Interview with Jeff Vogel
Interview with Jeff Vogel
Interview - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Thu 16 June 2011, 16:29:00
Tags: Avadon: The Black Fortress; Jeff Vogel; Spiderweb SoftwareSinister Design's Craig Stern interviewed Indie RPG guru Jeff Vogel on the topics of Avadon and his next move as a RPG developer among other things.
You’ve stated that Avadon’s sales exceeded your expectations. Without getting into specific numbers, would you say that adopting Avadon’s more linear, class-based approach was a good business decision for Spiderweb?
I can’t point at any one decision in Avadon and say, “That was the one.” Avadon is hundreds and hundreds of discrete decisions, each of which add up to one full game that turned out pretty well. What I will say is that changing everything up every few years is a good decision. I need to keep things fresh to not burn out. I don’t think a lot of people realize how important this is.
How about from a developer sanity perspective? (It seems to me, for instance, that discrete classes would be much, much easier to balance than amorphous balls of skills and stats.)
Not too bad. Happily, Avadon has no PVP. Having to balance classes against each other is the really tough thing to do.
Is there a danger in poking your head out of the small niche you’ve carved for yourself over the many years that you’ve been making games?
Change is always dangerous, but Avadon still very firmly in the same niche we’ve always been in. Low-budget, story-rich, indie RPG. The differences between Avadon and, say, Geneforge is really not that large.
You’ve stated that Avadon’s sales exceeded your expectations. Without getting into specific numbers, would you say that adopting Avadon’s more linear, class-based approach was a good business decision for Spiderweb?
I can’t point at any one decision in Avadon and say, “That was the one.” Avadon is hundreds and hundreds of discrete decisions, each of which add up to one full game that turned out pretty well. What I will say is that changing everything up every few years is a good decision. I need to keep things fresh to not burn out. I don’t think a lot of people realize how important this is.
How about from a developer sanity perspective? (It seems to me, for instance, that discrete classes would be much, much easier to balance than amorphous balls of skills and stats.)
Not too bad. Happily, Avadon has no PVP. Having to balance classes against each other is the really tough thing to do.
Is there a danger in poking your head out of the small niche you’ve carved for yourself over the many years that you’ve been making games?
Change is always dangerous, but Avadon still very firmly in the same niche we’ve always been in. Low-budget, story-rich, indie RPG. The differences between Avadon and, say, Geneforge is really not that large.
