Hellgate: London Interview

GamePro was able to track down Flagship Studios’ Bill Roper and hear him out about the criticism Hellgate: London has been receiving. I don’t think they covered all bases, though.

GP: I can imagine. I’ve seen some really withering criticisms in those forums…

Bill Roper: I think there was some confusion about what the game was going to be initially, [particularly] free play versus subscribing. I think there’s still a lot of that. It’s honestly confusing to me about the way people react to the subscription option in Hellgate. It’s been more of a challenge to us than we anticipated. The whole idea was to give everybody what they wanted. Because we’re doing this hybrid model, it’s almost like people try to figure out how we’re screwing them… but we’re not! For subscribers, it’s actually less than other MMOs like Tabula Rasa or World of Warcraft [$9.99 versus $14.99]. We’re not trying to hose you, we’re just trying to give people what they want.

But yeah, it can be tough to go on the forums. You try to explain things and interact with the community, but there’s a small percentage of people that will never be happy no matter what. You could pay them $5 a month to play your game, and they’ll complain that they want $10.

GP: It’s pretty common in the games industry.

Bill Roper: And I wonder if it’s unique to the games industry. I don’t see people [complaining about and slamming] TVs and movies on message boards, but it’s very much that way for games.

Ah, the kicked puppy act. I wonder when NFL/soccer/random sport coaches, politicians and film makers (yes, Mr Roper, they do get criticized) are going to copy this alluring tactic of acting like criticism is just something people do, just so you can avoid addressing the actual criticism.

Spotted on RPGCodex.