DCUO Interview: Creative Director Jens Andersen
This article originally appeared on ZAM on Nov. 15, 2010.
Following the recent DC Universe Online press event, Andersen shares his thoughts with Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff on the game's delay, the planned update schedule, the status of secret identities and more!
I recently had the chance to attend the DC University press event at Sony Online Entertainment's Austin studio to learn more about DC Universe Online. After the class, I was able to get some additional insight from Creative Director Jens Andersen on why the game was delayed until early 2011 and what sets it apart from other MMOs and action games.
Andersen goes into detail about the planned update schedule for DC Universe Online and confirms that the secret identity system is currently on the back burner. He does shed some light on the team's original secret identity plans, which included an offline component that would make you the secret identity for your character! Keep reading for more information on the game straight from the creative director.
ZAM: DC Universe Online was supposed to launch on Nov. 2. Can you tell us your thoughts regarding the delay?
Andersen: I've been doing this for over 14 years now, and you want everything to be so perfect and awesome and polished. It's hard to imagine it would have been out on Nov. 2, and I just feel so fortunate that Warner Bros. and Sony gave us more time to really bring it home. We were so close, but we needed that little extra time to get some time in beta, which was really important, and finish some interface issues and stuff like that.
ZAM: The entire game is currently available in closed beta right now. What key parts of the game did you feel really required some extra time to develop?
Andersen: Character create was the big one. It wasn't the concept of character create or anything like that, it was mostly just the interface. When you click ice, it does the ice power. We you choose a personality, it shows that movement. If you want to see what it's going to feel like to be a fire guy or a speedster or something like that, we actually have that incorporated into character create so you know what you're getting into. You're not making a blind choice. That was really important to us because console gamers in general are going to play a premade character that has its own package, like in God of War for example. They don't really have that choice. But for us, what if you don't like what acrobat looks like when you get in the game? What if you don't know what ice means or what it feels like? You get a little taste of it in character create because we took that extra time to put in these animations and effects to make people visually understand what they're selecting for their character.
The other things were just getting all of the animations, special effects and combos for the action combat locked down and as polished and smooth as possible. We also needed to make sure that all of our content is bug free. Here's the cool thing about DC Universe Online: we've been putting this game in front of people for a long time, way sooner than most companies would put a game in front of people. Not only were we putting it in front of people, we were letting them play it and get their hands on it at conventions. To me, that really indicated some maturity on our part, not just because we're confident in the game, but we wanted to make sure we were going in the right direction and making something new and different. It's not just an MMO and it's not just an action game. It's something new. It was very important for us to get the game in people's hands early so that we weren't making fundamental mistakes that would surprise us as we got into this phase. The reason we were doing that is because it was a reality check for us that we were making the right decisions. Make the right decision early and you'll benefit from it. Make the wrong decision early and change it late and your game will suffer. Putting it in front of people helped us make the right decisions. The delay wasn't because the game's in trouble or there's something wrong with it. We just want to make sure our first impression with players is a good one. We want it to shine.
ZAM: I know the game's scheduled to launch in early 2011, but do you have an internal date you're working toward?
Andersen: The second we can get it out and release it to the public, we will. We have an idea of when it's going to be, which is why when we say early 2011, we mean early. I can't give a specific date in that window, but unless something else changes, it's not going to be June or sometime halfway through the year. It will be sooner than that.
ZAM: You're in closed beta right now and getting a lot of feedback. What type of reaction are you seeing from players? Are they coming up with anything that surprised you?
Andersen: We're getting tremendous feedback, actually. When I say tremendous, I mean very positive impressions from people and they're really having fun with the game. We're also getting really valuable feedback in areas where we have problems. Have there been any surprises? Maybe a few, but we have a very seasoned and eclectic team. We have a lot of experts and experienced people from action console games and we have a lot of veterans from MMO games that have been working at SOE for awhile. There are a lot of competent people steering the ship. Of course, players are going to find thing on the micro level that are broken or bugged, which is expected.
We've only had one or two major “gotchas,” but they weren't earth-shattering. They involved us just setting up the data differently. We had a concept and it didn't work, so we shifted it back to something more traditional. We've made adjustments like that. For the most part, we haven't had that many huge surprises. It hasn't happened because we did our due diligence early by releasing this out the public in a limited way. Also, we've been live in the company for a long time and constantly have focus groups coming in from the local area. That prevented us from getting into trouble by painting us into a corner. We're already aware of some of the issues we're getting back from testers. They're issues because they're not in the game yet, and once they're in place the issues will be solved.
