Hellgate: London Interview

German website Krawall has published a transcript of a phone interview they did with Flagship’s Bill Roper, though you’ll need to stop by Hellgate Guru for an English translation. Some interesting questions in here…

Krawall.de: In the press you get often presented as “failed”, hellgate beeing a flop. But your sales figures look solid. Why is that?

Bill Roper: Well i don’t have to tell you how the press works. Great success or great fail that’s worth a press release. But not “Hellgate sells pretty solid”. According to that many media sit there thinking: “Let us release something about those flagship-guys, they are in the spotlight, that’s interesting for people”. But in our range there is this unbelievably success of World of Warcraft. Hellgate can’t keep up with that right now. So you can’t present us was winners on the podest. So we just get written of as losers.

Krawall.de: Isn’t that harmfull for you as a company? Do you notice people out there saying: “I better don’t touch that game, who knows how long it’s gonna last”? Do critics like those hurt you personaly?

Bill Roper: It’s not good for us, that much is sure. But we released games in the past, we know the internet, we knew what we are leting ourself in to. I don’t want to lie to you, there are days on wich i’m unhappy. When somebody talks like that about something you worked 4 years of your life hard on, you did everything possible to make it as good as possible at release. When somebody says to me: “Hey i tried out your game, but it’s just not something for me” – okay that’s no problem for me. But what’s really hard to process for me is when people suddenly insult me personaly or other employes of my company. I just can’t understand why people have to take this way to express their displeasure. It’s such an extreme contrast! There we are trying to create something that makes people happy, something they can do with their free time. And there is such an feedback. Imagine this happening in another job. “I had been at this gas station and wanted that special sort of gasoline.. but they didn’t have it! Altough they said they would have it! Bill the guy that works there, he cancelled that order for that special gasoline with full intention – what a big bounch of…” you know what i mean.