we've always enjoyed the luxury of building the game we want to build (without any publisher intervention), we're going to go it differently on Jagged Alliance 3 to avoid the frustrating delays that we've experienced with our last three products.
Zuletzt wird auch verraten wie es um JA3 steht
Musste ein bisschen kürzen, alles gibts auf
http://www.cgonline.com/features/010611-i1-f1-pg3.html
Viel Spass
Col. Kurtz
Ian Currie Interview
The man behind the Jagged Alliance series speaks out
by William Abner
Ian Currie has been in the computer game design business for over a decade. From adventure games to strategy games, most notably the Jagged Alliance series, his resume is an impressive one. Now as the Director of Product Development at Sir-tech software, and party responsible for the development of Wizardy 8, his passion for games is as strong as ever. We recently caught up with Ian to chat about games, hobbies, and the state of the industry.
How did you get you started in this business?
I became interested in computers rather late in life compared to most people. I was 25 at the time and adventure games were the big thing. I got my own computer and starting digesting every computer game I could especially the Sierra adventure games. I bought a bunch of books on programming and set out to make my own games. I've always enjoyed creating things and the very notion of creating my own game was intoxicating. I was a sponge and soaked up everything I could out of the books. My first few games were adventure and arcade games that I made mostly to practice coding etc, but I found that they were as much fun to play as to create.
What was the first game you had a hand in making?
The first full game that I wrote was a strategy-arcade game entitledChaser. I wrote it in Pascal over about nine months and sent it to various publishers. While I awaited a response, I developed an arcade game entitled Space Miner and then wrote a Sierra-influenced adventure game engine as a vehicle to learn the C programming language. This turned out to be good practice as I ended up landing a publishing contract to publish Chaser with Sir-tech Software (although it would later be called Freakin' Funky Fuzzballs), but they wanted the code in C, so that porting it to a console would be viable. I had three months to convert the code, create artwork for three video modes and music. Back then I did most of my own artwork, so it was a very stressful period. This was in 1990 and it quickly became evident that I needed a team of people if I wanted to pursue this career path. I learned a fair bit about the business, got to travel to the Winter CES show in Las Vegas, and meet a lot of game developers that I respected.
................................
And your least favorite part of the job?
I think the part of my job that I hate the most is dealing with a situation where a team member is not working out. You can imagine how many people are attracted to this industry; not all of them have what it takes to make great games. While you do your best to hire the most promising candidates, many times you never really know how well it's going to work out until some time elapses. It's not a pleasant situation. I think, after this, the other aspect that I like the least would be localization work (i.e. foreign language translations). There's very little (if any) creative work involved.
Aside from titles you have worked on personally, what are a few of your favorite games?
My favorite games are Space Quest, Wing Commander, Eye of theBeholder, Command H.Q. and Asheron's Call.
That's quite a varied list. Why do those games stand out?
Sierra's Space Quest was the first game I played from start to finish and completely hooked me on wanting to work in this industry. Wing Commander was a game that provided an adrenaline rush, a cool story, and fantastic rewards. Eye of the Beholder was the first RPG I played and I couldn't stop playing. It was so immersive, I would jump when the phone rang. Command H.Q. was the first multiplayer game that hooked me. I can't tell you how many times I've played this game. Asheron's call was the first multi-player RPG that hooked me; the seamless world filled with real players just fascinated me.
Has the computer game industry, in your opinion, focused too much on technology and not enough on making games fun?
Yes. We all know many games look great but are totally devoid of the "fun" element. I'm sure many of those games were results of situations where developers ran out of time (after all, you build the technology first). I'd like to think so, anyway. While I appreciate technology like anyone else, my games have never depended on it. The game designer in me wants plenty of opportunity to adjust anything in the game that isn't delivering entertainment to the player. That's what it's all about for meentertaining people. If something stands out to me in a negative way, I'm going to do everything I can to change it. The challenge of making sure a game is fun is the best challenge of game development. It doesn't matter if something works the way it was specified to in a design doc. If it doesn't feel fun, or worse, feels like work, then it either changes or disappears. I love to analyze either our own games or other games as to what were the fun, or addictive elements, what didn't work, etc. It's my passion.
If you could be any character from a video game past or present, who would it be and why?
Let's see...which one got the most girls? Actually, that would be probably that loser Leisure Suit Larry. Hmm. Seriously, all my favorite characters have died many times at my hands! In real life, I wouldn't want to be any of them because I wouldn't be able to rely on the LOAD GAME feature.
If you could work with anyone in the industry past or present, who would it be?
That's a tough one because there are a lot of talented individuals out there and I really like the people I am working with. I suppose I'd like to work with someone like Tim Cain (of Fallout and Arcanum fame) not only do I have a lot of respect for his talents, but I can also identify with his style.
If you were Lord God of Gaming with an unlimited budget and a team of anyone you wanted to work with, describe the project you would head up.
We'd build a MMORPG Star Trek type game. I'd want to create a game that was part space simulator (with combat), part planet exploration, and part political. We'd create so many unique worlds, filled with either non-sentient creatures or full civilizations and have valuable resources placed on many of them. I'd fill the game with great quests, and expansion would be easy in an infinite universe. Anything one could dream up would be fair game in a setting like this. Every day, a new world to explore, complete with the apprehension and wonder that a foreign planet could offer. Sigh...
What do your family and friends think of your profession of choice?
I'm sure they were all surprised that I could actually earn a living doing this, but they seem to accept it and take it for granted nowadays. None of them play games, so they can't relate very well.
Do you think that there is room in today's PC strategy market for turn-based games? Many developers have a tough time selling turn-based games to publishers. Is there still a viable marketplace for them? Or have too many publishers jumped on the real-time bandwagon?
I do think there's room for turn-based gamesespecially in Europe.However, real-time is becoming more and more important because multiplayer is expected to be a feature in every game these days (and sells products). Real-time is much more suited to a multiplayer situation, as there's little or none of the downtime that you experience in a turn-based game while awaiting your opponent's move.
Do you think D.W. Bradley's influence has lived on with the latest Wizardry game? Did you consult with Bradley in any way on Wizardry 8?
No, we didn't consult with him in any way, shape, or form. However, his presence is there, in a way, since he helped to define what Wizardry is. David made a fair number of changes to the series when he came aboard (for Wizardry 5). While we had to evolve the product dramatically because of the time lapse and gaming market changes between when Wizardry 7 came out in 1992 and now, it's still a Wizardry product. It's still going to feel like a Wizardry game to Wizardry fans and a lot of that is because of what we retained from previous versions. I suppose it would be natural to assume that we kept the "best parts" and changed what we think should have been changed.
Finally, will there by a Jagged Alliance 3? Has there been any discussion on the topic?
We've been working on JA3 for a while now; however, we're still not in heavy production. We've worked extensively on the design and we have a core team dedicated to the project, but we're currently negotiating with publishers before committing to any timeframes. While at Sir-tech we've always enjoyed the luxury of building the game we want to build (without any publisher intervention), we're going to go it differently on Jagged Alliance 3 to avoid the frustrating delays that we've experienced with our last three products.
geil!