"Jefferson" Project Forum News
Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2003 - 22:02 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's "Jefferson" project forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Game Costs: I don't know exact costs, but I think game development is often said to cost about $1 million/year of development.

Quote: So... how was it? Did you get to showcase Jefferson (or some of its aspects, like the engine), and, if you did, what were the reactions?

No. GDC isn't really a place for developer showboating (though a few do to illustrate points in talks). Six people from Black Isle went up: Feargus Urquhart, Darren Monahan, Chris Avellone, me, Jay Fong, and Chris Jones.

GDCs have been mostly hit-or-miss with me. Despite what some developers may say, I still believe that the core of GDC is a "boy's club" with a barely-tolerable amount of inbred back-patting. That said, there were still a lot of good lectures and (more importantly, to me) roundtable discussions. Warren Spector gave a good lecture on making sequels and licensed titles that made me think more seriously about the subject. Sheldon Pacotti from Ion Storm (Deus Ex 2) gave a talk on massively complex dialogue systems that was interesting, but ultimately helped confirm many of my stubborn opinions on the subject. There were some good roundtable discussions on advanced user interface design, dealing with licensed properties, and designer interaction with the rest of the dev team.

I got to meet Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky from Troika; Matt Pritchard, Angelo Laudon, Ian Fischer, Herb Marselas (ex) Rob Fermier, et al from Ensemble Studios; and a whole lot of other cool people.

Quote: Did you get the chance to beat up the BIOweenies?

Nope. I saw Ray at the XBox party and stopped Trent Oster to ask him for directions. That was about it

Quote: but what 'bout d&d and FR dogma? is josh telling us that if we makes a FR world that we not have to accept what is in the FR books? we can not only add new material, but we can change what is written?

None of the stuff I've suggested openly defies FR canon. Some will certainly argue that there's a fine line between omission and misrepresentation, but oh well.

Quote: I'd like to see more of a humble fantasy, where magic isn't so readily availible. Everything is more subtle. I'm not to keen on seeing everybody and their mother lobing magic missile and fireball around...

You can have that sort of subtlety even in the Forgotten Realms if the author/designer chooses to downplay or omit the presence of heavy magic in the story. For instance, if you have a game in the middle of the Sword Coast, don't even put Larloch's Crypt on the map or draw any attention to it. If you make a game in the Dalelands, pretend Elminster and the Knights of Myth Drannor don't exist. If you're making a game in the Old Empires, play up the elitism of the Red Wizards in Thay, the Rashemi Witches in Rashemen, and the priests in Mulhorand and Unther. The majority of the populace in many of those nations are slaves, and know nothing of magic.