ZAM: Speaking of things that aren't in DC Universe Online yet, will there be an auction house in the game at launch? Also, are there any other things you want in at launch that haven't been implemented yet?
Andersen: Going on the second part of your question, I could give you a huge list of things I want in at launch that won't make it. But the good thing is this is a live service and launch isn't the end, it's the beginning. I just want the launch title to be as solid and cohesive as possible.
We will have a broker in the game. It will definitely be in the game. We have an economy planned. We want people to be able to sell their items.
ZAM: So the economy will be mainly item-based. There's no crafting planned, correct?
Andersen: We don't have any crafting in there right now and I'm really not going to comment on where we're going with that in the future. Our fundamental decision was that superheroes don't sew. We really wanted to make sure the combat and content was as solid as it could be. Crafting is important to some people. I don't know if it's important to the action gamer, and we slant toward action. It didn't initially have a place on the long list of things we wanted to do with the game. Crafting was more on the list of “you must have it because it's an MMO feature.” We didn't want that to govern our decisions. There's a list of things on the action and superhero fronts I would want to put in the game before I put a crafting system in it. I get that you can be a reporter and photographer in DC Comics. It's very Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen. I understand it. We had initially talked about secret identities, which was going to be our hook into that, but we've needed to put it on hold for now in lieu of other things we're trying to do with the game. We want to get back to that because we do have ideas for it. I'm not saying we won't do a traditional crafting system, but I guarantee you, knowing this team and the creativity that's on it, that we're going to look at what would be perfect for DC Universe Online, not what has worked in MMOs in the past. We're not ignoring that, we're just not letting it rule us.
ZAM: You actually jumped right into my next question about secret identities. Is it still something players can expect at some point? Could you give us any details on the form it may take in the game?
Andersen: Secret identities will not be in at launch. It's on the back burner now. Secret identities are such an important part of the DC Universe, and it was originally an important part of our design. We were thinking of an offline component for it, believe it or not. Kind of a “you are the secret identity” thing. We all liked and gravitated toward it, but when push comes to shove we realized we needed to focus on the game itself. As for what form it will take in the future, I don't want to speculate at this time. It's too soon.
ZAM: I thought your comments during the DC University presentation about time sink versus having fun were quite interesting. Can you elaborate on that concept?
Andersen: We want to entertain you, not age you. We don't want you to just grind through and feel like, “oh, we have to have 60 levels in the game because we need 120 hours to max level.” And then it's great to max out your character, but what do you do at the end? It takes a long time to create 60 levels worth of content and 100+ hours of gameplay. To do that much and make it meaningful is difficult. The fidelity of our content moment to moment is higher than you'll see in most MMOs. The story that we tell is more deep because of the property that we're using. DC Comics is based on stories. That's what drives the entire game. This isn't about rat tails and beaver pelts. It's about defeating Scarecrow and taking down Black Adam. That's the story. The bosses aren't afterthoughts that you get loot from at the end. They are the culmination of these great narratives.
When we say we want this to be about the end-game, that's not saying we don't care about your journey there. You have an origin story and spend significant amount of time in the game getting to max level. Once you get to max level, we want it to be a fun cycle that you go through with your friends daily, weekly, or whatever you choose. Our game is highly soloable. If you go in with a group, it will go faster. If you want to blaze through to max level, good for you, but you're going to miss all those feats, collections and exploration. People can take their time with our game. I hope they don't feel like they have to rush to the end. The end will be there. Enjoy the moments as you level because they have more story and immersion to them than you would normally see in an MMO. Come into the game one day and play an episode for an hour and a half. Want to play another? Great. You can also take a break and come back tomorrow. We also don't lock you out of raids. If you want to run the same raid five times in one night, go for it. You will only get loot on that first time you go through until your victory flag expires, but we don't care if you keep cycling through it.
We want casual people to get in there and have fun with our game and interact with these great characters. Once you get to the end, that added challenge comes in the skill and coordination that's required to pull off the great feats and earn those extra skill points. But it's not like, “I'm in the 20s now and I have to get to 30 and it's going to take forever.” That's not really fun. Our goal is for you to be entertained moment to moment. We wanted to focus on how much entertainment we could add to the game, not how long we could make the game. When we move forward and put out more episodes and more content, we want to meet that fidelity bar and not have the content that came before it feel lackluster because we rushed through to add too much of it at once.
