Bill Roper Interview Parts 3 & 4

"n Part II of our four-part interview with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper, we got to talking about the company's somewhat criticized two-tiered model for its debut game, Hellgate: London. Roper informed us that the paid subscribers would no longer be referred to as Elites, and went on to explain that in his opinion, the free experience, which includes online play, was still a terrific value that should not be looked at as downgraded compared to the paid subscription service. Today, in Part III, Roper tells us why Flagship chose a hybrid business model for Hellgate: London; how the company is structured to deliver regular content updates; and why people should think of the game as an MMO.

In some ways, there isn't really a model like what you're doing on Hellgate: London. You have MMOs where people pay a subscription fee for the service. There are item-driven, micro-transaction driven MMOs, primarily in Asia. The closest thing that I think of to this--but it would even be different from what you guys have done--is Phantasy Star online, where you could play the single-player experience for no additional charge, but then to play with up to three other friends online, you paid a monthly fee. What's interesting is that audiences accepted that, whereas there's been some criticism of your approach with both free online and a paid subscription model. When you guys were formulating how you wanted to approach Hellgate's business model, what was the process you went through? What were the models that you looked at? How did you decide, "Here's what we think has worked; here's what we think doesn't; here's what we think is going to work for our audience?" What was the guiding philosophy?

Well, the guiding philosophy was what's gonna be the best for the game and for our players. We knew that players wanted the ability to go online and play for free. That was very, very evident. That was an expectation. And so even as a startup with our first game, we had to figure out a way to make that happen. We knew that that was gonna be a big selling point in terms of reaching out to all the Diablo players around the world. That was their, you know, expectations. They wanted to be able to have that same experience. But then we also knew that there was a big outcry and a need for continuing content and so, for us it really is "How do we accomplish these goals? How do we make sure there's free multiplayer? And then, how do we also support ongoing, continuing content and the things that are encompassed in that?" We talked about all kinds of things. We looked at all the models that are there: everything from real money transactions and item purchases to auction-based systems. All kinds of stuff. And really we tried to come up with what we thought would be the cleanest division, "Here's where you can get this experience and it's free. And then when you want to go to ongoing content, that's where we do a subscription."

We worked very hard to also try to come up with a price point--we decided on the $9.99 price [for monthly subscriptions]. It wasn't that we felt we were offering any less than games that cost $14.95 a month. It's just like with the game where we've done things like, for example, low-poly assets: low-poly versions of every graphic in the game so you can reach lower end video cards and older systems, 'cause we want to get it out to as many people as we can. Same thing with the pricing model. We want people to be excited about the potential of ongoing content from what's gonna be there; all the events we're gonna be having; these big content pushes every three months or so; and being on board with that and kind of sharing in that experience, and doing it in a way where we weren't busting the bank.

That was a lot of work not only from a development standpoint, but also with the online model: how we can do things so we can be more economical so we can actually offer it at that price? The board of directors here at Flagship sat down and everything that we decided was based on "How do we do what's best for the game, how do we do what's best for the players?" That really drove what the business model was gonna be. It's all about what could we do that enables us to be able to offer an amazing value, to kind of over-deliver, and to make sure that we can have people play for free for as long as they want. And then be able to support ongoing content that's very interactive, very driven by the community in a lot of ways so that it reflects what they want out of the game at a price point that was gonna be really friendly. The vast majority of our business decisions get driven by "What's good for the game? What's good for the players? What would we want? We're all gamers, so what it is that we want to do?"

That's how Battle.net got started in the first place back at Blizzard. We were at E3 and that was when TEN and Catapult and all these pay-for-play services were the rage. And we said, "God, wouldn't it be really cool if when you bought the game, you click a button, and you go online and play for free. That would be cool. That's what I would want to do." And so we just did it. We built that and that's what it was all about. With Hellgate: London, it's like, "Okay, what do we want to do? Hey, we want to make sure that people can have that same experience: that click of a button, go online, play for free. But then for people that want to have that long-term relationship with the game, we want to be able to have the same kind of long-term commitment and relationship, and build a game and continue to grow it and change it, and get in what they want, and get in more of our ideas, and do that in a way that doesn't kill anybody." It doesn't kill us, it doesn't kill them.

In terms of the continuing content model--I'm sure you guys must have considered--you say you're looking at a roughly sort of quarterly schedule for the major content updates. Did you consider sort of an a la carte model? What pushed you to a subscription model?

