How would you like to be able to make a truly meaningful impact on a game, to be written into its lore because of your actions? Wouldn’t it be fun to take over a zone for your faction, instead of having to raid and fall back without accomplishing anything? What do you think it would be like starting a game company from the ground up? We have all of that and more in this exclusive
Gamereplays.org interview with Todd Harris, Executive Producer of the upcoming title
Global Agenda from
Hi-Rez Studios.
GameReplays.org: Being a futuristic sci-fi game, did your team draw any inspirations from other sci-fi books or movies for the look and feel of the game?
Todd: For the feel of the game, we started with our desired game play and then drew inspiration from many classic sci-fi sources to support that game play.
Some of these would include: action-oriented, team-based missions - akin to
Mission Impossible but with more in your face combat and explosions!; progression and tech-mods to your individual agent character thru technology - akin to
Deus Ex; rebelling against a single totalitarian and oppressive NPC faction - akin to
Orwell’s
1984 or
The Matrix; and player-driven groups competing with each other for limited resources and territory - akin to
Serenity/
Firefly but all on future earth instead of in space.
In terms of art-style however we steered away from the conventional dystopian/post-apocalyptic look and opted instead for a relatively clean, high-tech look for the world and characters – more
Minority Report than
Mad Max.
GameReplays.org: Has it been difficult as an independent company to develop an
MMO? What hurdles have you come across that you might not have expected at first?
Todd: Well, the positive side of being independent is that it has allowed us to establish our own art style, game design, and production schedule. I think we’ve taken some risks with our hybrid game style that would have been more difficult given a traditional publisher funded model.
In terms of hurdles, as a start-up studio it can be harder to get on the radar of the major gaming outlets and get the word out about the game. But our strategy was to concentrate on making a fun game first rather than trying to hype the game before it was ready. And that certainly has paid off because after our
E3 hands-on we’ve received a lot of positive press and attention.
GameReplays.org: How do you plan on working closely with the community and developing that kind of connection through in game events or online promotions?
Todd: One of our favorite aspects of being independent is that it allows us to interact directly with the community and we definitely take advantage of that connection. In Alpha, our development team has enjoyed playing along-side the community, being very active on the forums, hosting dev chat/discussion sessions, partnering with fan sites, and initiating both in-game and out of game events. As we move into Closed Beta and the community grows we’ll certainly continue this close working relationship.
GameReplays.org: Do you expect players to advance or create the lore of the game or will you have an overarching plot that you establish yourselves?
Todd: We’ve worked hard to provide an engaging back-story to get players into the game and interested in the world, but beyond that we believe the most interesting narrative is derived from the actions of players and player-created groups as they cooperate and compete.
The most successful player agencies and agents within
Global Agenda will literally make history because their actions and accomplishments will be written into the lore of the game.
GameReplays.org: Are you worried about comparisons to games like
Planetside or
Guild Wars? Are you looking to capture the audiences of both or are you focusing more on say fans of instanced PvP content?
Todd: It is a bit pointless to worry about it, but those comparisons do come up often. And
Global Agenda has some things in common with both games but also some very important differences.
Planetside introduced FPS mechanics into a persistent world setting and was oriented around territory control.
Guild Wars PvP is appreciated because of the way they use instances to ensure balanced numbers on each side. We do combine aspects of both since our combat is instanced for balancing team-sizes, but also oriented around controlling territory in a persistent world; and of course shooter-based game-play.
More than anything we started with the goal of fun, team-oriented combat and worked backwards to implement the systems that we felt best supported that goal.
And so far our community is equally split between fans of shooters, fans of instanced PvP content, and fans of co-op PvE content, so we’re excited about bringing these folks together into our massive, persistent world.
GameReplays.org: Have there been any glaring issues with balance? How are you ensuring that the game remains fun and balanced for all players and classes after release?
Todd: We feel very good about the overall balance between classes. Every day the design team rotates thru playing a different class and it is usually a hard decision since each class serves an important role and is a blast to play.
Preserving balance after release is very important to us and so we keep detailed server statistics around how each class device and ability is performing within our various mission types. We also have a behind the scenes player skill and matchmaking system that will help us maintain fun, balanced games even in the case of pick-up matches.
GameReplays.org: Will players be able to focus entirely on PvE and not partake in the PvP content, and if so what is available to them that you wouldn't find in PvP?
Todd: Yes. By striking against the
Commonwealth NPC faction in PvE, players acquire blueprints and high-tech components which can be used to craft implants of various quality levels. Implants are persistent enhancement buffs for players and can be used or sold on the auction house. So, a PvE-oriented player could certainly focus on missions against the various
Commonwealth facility types and increasing crafting skills.
GameReplays.org: What are the plans for the territorial map? What happens if one agency 'wins'? What is to keep losing agencies in the fight if they have less territory?
Todd: Player-created agencies group together to form alliances and those alliances are the entities competing to dominate a particular zone on the world territory map. An agency with a small amount of territory can still contribute resources toward their alliance campaign win condition and/or raid the territories of rival alliances. And that contributing agency would share in any prestige rewards if their alliance wins, earning epic gear and special achievements.
Once a zone is won a new zone will open up. Introducing new zones, but not resetting characters or any of their persistent stats and gear, allows agencies to have somewhat of a fresh start toward fighting in each campaign.
GameReplays.org: How does
Hi-Rez plan to counteract cheating/hacking, and what measures will be taken against people found cheating/hacking?
Todd: For us it is very important to maintain a fair, balanced competitive environment for players and player-groups. We use instanced mission areas to keep team sizes balanced, but all those missions are hosted on our server rather than using a peer-hosting system. Our server-side authentication for combat makes cheating much more difficult. We also collect and maintain statistics around every match played and can detect irregular patterns by player. So we have many tools in place to counter cheating and have zero tolerance for it.
GameReplays.org: What are the plans for future content in Global Agenda? What sort of DLC content will there be, if any?
Todd: Being a subscription based
MMO, we will be providing ongoing content updates of all types including: social areas, player devices, PvP areas, PvE areas and PvE enemies.
We have a talented art team and plan to keep them very busy continually updating the world well after release!
GameReplays.org: Thank you very much for the interview, and we hope to talk to you again soon.
We hope all of you have enjoyed the interview, and again, thank Todd Harris and
Hi-Rez Studios for giving us this special opportunity!
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