PCGP Episode 86: Shadowrun Interview
This week we welcome Mitch Gitelman from FASA Studio, developers of the newly released Vista and 360 game Shadowrun. He shares some of the technical and design challenges in developing the game and responds candidly to some of the criticism it has received.
Also, Greg’s End Boss column responding to the reaction to his “Penny Arcade” Letter from the Editor in the July issue; Shadowrun and Games for Windows Live first thoughts; Sim City 5 not developed by Maxis; q&a and playlists! Plus, this week only — 47% more podcast at no extra charge.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
WEWT PCGP TO THE RESCUE
June 7th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Whoa, thats a long podcast! Oh well, more goodness!
June 8th, 2007 at 3:42 am
the last part cutscenes was daaam funny…. jeremy is unimpressed ROLF
June 8th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Regarding Shadowrun - Gitelman keeps harping on about not getting credit for making a crossplatform game in reviews.. Greg makes a good point which Gitelman doesn’t really answer - why should I really care about crossplatform gaming in the first place?
I also like how he compares a $7 film to a $50 game.
June 8th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Is there a link or something for that peggle replay?
June 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am
I just looked at the box for Shadowrun (On Wikipedia) and i see what you mean when you say that it “Requires Windows Vista”. But i have a copy of Shadowrun here (I’m in UK) and the “Requires Windows Vista” is in a big blue box with white text so it stands out clearly. I guess they learned very quickly from their mistakes.
Mind you, i’ve had lots of fun playing this - If you’re on Vista i’d advise to have a dabble
June 8th, 2007 at 10:47 am
We need the Peggle replay!
June 8th, 2007 at 11:34 am
frapping and youtubing today
June 8th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Whoa, you’re right Netram. Amazon.co.uk has a pic.
June 8th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Yay Norm!
June 8th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I have to clear all pegs on THREE MORE LEVELS and I will have finally beat all of Peggle…wish me luck, I plan on making the attempt for the rest of the weekend.
June 8th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Shadowrun seems like an amazing game, but i dont have vista. So i wont get it until i do.
But i’ve seen Counter-strike with magic done in counter-strike; Counter-Strike Warcraft 3 server mod…
gives you crazy magic skills and leveling up within counter-strike.
So I wouldnt call Shadowrun innovative. But I am very confident that i would thoroughly enjoy it. Alas, whoever thought making Vista a requirement was a good idea should be flogged…
Hope the game does well in sales regardless.
And where’s this Peggle shot? I got’s to sees it!
I have also completed all the challenges. Now trying to get 100% pegs cleared on every level… I’m about 1/3 done… Finishing Neverwinter Nights 2 kept me from Peggle…
June 8th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Nice episode
Very entertaining
June 8th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I remember when i was in elementry school me and my friends would go on the school computer and have city destroyed by tornados and monsters. good times
June 8th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Just sharing my 2 cents about the show:
This was the first episode of the podcast ever (started listening around nr 40) that made me turn it of before it was done. I’m 45 minutes in the “interview” and all i hear is some dudes rambling on how good his game is and why it’s got an unfair rating. This is not quality podcasting material at all. I understand that PCG has a special relation to game developers and such but this is just pure “in-your-face”-marketing from their side. The shadowrun guy finishes every single sentence by highlighting a feature, without the relating it to what the interviewer was talking about, his just going on about how “good” his game is. I havent’t played the game and I don’t intend to, I do hower intend to listen more to the show but I won’t if i’m going to be treated as an stupid uninformed “potential” shadowrun-customer. My point is: If you want to make an interview about a game developer that people may get something out of - start treating us as grown ups and do a proper interview, not a 45+ minute long shadowrun advertisment.
Looking forward to the next normal show.
June 8th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
what else do you want a game developer to talk about in an interview? normal mapping, z depth buffer, navmesh, portals, supersampled alpha maps, micro-triangle displacement and mipmapping? yeah that sounds exciting! …give them a break, half of the interview has Greg talking about all the downsides of the game; of course the game dev is going to be biased and advertise his game, that’s sort of obvious, but the interview as a whole was unbiased to say the least.
June 8th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Gordian, I’m confused - I thought Greg asked some pretty hard questions, and Mitch gave some excellent, informative answers. What questions would you like to have heard asked?
June 8th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I felt did Greg did a great job asking questions I know I would have felt a tad odd asking the developer. Gitelman certainly can’t talk trash about his own game, and it would be ridiculous to expect him to give anything but praise to his team.
