Jumpgate revelations: Massively interviews NetDevil's Scott Brown

NetDevil were previewing their upcoming game Jumpgate Evolution at Connect08, with a series of gamestations set up to let players experience the game for the first time and give their feedback. Jumpgate Evolution is a space-based action MMO firmly centred around action combat, and we managed to snag some time with NetDevil's president, Scott Brown, to fire off some questions about the game.

Development's come some way since our last interview in November; as you may have read, our first impressions weren't too hot, so read on behind the jump to find out what Scott thought and to learn more about the game.
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What are some of the difficulties and differences involved with making a space-based MMO?

Typically, space games can be hardcore and difficult to play, in general they're too hard. We loved X-Wing, Freelancer, those sorts of games -- we want to go back and make it accessible for players. Sci-fi settings are hard, there's a lot to learn -- the player doesn't automatically have knowledge about the setting. Anyone knows the differences between a dagger and staff, leather and plate, but plasma and lasers? Which is better? We have to teach the game, its mechanics and the fiction to players, all while players get used to moving in every direction which they don't get elsewhere.

There's a lot to learn, so we spent a lot of time on the new player experience, making sure the system requirements were quite low, making the game bright and colourful and letting players use mouse controls.

I played the game and noticed you jump into action almost immediately, but from a traditional MMO background, it took me some time to get used to it, which wasn't a good thing. Am I your audience?

Yeah, I don't think many people really like tutorials, they just want to play the game, so we made that experience fit that. The audience, there isn't really another game like it, primarily we aim at the people who loved X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Wing Commander.

Everyone compares us to other games, I don't know, we're more of a cockpit and action game - we have to get that awareness out, you are the pilot.

What else is there beyond fighting?

People enjoy interactivity, other players, things like auction houses. There will be different roles, like with crafting systems in other games that need different crafters to get an item made. It's a similar economy, we'll have player-built items, crafting ingredients from mining, mission rewards and then manufacturing those into items.

But it won't be like in games where you can make anything at a forge, we'll have corporation factories, you'll have to use a specific factory for certain items and as your reputation increases you can build more. Different corporations will let you build different objects. They might be in dangerous places -- it'll be a team effort to get stuff made.

We'll also have an economy that's separate, Elite style, different stations will need different items and you can trade goods between them. The trade routes will be affected by players too, if everyone's running one it won't be as profitable.

Role-playing wise there's no prewritten story, missions are dynamic. Actions taking place in the world, actions by players all change what you can do. For example if a station's out of water, it might call me because I'm an ally, then as it gets more and more desperate there are more missions, it might end up asking its enemies.

Won't that freedom put players off initially?

There's a learning curve to get to that stage. In the new player sector we'll introduce mining etc, there will be mission options: if you want to fight, go here, if you want to trade, go here. It'll gradually open up.

What sort of reward systems are there in-game?

Faction ratings will unlock new ships, medals are player achievements and then there's licences. They're like Gran Turismo, you work your way up to get a pilot's licence. Then there's the traditional level system, it's good, you can see where people are in the game and how experienced they are, I like it.

How will the experience pan out for hardcore players, those with alts etc?

We aim for player interdependence, it'll be a different experience for alts due to the dynamic missions. We're trying to make it as non-repetitive as possible. The setting of the tasks will be different, it might still be killing a number of enemies, but we're looking at movies and books to find compelling settings, like blowing up the death star and having a narrow escape, things like that. We're taking those experiences and feeding them into the mission generator.

What will endgame offer?

There'll be different options. There's soloing, rep grinding and crafting and so on, then pvp with a battleground style system and also open world pvp with objectives. There's large scale pve, attacking large battlestations, that'll be raid-level complexity. You'll have the option to do them all.

Any social systems?

The squad system allows players to come together, you'll automatically get a squad webpage and be able to customise your squad. The grouping system is called Wings, but we found that in fast-paced space combat it's hard to group up, instead you'll automatically team up with those nearby on the same mission -- no killstealing, you share your objectives automatically.

And what stage is the game at now? Any release date?

We've got the new player experience, performance, graphics to a good stage, we're working on the mission generator now as our main focus, then we'll let people into the content -- I can't really give a date as we're committed to making a good product, so we have a lot of work left to do.