Pirates of the Burning Sea Team Q&A #1

RPGVault is offering up an interview with several team members of the recently released Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Jonric: With respect to your personal contribution to Pirates of the Burning Sea, what are a couple of things that stand out? What are you most proud of, and what did you find most challenging?

Bruce Sharp
Art Director
Our ocean stands out the most. We have the best looking ocean in the history of games, period. It has big swells with chop on top, transparency when looked at overhead, and reflectivity when looked at laterally, its depth has color… in fact, we have access to so many aspects of the ocean’s color – its specularity, depth, surface, surface ambience… it’s just an inspiring sight. When I first sat down to work on Pirates, I wanted to create an environment in which players felt as though they’d gone away on vacation to someplace beautiful. Our ocean certainly does the job.

Some would say that one of our biggest challenges, from an art perspective, is a lack of tech, but I would argue that point. MMOs are necessarily less high-tech than, say, FPSs, t’is true. But beauty in art doesn’t come from having more and more detail; its beauty comes from having vision with what you’re given to work with. Our game may not be normal map- or bloom-heavy, but it has loads of vision in areas of color, texture, design, lighting – all the areas that affect it visually.

The team of artists here is artistically brilliant; they know their tech too, but they are, all of them, gifted artists. This is how I chose them to be on my team. You see, more than 90 percent were students of mine at the Art Institute of Seattle, where I’ve been able to cherry pick the best and brightest. It’s a very convenient arrangement for everyone involved. By the way, I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to be able to discover new talents in the classroom and actually be able to give them jobs – and not just any job, but a dream one – at the end of their schooling.

Kevin Maginn
Lead Designer
My largest personal contribution, if we’re talking about individual game systems, is the economy. I had a vague plan for one economy for many years, and Pirates gave me the opportunity to put some of the concepts I’ve been tinkering with into practice. It’s very satisfying to see players exploring the economy, and more importantly, enjoying it. It’s a difficult problem to tackle in the MMO space, and while I don’t think our game economy is perfect, it’s certainly competitive with any economic-focused MMO out there.

The largest personal challenge in working on Pirates? Learning to work collaboratively. There’s this perception that the design team, and particularly the lead designer, shows up with a great idea and hands it down to the rest of the team as though it were the word of God. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s a lot of setting aside of your own ego involved in getting a game designed; you have to learn to evaluate ideas, suggestions and revisions on their merits, no matter what their source. Every person at the company is trying to make a great game, and the sooner you realize that and really listen to their ideas, the better the design process will be.