June 8th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
I love the interviews. Its always good to hear the developers talk about the game. I love hearing things whether it be stuff I know or not, features….etc. Its gets me more more interested in the game (or not). Its much easier then buying or renting the game and having to go back to a forum and ask “Hey how do you do this?” then find out and be like “Oh?? Really? Thats an awsome feature!” You find out about he cool things in a game with these interviews and it makes you want to buy the game which is of course the whole point in my book.
June 8th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I thought it was a great interview, and Vede did a fantastic job asking the tough questions (without being an ass).
NOW WHERE IS THAT PEGGLE CLIP? I MUST SEE IT!
June 8th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Go read some of the reviews for Shadowrun and you’ll understand why the guy is being so defensive…
But the interview wasnt a candy coated commercial for Shadowrun. Greg asked some of the most legit questions they could have asked.
well unless you wanted Greg to say: “So how come your game sucks so much and keeps getting low scores?”
Although i find it funny how many developers are being angered by the gaming press for reviewing their games “unfairly”… If something isnt up to par, you cant expect them to brush it aside just because some of the gameplay is incredibly compelling. Whatever shows up in the final game is what you get criticized for. Although based on the PCG staff’s impressions i’m betting PCG will give it somewhere between a 75%-85%…
and where is that peggle clip?
June 8th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Another stellar show.
I laughed hard at Norm and Jeremy’s Peggle talk. I’ve gotta see that shot.
You guys Pwn, everytime.
June 8th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Gordian, seriously, I hate to pile on but I also think Greg did a great job. We spent practically the entire interview letting Mitch respond to criticism the game has received, and his feet are pretty charred from being held to the fire. In fact, I don’t think it was evident after listening to the edit just how much we actually like the game. I’d give it another listen, maybe we caught you in the wrong mood.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:16 am
youtube search ‘peggle’ and itll be one of the first finds, add the word million for a better search
easy..
June 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Nope, none of the ones on YouTube is the one we discussed. Hopefully Norm will have it encoded soon. The one with “Million” in the title is close, but this one we’re talking about had all the orange pegs in the middle DNA column, so the player cleared them all and got the extreme bonus.
June 9th, 2007 at 5:44 am
I found the Peggle video! You need Peggle to view it , but I couldn’t wait for someone to re-encode it
http://www.jackhenderson.com/?p=256
June 9th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Haha, it would be so great if the next issue would be the ’snazberry issue’
.
Also, good interview by Greg (diplomacy++), but I would have certainly liked to hear a bit more from Jeremy, seeing as he actually played the game a lot, what it’s like and all.
I have to say, Shadowrun looks like loads of fun, the only thing I don’t like about it is the apparantly very flat/boring levels. They aren’t the first to do the whole item/class combo thing though, I remember Desert Crisis (an old HL1 mod) had implemented a great (and very similar) system. I like Shadowruns version better though because the classes look/play distinct plus it has extra features like being able to summon things
June 9th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Thanks for the link GraemeF!
I’ve put a capture of the peggle shot up onto youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHgBx2dWtRo
but it doesn’t have any sound (since Fraps made my system crawl, I had to use SnagIt). Hopefully someone can put up a proper soon with sound.
June 9th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Wow! Very nice (and lucky?) shot. I’m trying to beat the last two challenge levels atm and I gotta say, its pretty tough. What level did you choose Jeremy for the 750k point challenge?
June 9th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Starlyght, Greg has been playing just as much as the rest of us.
June 9th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Shadowrun seems awesome but im not gonna get it because i dont have vista and dont plan on to anytime soon.
Greg dont listen to that Gordian idiot. You did a great job.
June 10th, 2007 at 4:59 am
Ok, i may have sounded a bit harsh in my previous commend but I guess it’s just my opinion then. Anyway I do wanna give credit for a lot of the questions given, they were good, I guess it’s just that the devoloper spent so much time commending the bad press he’s got and less highlighting good points for his game. Although it does even out in the later part of the interview.
Looking forward to the next episode.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
So any news on Dan Morris coming back to the podcast or am i gonna have to keep on spamming Dan S blog.
June 10th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m5072/is_2_27/ai_n9507774
from 2005
June 10th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
man imagine if you got the 3x bonus from the rabbit on that shot… you would get almost 6 million, jeez.
