To get rid of this ad please Sign up/Login.
Interview:20 April 2001, Patric Sundstroem, MindArk
20 April 2001, Patric Sundstroem, MindArk
An interview with Patric Sundström, Marketing Manager over at MindArk, the developers of Project Entropia. 4-20-01
An interview with Patric Sundström, Marketing Manager over at MindArk, the developers of Project Entropia via Locke.
4-20-01
1. Patric, could you please state for readers of this interview what your official position at MindArk is?
- I work as Public Relations Manager at MindArk. This means I’m responsible for the MindArk and Project Entropia websites as well as communicating with press and media. I represent MindArk at conventions and trade shows, and also take care of Project Entropia’s marketing and merchandising.
2. Patric, could you please inform us on the current status of the game’s development? Any set backs? Unexpected developments?
- Development is going well. At the moment, we are coordinating all the components for the first external beta test, optimizing the code as well as correcting as many bugs as we can find. The tests we have performed internally look very promising and we're all looking forward to settling the final pieces and beginning the real beta tests. Overall, we haven’t come across any really serious problems, and those we did encounter were solved pretty painlessly so we’re all hoping here at MindArk that the beta tests will go just as well. We’re currently on track to contact the first external beta testers within the next month or so.
3. How confident are you with NetImmerse 4.0, the game engine that you integrated into PE?
- We are very pleased with NetImmerse 3.0, and right now we’re waiting for version 4.0 that seems even more promising. We had decided early on to license a 3D engine instead of developing our own. This has resulted in us having more time to develop such things as our game engine for example.
- Version 4.0 will enhance the graphic quality of Project Entropia distinctly as it will cater for functions of DirectX8 as well as GeForce3. Support for bump mapping is one of the new functions available in version 4.0 that we plan to use. We won’t implement version 4.0 in our first beta test but we expect it will be applied to the following phase.
4. How confident of PE are you? I have heard much talk that this game will either revolutionize MMORG’s or will be left in the dust. How do you respond?
- If we at MindArk didn’t believe one hundred percent in this project, we wouldn’t be working with it. I speak for everybody at MindArk when I say that we are absolutely convinced Project Entropia will be a huge success. We believe it will revolutionize the whole gaming industry in regards to the development and distribution of games. Of course, it could just disappear, but as nobody will have to pay to acquire or play the game, we’re firmly convinced otherwise.
- Personally, I have a lot of friends that buy up to three games a year and this is what they feel they can afford. So for these people it is important to know that the game is worth the price and the time it takes to play it. When asked if they could consider playing a MMORPG they usually bring up the high price of purchasing the game plus the further cost of playing. However Project Entropia, because of its different set up, is something they will definitely try.
- With this in mind, I am completely convinced that we will get a lot of new players who have never tried out an MMORPG so far. And when they begin enjoying they game and the community, they will keep it up.
5. Are there any in-game skills that can be released to the public at this time?
- We can't give out any detailed information at this point but we can reveal some general information about a few basic types of skills. For example, there will be medical skills to treat injuries as well as to perform implant surgery, scientific skills for various forms of creation, perception skills for tracking, evaluating items or find hidden objects, social skills for things like trade-bargain or dancing, a mental skill called MindForce to use various psychic powers, and of course combat skills for the use of weapons.
6. How exactly will housing be arranged in PE? Will there be lands specifically designed for housing or will the housing be arranged as in UO?
- Project Entropia will have different ways of acquiring housing. When the game begins you will have access to a small apartment with limited functions and storage space.
- If you want a real house that you can decorate and use according to your needs there will be several options available. One would be to leave the cities and claim a piece of land that is available and suits your needs. Once this is done you have x amount of hours to place your house on this land.
- If you don’t fancy a house on the mainland, or just can’t find a place for it, you can purchase platforms that can be laid out at sea. These platforms will be available in different sizes and can be put together with other platforms or just placed on their own. You can then place your house on these platforms.
- With regards to the actual houses there will be different shapes and sizes available, everything from small huts to complex skyscrapers. It will be the players’ choice to decide which type of house they want and what they want to do with it. It may be used as a private dwelling, maybe a shop or even a society house where it’s members can meet.