Because we'll be doing a lot more than just the push every three months. You know, we're already planning things; looking at monthly events, weekly things. If we come up with a really cool idea, we may not want to wait until that big content push to introduce things into the world. And then there is honestly a lot of expenses involved in running an online service and having a development team that's constantly being able to fix issues and balance tweaks and bugs, all those kind of things.

But I also don't want people to just think that because they're paying a subscription, they're only gonna get something once every three months. They're getting things all the time. There will constantly be things that we're streaming out to the player; events that are happening; special things that are tied to real-world timeline events; things that we build specifically just for inside the game that deal with our world history. We've even talked about things like every Tuesday is mod day and some Tuesdays we change--you know, you have a higher chance of mod dropping and different costuming to put on your weapon. Like we kind of change the rules on different days of the week. We'll have special events that happen once every two weeks, things we'll constantly be putting into the game and pulling out of the game, altering and changing. And all those things take coordination and programming, and art resources, and all that.

The goal is that there's always something going on and we're kind of always getting you new, fun things that happen in small amounts. But then once every three months there's a big content drop that happens as well, and that can be anything from new areas, new monsters, new weapons, new quests, new everything. New gameplay mechanics, new damage types, even up to and including new character classes, which traditionally you only ever see in expansion sets. We want to have those kind of quarterly pushes being really big things that people are looking forward to, but at the same time they're constantly getting new stuff in the game.

So how are you organized internally to support the weekly, monthly and quarterly updates and events? How are you structured?

Well, pretty much when the game shifts, that's when the majority of the company is still working on it. Obviously because it's our big product that's launching, and it's our initial launch, that means the vast majority of the company is focused on that. We have people that are assigned as leads--design leads or program leads--and they kind of are that core of what makes up that ongoing content theme. We've already done a lot of designing/planning on what can happen in different months and different ideas, how those get created. And we do maintain a very organic development process where we'll structure things out in terms of a skeletal structure, where we have a high-level overview, a main line of what's gonna happen; but then we always leave room both in our dev schedules and in our design to be able to be iterative. So, if something goes in and it's not as good as we thought it was, we can change it. If it was really good, we can expand that idea. And we can get feedback from the community; we can actually see what's happening in the game and make additions or alterations that way. We're trying to stay as flexible as possible because that's really the most exciting thing about having an online game that has the ability to create continuing content is that you're not just building something for months and years, and then it comes out and you hope its what people want. You can be very iterative. You can make changes both small and large that take into account what's actually happening.

That may be the most exciting thing about doing any kind of MMO at all is the fact that your turnaround time is a lot shorter, right? You can say, "Oh, hey, this isn't working. People don't like that. Well, what if we change it this way? OK, boom, let's try that change, put that change in live. OK, yeah, that made it really good." Or, "Hey, it would be really interesting if we added this ability to this monster because it seems like that would make him a lot more fun for people to play at higher levels," and you can just make that change and put it in. You don't have to wait a year before an expansion set comes out to do that or something, right? So the team will be a mix across the board. It's still actually not design-heavy, but design-focused, in the fact that it's not just a list of things that we want to get done. It's us being able to play the game ourselves, interact with our community, and be iterative and responsive to what it is that the game wants and what the players want.

Do you have a name for this kind of thing? I mean, is it a minimally multiplayer online game?

No, it's an MMO. I mean, MMO means "massively multiplayer online." We're gonna be connecting hundreds of thousands to millions of players online. You know, Diablo 2 is an MMO, but in people's heads when they think MMO they think the EverQuest model so that gives them all these parameters of what an MMO is. And then---I don't know if this gets driven by marketing groups or by sales or fans, I don't know--people really seem to need, have that need to be able to strictly define things. Like I know that Raph Koster at one point referred to Guild Wars as a hub-and-instance MMO, trying to narrow down what kind of MMO it was. It's an MMO. You go online and you're playing with, you know, thousands of other people in your community. That's what Hellgate is. It's an MMO. But to me the more quote-unquote "confusing part" is that its both a single-player game and an MMO. I was thinking of it as trying to be kind of like the Swiss Army Knife of games or the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of games. You've got your single-player MMO or whatever, or it kind of has these different arms that it reaches out to, these different people that want to play it. But we talk about it as being a massively multiplayer online game in the fact that we're gonna be putting a massive amount of people together to play a game.