Thats the only way i beat the 750,000 challenge, pick a level you have a good feel for clearing alot of the pegs in one shot, and keep playing with the rabbit until you get the 3x and a good shot… patience is key…
June 10th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I actually thought the developer (Gitelman?) was pretty upfront and candid. I particularly liked when the comments came up about Live whatever not working and he made it *very* clear that that was a Shadowrun issue, not a Windows issue, and he and his team owned and were fixing it. He didn’t say they were working around some Windows issue or that it wasn’t clear what the problem was, he owned it and moved on.
Overall it was a great interview… the guy was defensive but he was also about as candid as he could be. The only thing I thought was a little crazy was Greg harping on how you couldn’t tell if you were playing an XBox person or a PC person. Other than the staff of a pc gaming magazine, who really cares whether the person you are playing is on XBox or PC? Seems like an incredibly minor omission to spend the 5-10 minutes that Greg spent on it.
June 10th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
I think part of Greg’s point was that, if you can get achievements for killing / helping members on the other platform, wouldn’t it be helpful to know who they are? Also, I think we’re all interested to see if they really did balance the game as well as they say, and it would be interesting to see how PC players generally rank, as well as perform full on PC vs. Xbox matches.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Having never caught Counter Strike fever myself, I’m very ‘meh’ on the release of any multiplayer-only FPS like Shadowrun. On the other hand, I’ve been a fan of the paper-and-pencil Shadorun RPG and the Shadowrun universe in general for years, so I can’t help but feel like I’m shirking my fan-boy duty by not running out and buying the game and Vista to play it on.
Whether I end up buying it or not, I hope that the game re-invigorates the Shadowrun IP as a whole, and gets that “BioWare or somebody” RPG version made.
June 11th, 2007 at 5:56 am
I burn podcasts to CD and listen to them in my car, so try to keep it under 80 minutes in the future please.
To those in the same predicament as me, use Audacity (google it) to open the podcast MP3 file, click Effect / Tempo, enter “4800″ in the Seconds field, and click OK. This will quicken the pace without increasing the pitch to chipmunk levels.
June 11th, 2007 at 7:08 am
how about getting an mp3 player and plugging it into the car’s stereo. CDs are so 1990s.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
It was 84 minutes oh noes!
June 11th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Tapes FTW!
June 11th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
or just listen to the first 4 minutes then edit off the first 4 minutes… Not like anything good ever occurs there anyways… well aside from the wicked music that jeremy opens it with.
June 11th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Speaking of which… Jeremy please give us access to unaffected-by-fading-or-voices versions of the PCGP music!!!!11oneoneone
June 11th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
So any news on Dan Morris.
June 11th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Hey Daffy: Dan is back on the PCG side of the business (he was off working on OXM and PSM exclusively for a while), but he’s a seriously busy fella, so it’s unlikely that he’ll be joining us again on a regular basis. We’ll do our best to cajole him into participating every now and again when his schedule allows.
June 11th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I’ve been listening since E1 but this is my first comment. Just wanted to say good job on the interview Greg. It’s a difficult task to ask pointed questions while trying to keep the atmosphere from becoming too adversarial. Just ask Barbara Walters. I agree with the majority that Gitelman was on the defensive pretty much right from the get-go, but wrote it off because I figured he was already pretty beaten up by previous interviews. It’s got to be so tough to pour everything into a creation only to have it torn apart the minute it hits the shelves. To be fair, I also didn’t come away compelled to play it, but I’m exclusively a single-player game fan. To whoever griped about the concept of magic + technology (can’t remember for sure, but probably Dan), Arcanum pulled it off well a few years ago and it was pretty well received.
Jeremy, you should comment more. Your points & questions are consistently focused & to the point. Anywho, good podcast.
June 11th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
BTW, does anyone know what Jeremy even looks like? I’ve seen headshots of the PCG staff in the mag, but can’t put a face to a voice for him.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
If you must know.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:25 am
‘Live is Vista only and games for live are only on vista because of the extra security of vista…’
What a crock of horse shit. Live is Vista only because MS wants people to pay the outrageous fees to sidegrade to Vista. There’s nothing that they couldn’t make secure in XP for Live if they wanted to.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:40 am
TheVede: Thanx for the update. BTW try telling him that your now being called the “new and improved Dan.” That ought to get back for an episode or too.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Good podcast, great interview. I think you guys did a fair job of both pressing him on the current issues with the game, but also allowing him to promote what he thinks are the positive aspects of his product.
I think it’s pretty clear from what was said, and what wasn’t said, on how Mitch feels about the game. I think it’s safe to say that he agrees with the major points, (High price point, lack of XP support), but because he is “just the developer”, those things were beyond his control (Microsoft decided against them).
