For those of you who don’t know, GCAP is the Game Connect: Asia Pacific Conference which this year was held in Melbourne, Australia this year.
One of the speakers who attended the conference was Flagship Studios’ own Art Director, David Glenn. Internode (An Australian ISP) games writer, Chienne had the pleasure of conducting a small interview with David.
David talks of the subscriptions, the game reviews, as well as a mention of the art work that he does.
He then went on to explain that Flagship would ideally have liked to have made the game free to play online, like the original Diablo series, but apologised as they didn’t have the backing for it this time around.
“This was our way of saying like ‘We know only a certain percentage of people will be in the subscriber base - but that’s okay, as long as it’s enough to cover the costs’.”
“Almost every review I’ve read, it’s been like ‘Oh, this game is addictive, it’s really super-fun, but…’ and then they list a bunch of negatives, and give it like a seven. They just finished saying how fun it was, how great, how addictive it is, you can’t stop playing it, but then, oh, it had a couple of bugs, so we slashed the score.”
Talk about short notice ! Flagship Studios will be doing a IRC devchat Friday the 7th, at 4PM PST (7PM Eastern, 11PM GMT+1). No need to fiddle, here are the details Kaiser provides us on Hellgate: London’s official website.
Howdy everyone! This Friday, December 7, we’ll be doing a live IRC developer chat. It will start at 4PM PST, and you’ll have a chance to talk directly with a number of us here at Flagship. You can ask questions, tell us your thoughts on the game, or say whatever you want (well, within reason ^_^). Below are the details.
Two popular IRC clients you can use are mIRC (a personal favorite) and ChatZilla. Alternatively, ForTheGamers has a Java chat client you can use directly in a browser by clicking this link.
If you’ve never used IRC before, it’s really easy. Under the connection settings just connect to “irc.ForTheGamers.org” (without the quotes), and then type “/join #FlagshipStudios” (again, no quotes). This will put you into the proper channel.
Once in, and the question bot has been unlocked, you can ask a question by typing “/msg DevBot XXX” with XXX being your question. We’ll also have another channel set up where you can all just chat amongst yourselves.
We’ll give you any updates as the day approaches. Thanks, and see you there!
Get your questions ready gentlemen, for this is not an opportunity to be missed !
In the meantime, you can join #HellgateLondon on the same server to discuss the game.
The release notes for Patch 0.7 have been released by Tiggs. If you want to try out the new patch, be sure to log into the Test Center server and you’ll be able to experience it.
Among some of the new things added is a Transmogrifier that sounds suspiciously like the Horadric Cube of Diablo 2 fame, and a new Looking For Group interface that allows you to create a new party or join a preexisting one without the hassle of looking for people, and there are plenty of memory-leak fixes to go around.
Be sure to read the full details on the patch notes here.
Tiggs, Ping0’s head of Customer Support, wrote 3 posts on the official Hellgate: London Forums yesterday, to warn us of the downtimes (not relevant anymore) for Patch 0.6 to be installed, and to publish the final patch notes. Two fixes have been added to the list, here they are:
Warp restriction text clarified to, “Warp Restricted. You don’t have a waypoint far enough to warp to this level.”
Fixed an infinite loading issue for Russell Square. Some of those characters may not yet be able to progress in the story/areas, however, without getting a party portal to Russell Square to complete the “Forage” quest.
Well well. We might as well start asking tuition to our members, because Hellgate Guru is becoming one hell (pun intended) of a place to change a passion for gaming into an actual career project.
Why am I telling you this ? Because Evan Berman, a.k.a Scapes, our Community Director, Webradio Host, all-around good fella and creator of the “General Asshattery” infraction, has been hired by Flagship Studios. You heard me right, a fourth Guru working by our favorite game-developing team (after KrazyKaution, Pyke, and Sol Invictus who’s working at IAH).
Another good news is that he’ll be doing the same kind of job as before, but with a lot more information and means, and he’ll even get paid for it Here are the details that he shared with us:
- Forum activity
- Fansite interaction
- News posting on Hellgatelondon.com
- Press release authoring
- Community event planning
- Video production
- And more XD
On behalf of all of the HGG and HGGFR staff (well, the few of us left…), I wish lots of luck to Scapes on his new career !
Catalyst 27 here once again. Yes it’s true, it seems that little interview by CVG that was posted here yesterday was in fact, part of a much larger interview. In this extended interview they quiz Flagship Studios’ founder and CEO Bill Roper on everything from how he entered the games industry, right up to the release of Hellagte:London itself. While the interview is fairly standard there are some surprising answers, such as this little gem.
What would you pick out as your ‘best game I’ve ever played’ if you had to choose one, and why pick that?
May favorite game of all time is Poker, and specifically Texas Hold’em. I love all of the aspects of poker and I play whenever I can find a good game.
To me, poker is perfect. It has a limited number of pieces / game board, a simple basic rule set that can be modified in hundreds of interesting ways, is a portable multiplayer experience, and has an incredible risk-to-reward ratio. It’s also fun to watch and can be equally enjoyable whether playing competitively or just for fun.
Who knew Bill was a big poker player? Enjoy the interview everyone while I go brush up on my card skills.
Hellgate Guru is being upgraded with a bag of new tricks!
The new Information section now features: The Minigame Crafting and Upgrading Game Modes Subscribing
This and a slew of other information, including background lore on the class and factions, and the demon castes as well can be found in our new Information section.
The Gallery is kept up to date with the latest screenshots and concept art.
In addition to all this, we’ve also added a Weekly Poll that you can participate in each week.
[Edit by G-15] And another great news: HGG will soon have its own skill simulator ! We’re almost done polishing it up and correcting the last mistakes, then we will make it available to you !
This and more are some of the exciting new changes on Hellgate Guru. Be sure to check back for more updates!
To go with the news of the Dev chat that we had this morning, Sol has posted up the transcript of the chat on Mythos Guru!
It was a great chat with the devs and there was a wide variety of questions asked and the devs seemed very happy to answer them!
We’ve finished preparing the transcript for the Mythos DevChat that we held earlier today on our IRC channel. If you missed it earlier or arrived late, or simply want to go over the questions and answers, you can check it out here!
Thanks for the interview to all the devs who attended.
Gamasutra has posted up a summary of Tyler Thompson’s (Flagship Studios’ director of technology) speech at the 2007 Montreal Games Summit.
Tyler speaks of the challanges of using random generation for items, levels, monster and the overall game design. He also speaks of the advantages of using these, although he mentions how things can go wrong. There is a detailed write up about each item and it’s a very interesting read.
“All RPGs are a little random,” Thompson began, explaining, “You can’t imagine a bunch of guys getting together to play D&D without using dice.” As almost every RPG uses some basics, such as random damage ranges on items/spells/skills, or random selection of item drops, it’s worth asking — why do players like it?
“First, it kind of fits into a gambling mentality,” said Thompson. “Random combat is similar to craps or roulette, where you take your chance and see what happens. Randomness can create excitement — a weak character could randomly manage to beat a much stronger character, and vice versa.”
Hellgate Guru was founded in mid-2005 and has ever since been one of the most popular fan sites and forums devoted to Hellgate: London, catering to a wide range of interests, as well as having a dedicated team of staff members who keep the website full of constant updates, news and generate activity and hype around the game. More