It is a different model in every way. Yes, it's a different business model. It's a different gameplay style. It's not gonna play like World of Warcraft. It's not gonna play like EverQuest because it's an action RPG, but it has story line, and role playing, and character development. Depending on what character class you play, you're even gonna get some different experiences there. If you're playing one of the hunter classes, especially the marksman, you're still going to be playing an action-RPG and still have all those role-playing things like leveling up and items, and skills, and you care about your character level versus monster level and all those things; but it has much more of an FPS feel to it. Like the mechanics flow more that way because the higher the level you get, depending on what skills you take, there's a lot more concern as to player skill whereas the Templar classes and the Cabalist classes don't really rely on player's skill; your twitch skill specifically. The marksman class very specifically, the higher level you get is more built to have more interest for FPS players because, depending again on the skills that you take, it becomes very dependent on player accuracy; and you get benefits for that.

Again, it's trying to take these elements from different types of games and--not mash them altogether but "Oh, this is really interesting about working in 3-D. This is really interesting about FPSs. This is really interesting about MMOs. You know, this is really interesting about very story-driven RPGs." Even things like the concept of content over time as opposed to content over area, which for the first time a lot of us ever really saw that used really well was in Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing has got a very small game space, but there's tons of new things that keep happening to you. That's because things are timed. Oh, I've been playing for this long. Oh, on this Tuesday this is gonna show up. Even though it's not like I had to go to a new land to find that. Things are coming to you.
And you even see that happen in games like Tiger Woods where they have a real-time event calendar. It's like "Cool, it's Easter. I can go win this shirt." That was a contest over time. Even things like that that come from different games and these blendings--I think that is where our minds have always been. If people feel that need to classify it, hopefully it'll be classified as a really fun game they like playing as opposed to just having to stick it in some box.

Next: Businessman, game developer, musician, voice actor--is there anything Roper can't do? Filed Under: The Artist's Way, Loot"
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In Part III of our four-part Q&A with Flagship Studios CEO Bill Roper, we talked about whether his company's first game merited the MMO label and the reasoning behind Hellgate: London's hybrid business model. In today's final installment, we discuss the relationship between Flagship, Namco and Electronic Arts; whether Roper is concerned about the amount of risk inherent in Hellgate's numerous innovations; and whether his real-world musical abilities are transferable to Guitar Hero.

As Flagship was developing the content model and business model for Hellgate: London, what role did EA and EA Partners play? I understand EA Partners is primarily distribution. It's not like you're an owned studio. You have a lot of freedom to determine your future. But what kind of guidance, advice, philosophy sharing--did you guys work together on this stuff at all, or did you just tell them, "Hey guys, here's what we're gonna do"?

It definitely was driven out of Flagship. Once EAP came on as a publishing partner with Namco, certainly we availed ourselves of all the knowledge that was there: the research they've done; all the things that EA definitely brings to the table. For example, when we were talking about pricing for the continuing content, the number, that $9.99, came out of Flagship; but then we talked with EA about it and said, "OK, here's what we think it should be. What do you guys think? We want your feedback on it." It wasn't like EA said, "OK, great. Now that we're doing the distribution and whole thing, here's the price, here's your model, here's your list of things." That was all driven internally by the team, by the company. But at the same time, we were very pleased to be able to have a wide breath of knowledge, and research, and experience to bounce those ideas off of and get very honest feedback. So there's been some good collaboration there.

From the previous conversation we had in January and then again now, it's clear that you guys are innovating in like a bunch of different directions. And innovation generally means risk. So, I mean, do you find yourself--other than being sort of up late working on the game--do you find yourself having sleepless nights worrying about the amount of risk that you've taken? Do you feel concerned about that level of innovation and risk-taking and do you ever wonder whether people will get it and get on board for it?

That's a great question. As with anything that isn't done yet [laughs] you worry, just because you can't predict everything that's gonna happen. I think that we have had an excellent track record of success with innovation. Going back to--at least for me personally--when I worked on Warcraft 2 nobody was doing eight-player, multiplayer, SVGA graphics. That was insane. But it was something that was a big innovation. All the multiplayer things that Starcraft did and the introduction of things that made it really a big part of the beginning of e-sports; and, the way we did matchmaking; just the fact that we had three races that were completely different--I mean, those were all big innovations that no-one had done before.

Diablo was definitely a huge, risky innovator in the fact that it was the first major game on the Windows platform; and I remember very specifically us having discussions with CUC or Cendant or whichever one of the big fish that had been eating off us at that point. And they were asking if we could do a DOS version 'cause "What if this Windows thing doesn't take off?" And we said, "No, we can't. We're very tied to the way that Windows works." At the same time we were doing that, we were launching this Battle.net thing. We did the original Diablo when RPGs were dead, and people asked "Why are you guys doing an RPG?" So I think that every title that we've worked on that has launched a franchise has been very innovative and has been filled with risk.