I do think that he was caught unaware by the point that: while cross platform gameplay is presented as a major selling point of the game, there is very little emphasis inside the game itself to high lite this feature. So that it is very possible for an unsuspecting player to never actually know that the game even does it in the first place.
I think he was as candid as he could be, without outright showing his displeasure at the publishers decisions, because you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you.
So I’d say it seems that he is just as sad as everyone else, as the great potential that shadowrun has may be buried underneath all the other issues.
I myself have XP, and Vista just isn’t in my immediate future. Which means, even though I’d like to try/play, I can’t. I get the distinct feeling though that Microsoft (Publisher’s) concerns were largely focused on 360. To be fair, thats probably where the majority of sales come from in multiplatform games, it’s just a shame that Shadowrun’s purpose on the “PC” is largely to promote Vista, at the expense of the game itself.
Aggies
June 12th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
BTW Gary, ONLY OEM Vistas bind to your motherboard, retail copies of Vista will not bind to a single mobo
June 12th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
http://hem.bredband.net/pcgp/people.htm
wow you guys are SOO much older than i expected you to be! espcially Jeremy
June 12th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
1974, baby. Respect your elders.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Skyruner2: (lol) That’s a relief for me because I was wondering how old I’d be when I grow tired of my favorite hobby (1984 here).
June 13th, 2007 at 7:52 am
The peggle video but with sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW946pLEFhI
enjoy
June 13th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Thanks for the updated peggle video with sound, yxxxx!
June 13th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
What did Dan S cough out when Maxis’ new project was referred to?
June 13th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Also, some of the 400 project’s rules that kind of apply to Shadowrun:
19:Make the Game Fun for the Player, not the Designer or Computer
This may seem obvious, but often game designers forget that it is the player who is the final audience. It’s hard enough to make a game fun for the player – in fact, that’s what most of the craft of game design is about – but it’s even harder when you lose sight of your audience. Sid Meier
20:Make the Effects of the AI [or the crossplatform capability] Visible to the Player
It can be tempting to model subtle choices in your AI, but unless the final results are clear to the player, you may well be wasting your time. One way to do this is to choose to model clearly visible choices – a possible Sims mate can touch your character’s arm and laugh, or turn a cold shoulder. Or to flip that around, you can alert the player directly when a subtle choice is made – for instance when an enemy sniper is responding to a player’s choice to run straight ahead instead of crawling stealthily around the flank, an audio cue like “Look, there he is!” lets the player know the AI is on to them. Noah Falstein
(Basically, make innovation obvious.)
http://www.theinspiracy.com/Current%20Rules%20Master%20List.htm
June 13th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
It’s about time for me to submit another question. I feel like submitting questions is like renewing my subscription to PCG.
June 13th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30MBljXxg3M
June 13th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Vagabond: The only difference is that submitting a question doesn’t cost $24.99, not that paying for the magazine is a bad thing.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:00 am
This just in: Beginning next week, submitting a question will cost $24.99.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:00 am
http://www.halfpixel.com/2007/06/08/penny-arcade-vs-the-vede-smashdown-blitzathon-07/
June 14th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I would like to apply to the PC Gamer Podcast Question Loan Program.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I don’t agree with Gary, Chris didn’t sound arrogant at all, I really understand what he meant. I think the problem is that, as a programmer, you don’t really make a lot of the choices that define the game you’re making. Ofcourse, you’re giving the game (or part of it at least) your ‘feel’, but in the end it’ll be the creative directors that determine what the game will play like. What I would do if I were you: find some likeminded people in your neighbourhood (enough devotion is necessary) and dream up some good ideas for a game, probably best to start out by making a mod (making your own game engine is so much work plus youll probably be licencing one in the future anyway).
July 5th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Growing starcraft 2 community @ http://www.starcraftvanilla.com
April 20th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Great podcast… going back and listening to em all since I just built a computer and can now play these games. Few points… first, it’s funny to come back and listen to this after the dev team was broken and hacks were released to run the game in XP (can only run on Vista? You dirty liars.)
Second, I thought a point Greg made went unanswered: ‘why should we, the reviewers, care?’ Specifically… yeah, maybe you did something difficult. So what? Reviews shouldn’t give an “A” for effort, they need to review a game based on the fun for the consumer. Chris just didn’t seem to get that idea.
Finally, whoever it was among the PC Gamer podcast crew who refused to install Veeeesta- hurrah. Still running XP happily here, and I think those who said everyone would need to switch to Vista have been thoroughly discredited.