"Most people thought this was a porn game": Swen Vincke Interview at Gamers.de
"Most people thought this was a porn game": Swen Vincke Interview at Gamers.de
Interview - posted by Crooked Bee on Fri 21 December 2012, 23:46:14
Tags: Larian Studios; Swen VinckeThe same Germans who recently interviewed Josh Sawyer have now done an interview with Larian Studios' Swen Vincke. In the interview, Swen mostly reveals his love for the winking emoticon -- but not just that! Have a snippet:
Click here for the full interview. There's also a video at the end of the interview -- but you should see it for yourselves.
G: Was the success of the game unexpected? Was the redundant title maybe helpful in the long run? And retrospectively, was the release of “Beyond Divinity“, the buddy-movie of the series, maybe a little too early after the original game?
Swen: I’m pretty sure the title hurt us a lot in the beginning – most people thought this was a porn game. ; )
I guess the success indeed did take me by surprise – not because I doubted the concept, but because the game wasn’t finished when it shipped. I was very very very angry then ; )
With "Beyond Divinity", what we should’ve done is stick to the original formula rather than wanting to introduce so many new things, but you have to realize that at that time the only way you could score publisher interest was if you had “new” stuff. Another problem was also that we were so traumatized by all the development problems we’d had with "Divinity 1" that we didn’t dare take any risk anymore, and that showed in the world design. And of course, we also made it on a shoestring budget – that didn’t help things when we figured out that we’d made some mistakes ; )
G: In regards to LMK, Guido Henkel, who was one of the founders of Attic, your former publisher at that time, worked on a Kickstarter-campaign not too long ago. Unfortunately, it failed. But how is your opinion about crowd funding-campaigns? Do you, as an indie-developer, see a chance for the industry there?
Swen: I actually never worked with Guido when working with Attic – he’d already left then, but I was sorry to see his campaign fail. In general, I think Kickstarter is a fantastic platform, but given that there’s more and more competition on it, as a developer you’ll need to start thinking of it as any other distribution platform i.e. you need to figure out how to attract attention, how to present your message well and how you can help players imagine what you’re trying to make. That’s not that easy. I think Larian is going to give it a shot eventually, but I’m not sure if we’ll manage given how fast the platform is maturing and the types of investments that are being made in the pitches. But we’ll try.
G: Top-down or third-person in RPGs? You used both perspectives in the past. But do you have a preference?
Swen: Depends on the game. I loved "Ultima VII" and "Ultima Underworld" equally ; )
Swen: I’m pretty sure the title hurt us a lot in the beginning – most people thought this was a porn game. ; )
I guess the success indeed did take me by surprise – not because I doubted the concept, but because the game wasn’t finished when it shipped. I was very very very angry then ; )
With "Beyond Divinity", what we should’ve done is stick to the original formula rather than wanting to introduce so many new things, but you have to realize that at that time the only way you could score publisher interest was if you had “new” stuff. Another problem was also that we were so traumatized by all the development problems we’d had with "Divinity 1" that we didn’t dare take any risk anymore, and that showed in the world design. And of course, we also made it on a shoestring budget – that didn’t help things when we figured out that we’d made some mistakes ; )
G: In regards to LMK, Guido Henkel, who was one of the founders of Attic, your former publisher at that time, worked on a Kickstarter-campaign not too long ago. Unfortunately, it failed. But how is your opinion about crowd funding-campaigns? Do you, as an indie-developer, see a chance for the industry there?
Swen: I actually never worked with Guido when working with Attic – he’d already left then, but I was sorry to see his campaign fail. In general, I think Kickstarter is a fantastic platform, but given that there’s more and more competition on it, as a developer you’ll need to start thinking of it as any other distribution platform i.e. you need to figure out how to attract attention, how to present your message well and how you can help players imagine what you’re trying to make. That’s not that easy. I think Larian is going to give it a shot eventually, but I’m not sure if we’ll manage given how fast the platform is maturing and the types of investments that are being made in the pitches. But we’ll try.
G: Top-down or third-person in RPGs? You used both perspectives in the past. But do you have a preference?
Swen: Depends on the game. I loved "Ultima VII" and "Ultima Underworld" equally ; )
Click here for the full interview. There's also a video at the end of the interview -- but you should see it for yourselves.