We've also been very fortunate that our players have shown the fact that they will support a great game. If the game is good, you know, they pick up all the other things that are different and unique about it. That's been what has driven us. Our main goal is that we have to make the best game possible. If people are like "Oh, I'm not really sure if it's single-player, if it's multiplayer, how does it work?" if they get in, start playing it, and they enjoy it, then it's like, "Ah, OK, now things make sense." It's like when we first started describing the game to people. We got a lot of people saying, "What? It's an RPG; but it's action-y; but it has a shooter-thing; but it's first-person; but it's third person?" But then all we really had to do was get them to sit down and play the game. And once they spent five minutes playing it they got it. They go, "Oh, OK, I understand what you guys are doing."

It's the same kind of thing even now, when we release videos of the game or screenshots. You want those to be exciting and so you show a lot of action, right? People don't necessarily want to look at a screenshot of you getting a quest from somebody or standing in town. So then people say "Well, we noticed the game looks really action-heavy and shooter-y. Are there RPG elements?" Yes, of course there are, but those are really hard to illustrate in a screenshot. Those are the types of things that as you play it, you say "Wow, I'm really getting into the story, this is really cool." "Oh look, my storyline is kind of different when I'm playing a different faction." There's a lot of things that you get only by playing. And I think that to a degree what we're doing both game innovation-wise, and even the way that our business model works, when people get the game and play, it suddenly makes sense.

I think we've always been very fortunate to have an incredibly smart and passionate and cool player community. We had a community day here about three weeks ago, I guess, where we brought in about 22 community leaders from the U.S. and Europe and had 'em sit down and play the game, and talk about what we're gonna be doing, explain the character class, and the whole thing. They left and were like, "Man, this is awesome," because they really got a chance to experience it. So for us, that's what takes the majority of the concern out of it. That's the reason I'm not staying up all night going, "Oh, my god, is this gonna work?" because we've been showing it to people. We've had our people playing it. I think it was really good for us the first time we got the folks over at EA playing it, 'cause they'd never seen the game other than peripherally at shows. So when we started working with EAP, we said, "Great, here's access to the game," and suddenly a lot of the questions that were there beforehand--now we started getting emails saying, "Wow, OK, we get it. This is cool. We get why this works."

As much as you read about something or talk about something, or see images about something, the proof is really there when you actually get your hands on it. And that's why we really wanted to have that--to tie it back into everything else--that's why we wanted to have that kind of that business model that is very friendly to wrap people into that ongoing experience if that's what they want. You can get the game, you can play it single-player. Maybe you don't like playing online. "Hey, great, I got this awesome single-player experience. It comes with replayability and, you know--wow, this really opens the lid. It's really cool. Oh, I can go online and try out this online for free? Well, that's awesome. I'm gonna do that." And now maybe your friend gets the game. You're not really sure if you want to play online or you want to check it out first and you go on there and you start getting that experience and seeing how that works and you say, "Wow, I want more of this. This is really fun." Then there's the way to do that. Again, really all about how do we get people to play the game because that's where they're gonna really get more and see more and understand more than any amount of us putting stuff in magazines or on the Web is gonna ever do.

At the EA Partners event at GDC after the Rock Band announcement, there were several instruments on stage, and you got up on stage and picked up the guitar and started playing the guitar and singing. You're actually quite good. Where did you get your guitar and singing skills, and how transferable have you found all that to Guitar Hero?

I'm a very mediocre guitar player. I'm a much, much better bass player, which helps me actually a lot in Guitar Hero. I can get by enough on guitar. I can accompany myself on some stuff. But I've always been a musician. I was a music major in college. I still sing in a band and play in a band. In fact, I've got my bass rig here in my office. And so [my playing at the event] was just kind of fun. Everyone was leaving and I was like, "Oh, hey--cool." In fact, earlier, during the setup, Brent Shinn who's our IT lead here, who is a great guitar player--we actually have a couple of awesome guitar players it the office--Brent was playing guitar and I was playing bass. There was a bass up there too. So, we were kind of jamming out. I've always played. I still play. My emphasis in college was on vocal.