7. Will the in-game "credits" be named as such or will there be a name given to them?
- The name of the money that we will use in Project Entropia will be PED (Project Entropia Dollar), and there will also be PEC (Project Entropia Cents).
8. Can you give us any insight to the creation process of characters? What can we modify on our character? Size? Color? Hairstyle?
- All player characters are human. You will however be able to differentiate your character and your appearance in many ways. With the help of 30 to 50 different attributes, you will be able to adjust areas like height, hair, eye and skin color but also in more detailed areas such as the size of your nose, how your eyes are placed, the shape of your face and your body form to name a few.
- How you created your characters appearance will become very apparent in the game. When you walk around the city streets you will be able to physically recognize people, without having to double click someone to see a picture of the person in question.
- In this way you will be able to recognize friends by their appearance. You will be able to change this image of yourself during the game as well by visiting a clinic where you can re-form yourself, more or less the way plastic surgery works today.
9. When a character is attacked in-game, will the damage show up on the players armor?
- In some way it will be apparent how injured a player is. Whether this will be represented visually on the player or in the form of a level meter cannot be answered specifically at this time. It would be great to see how injured a character is visually, but right now, I can’t say.
10. Can you give us any idea to what type of quest will be given out in the game? How will the process take place?
- Quests will be a major part of Project Entropia. You could indeed see the whole game as a quest if you like, a mission to populate a world.
- Inside the game there will be a whole range of different quests. The simplest will be to receive a task from some NPC or from another player that wants help to find something or complete some other task.
- Another type of quest will be the serial type where you will have to solve different stages to advance. You could see it as one large quest made up of several smaller tasks.
- There will even be quests that you as a player can initiate, such as the completion of a quest to join some society. In this case those who organize the society can create an appropriate quest to be completed.
- We plan to describe this in more detail later when we have tested the different systems during the various phases of beta testing.
11. Will MindArk be hiring/recruiting players to be Game Masters as UO does?
- MindArk will employ people to work with in-game support, people that will be a part of the population on Calypso. Keeping in mind that we will be dealing with real money in the game, so we won’t be able to use volunteer GMs in the way some other games do. What will be possible for example is that society leaders could have more functions in their user interface so as to be able to administer their societies.
12. How will Neo Ithica be devised? What can we expect to be found in the city and is there a map available to us?
- Neo Ithaca will have its own architectural design, just like all the other main cities in Project Entropia. We want to give each one a unique touch to insure that if you live in one city and visit another they won’t look the same. Each initial visit to a city should be a new experience and their large size will ensure lots of places to explore. All cities will have the same type of institutions available, ranging from social establishments like restaurants, nightclubs, cafés and bars to practical ones like shops, hospitals, apartments and repair stations. All institutions will use the same user interface devices and functions to make them easily recognizable to all players, but facades, names and interior designs will vary. Some shops will of course be present that use the same name and design in all cities, as companies tend to increase and expand their operations to different places as time progresses, but our goal is to keep this type of repeated frequency rate as low as possible.
- Planning cities of the size that Calypso will have takes lot of time and effort, so there are no official maps currently available of Neo Ithaca or any other city at this point.
13. Will there be a background story for the city as in other games or will the cities just exist?
- There is a general background story for the three main cities that exist in the game world from the beginning, as these cities share a common history. But each city will also have a more unique background story based on the history of the old colony that still remains a part of the new city landscape. The shared background story of all the cities is that three large space corporations financed their construction, each one building one new city on three separate continents. The unique aspect is that this gives each city a different corporation that acts as its ward, even though a higher federal authority holds them all under its supervision. These corporations have their own history and reasons for financing the colony reconstructions on Calypso so this becomes a part of the background story of each city as well. In the case of Neo Ithaca it’s a corporation called the Genesis Star Corporation that built the city and more information about this will be made available soon. How players act and react inside and around the city will also be used as inspiration for further local story development, if it is considered to affect the cities ward.