I was reading the inflight magazine on my way back from eGames, and managed to catch someone's claim that the best club sandwich in Australia is made at the Crowne Plaza. Personally, I can vouch for this, as that was what I had for my (very rushed) lunch a few days earlier, before I sat down with David Glenn, Art Director for Flagship Studios.

A brief history - fresh from working as Chief Background Artist for Diablo II, David joined many of his colleagues from Blizzard North and branched out, which was when Flagship was formed. He was now in the country promoting their latest baby, the zombie shoot-em-up MMO Hellgate: London.


The game was a long time coming, and - like all games - went through a few changes in the years spent on development. One of the major changes was the structure of the MMO itself, which sees gamers playing online for free if they want - or paying a bit extra for a few more bells and whistles. I asked how that had played out for them, from a developer's perspective - was it the sort of thing they'd do again?

Cabalist

David explained: "[It] got a lot of forum chatter - good and bad, because people who saw what we were trying to do were all 'Oh, this is great!' - you could play it, and if you really think it's cool, then you could get the subscription and get extra cool stuff! That's what we intended - but everyone else was all 'I can't believe you're shipping half a game and making everyone pay for the rest!' ...I mean - how did you get that idea? That stuff wasn't actually here when we shipped - we had to keep working on it, which was a downside - normally, you're meant to get time off after the game's done!" 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'."

Trying not to overtly bash their publishers, David mentioned that many of the initial problems with the game's release stemmed back to some elements of marketing - and development - being rushed. Most of the major dramas were fixed with a Day 1 "Patch 0", but this of course came out on the day of release, leaving many game reviewers and media types in the lurch, with unpatched preview copies... of course, unfortunately, that came through in the media coverage. David continued: "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." As reviewers and gamers know by now, the only time bugs should be mentioned in reviews is if they make the game unplayable, or if the reviewer doesn't believe they'll be fixed in a speedy manner - so these negative reviews shook the developers a bit, and now they're in a state of flux, waiting to see how much the reviews actually affect the marketplace. In Australia, at least, it topped the PC charts in its first week, so customers don't seem to put too much faith in what's being written about a game.

Hunter

Templar

The reviews that the developers have been paying a bit more attention to are coming from the actual audience of gamers - and it seems they've been almost polarised in response. "Our average score is only like a 7 - but if you look at it, 70% give it a 9 or a 10, and 30% give it a 1 or a 2, but that drags the whole thing down. You can't expect everybody to love your game, but of the 70% that like it, they really love it, so it's all perfect. That's who we really care about." Part of caring about your fans is keeping them satisfied with new and updated content, so the obvious question: are there any expansions on the horizon? David paused for a moment before replying: "...well, we have online content, which is a lot bigger than it should be from just a sheer content perspective - a lot of our content's going to go through ongoing. That's the big thing. We've already got that scheduled out - every three months, we'll do a big content patch, new levels, new towns, new characters, that sort of stuff. "We can get stuff cranked out fairly quickly - the big hangups are trying to get new NPCs, voice recorded and stuff like that, but as far as levels and weapons and stuff, we'll definitely have that pretty easily."

So. You've got heaps of content, heaps of online stuff promised, a game that's been quick to patch its bugs, a throwback to an old-fashioned school of gaming with a modern interpretation... how would David Glenn sell his game?

"It's the most beautiful art in the wooooorld!"

...of course. He laughed and explained that his favourite thing about the game - in addition to the beautiful art (which is actually quite pretty), the game is "legitimately" the sequel to the well-loved Diablo games, so anyone who's ever played one of those will enjoy this one, too.


If that's got you drooling and you want to get your hands on some of this action - we'd like to help out. Take a wander through our File Library, and you'll find the shiny Hellgate: London Demo tucked away. You'll get to choose two characters (of the full version's six) and "carve your way" through zombies lurking around tunnels and streets on their way to Covent Garden. While you're there, it might be worth checking out some of the screenshots and artwork too, to see just what David's been spending all his time on.