Actually, it's really interesting--I find that in Guitar Hero, the right-hand transfers really well and the left-hand transfers strange. So when I'm hitting the notes and things, that transfers really well, though I tend to play the guitar in Guitar Hero like bass, so I don't do the picking motion like I would on a guitar. I actually use my pointer and middle finger like I'm playing bass for all that stuff. Because that's how I mostly play. The weird part is playing the songs and you're hearing notes in your head, but that doesn't always necessarily translate to where your fingers are on the board--that's the part that you have to make a disconnect on. It's kind of interesting though: I found that most of the people that when they start playing Guitar Hero they start on the four buttons that are the furthest down the neck. Then when they get to a higher level and they have to add the orange button, it gets really hard because they're locked down like that. The first time I picked up the Guitar Hero controller, picked up the guitar, just because of where I would actually put my hand--I actually center my middle finger on the yellow one so my pinky is on the orange all the time. And then I slide down for the far left.

Right.

I tend to slide a lot, just because that's the way I play bass. So, it was really interesting that--and when I was playing it at the office, the guys were like, "Wow, you hold it really weird. You never even use your pinky." I go, "Yeah, but when I get to expert, suddenly I'm gonna be fine because I don't have to re-learn how to play." It just mirrors the way that I play bass.

The thing for me that's kind of tricky is that--and this may be a difference in the fact that I'm more of a bass player than a guitarist--it was hard for me to kind of sync up with the beat in the game because I think as a bass player, you tend to be centered much more, right in the middle of the beat. If you think of a beat of music as kind of being, of having kind of a front, middle and a back end; a lot of times in jazz you stay on the back half of the beat. You kind of have that swing and that kind of lazy thing that you're going through. Typically in rock, the bass man and the drummer are gonna be locked in and they're both gonna be in the center of the beat. I noticed Guitar Hero lays you more on the back of the beat and that may be a guitarist-type thing. So I had to get used to the fact that where my downbeat was wasn't always where the game's downbeat was, which is kind of interesting. But fortunately, the game is more forgiving if you're early than if you're late, so I tend to be early a little bit, like a hair.

Got it.

And that was OK. It didn't kill me, 'cause I was more in the middle of the beat. And it's kind of fun too, because of the songs; you know all the songs, and the solos and stuff. But then it's learning [the difference between] where in my head I would be playing that solo or playing that line and then where [the game] chose to have you hit the beat and where it is in the neck--sometimes it's a little funky. It's almost like you get bonuses and minuses if you're a musician, if you're a guitarist or a bass player, because some things are a lot easier, but then some things just don't click with you mentally. All your muscle memory fights against you and you're like "Ah. Oh. No. Okay." But it's a blast. I love that game. I can't wait for Rock Band to come out. That's gonna be stupid fun 'cause we right now we're setting up our Guitar Hero tournament here at the office. But then when Rock Band comes out I'm sure we're gonna get a whole set. Because we actually could put together a real band in our office. We've got a couple of drummers and guitarists and bass players and singers and instrumentalists. It's kind of interesting. We have a lot of musicians in the office so I'm sure that we will have actual full rock band competitions here when the game comes out.

Battle of the bands over at Flagship?

Yeah, definitely, definitely. We have battle of the Guitar Heroes right now, so I'm sure that when Rock Band comes out we'll be having battle of the bands.

And as a bonus treat, should we expect to hear any of your vocals in the finished game?

I have some voices I'm doing in the game. Haven't done any singing, but maybe I'll sneak something in there as a hidden track or something, I don't know. But yeah, I've always tried to do voices in the games. I really love doing 'em. They're a lot of fun to do. Lets me kind of keep my voice acting chops up a little bit. But I still have to audition like anybody else. [Laughs.] I don't get to pull the hey-I-just-get-to-do-this-right? I have to actually meet the quality of our voice actors, which was kind of a challenge in Hellgate because the game is set in London. So we did actually the vast majority of the recording in the UK, with British actors. We wanted--we didn't want to have Mockney in there, right. We wanted it to sound like when you're talking with someone who's supposed to be British, they are. I do two characters in the game; one is British, one is American. The American one, of course, was much easier, but I really had to spend a lot of time getting honing my British accent so I didn't sound completely out of place. So that was kind of fun.

You're a Renaissance man, Bill. You're a man of many skills.

Yeah, well, I appreciate Renaissance man better than jack-of-all-trades, master of none. [Laughs.]

Terrific. Well, Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.

Of course. Always happy to, N'Gai.
Filed Under: The Artist's Way, Loot"

Both of these interviews have their home at the Level Up blog.