ZAM: Speaking of updates, you mentioned in the presentation that DCUO will have monthly updates that will feature different characters. How much new content can players expect to see after launch?
Andersen: We're going to have a focus character every month, and usually that character will be available to be played in our Legends system. So let's say we did Two-Face somewhere down the road as our featured character. You would get a Two-Face episode. Heroes and villains would get to play in this new episode, which is a full story that adds various content pockets in the cities. At the end, you'll fight a boss in an instance, which will drop loot that's new to the game.
ZAM: So there will be new items added every month?
Andersen: Yeah, totally. And that's just the focus character. And then there will be an additional character for the Legends system that you can usually purchase. So one of them you can get through the content, and the other one you'll be able to purchase if you want. There will be the content episode itself and various feats attached to that, so you can try to accomplish them to get more skill points to buy weapons and movement mode stuff. You'll also have duo modes and hard modes you can play for some of the alerts and previous boss fights.
We also have seasonal updates. Valentine's Day in February, St. Patrick's Day in March, that kind of stuff. These will be available for a window of time, but the focus stuff will be added permanently to the game. Our Legends system grows as a result of this, your appearance collection grows, you'll get more items, and you'll get fun content. And that's just monthly. There's also the trimester updates, which focus on larger things like the Fortress of Solitude. We have a whole bunch of Kryptonian stories and themes to explore there.
ZAM: And I'm sure expansions are also planned, correct?
Andersen: Absolutely. We have three types of content updates planned right now. For your monthly subscription fee, we're going to be giving you the monthly updates that include the focus characters and seasonal content, as well as a trimester publish that includes a major content update. They will be larger, such as adding a bunch of content and characters for the Fortress of Solitude. We can add places like Kandor and the Phantom Zone, which gives us areas to focus on for alerts, raids, episodes, iconic characters, PvP maps, duo modes, hard modes, and so on.
And then we'll have expansions. For launch, we're focusing on Earth and places around Earth, like the moon. In expansions, we'll eventually get off the planet and into the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, and other dimensions. We may even see Darkseid at some point. We're trying to work our way up to that stuff.
ZAM: What would you say to fans who couldn't attend the DC University press event?
Andersen: Get your hands on the game. Putting your hands on our game is the ultimate way for you to understand what we're doing here. It's really hard to evaluate what the appeal is when you're just watching it on a screen. It's the scope and the scale. It's the open world. It's thousands of people coming together and creating their own hero and villain in this universe. It's just a lot of fun. It's something new and different. It's not your dad's MMO.
Following the recent DC Universe Online press event, Andersen shares his thoughts with Editor-in-Chief Darryl Gangloff on the game's delay, the planned update schedule, the status of secret identities and more!
I recently had the chance to attend the DC University press event at Sony Online Entertainment's Austin studio to learn more about DC Universe Online. After the class, I was able to get some additional insight from Creative Director Jens Andersen on why the game was delayed until early 2011 and what sets it apart from other MMOs and action games.
Andersen goes into detail about the planned update schedule for DC Universe Online and confirms that the secret identity system is currently on the back burner. He does shed some light on the team's original secret identity plans, which included an offline component that would make you the secret identity for your character! Keep reading for more information on the game straight from the creative director.
ZAM: DC Universe Online was supposed to launch on Nov. 2. Can you tell us your thoughts regarding the delay?
Andersen: I've been doing this for over 14 years now, and you want everything to be so perfect and awesome and polished. It's hard to imagine it would have been out on Nov. 2, and I just feel so fortunate that Warner Bros. and Sony gave us more time to really bring it home. We were so close, but we needed that little extra time to get some time in beta, which was really important, and finish some interface issues and stuff like that.
ZAM: The entire game is currently available in closed beta right now. What key parts of the game did you feel really required some extra time to develop?
Andersen: Character create was the big one. It wasn't the concept of character create or anything like that, it was mostly just the interface. When you click ice, it does the ice power. We you choose a personality, it shows that movement. If you want to see what it's going to feel like to be a fire guy or a speedster or something like that, we actually have that incorporated into character create so you know what you're getting into. You're not making a blind choice. That was really important to us because console gamers in general are going to play a premade character that has its own package, like in God of War for example. They don't really have that choice. But for us, what if you don't like what acrobat looks like when you get in the game? What if you don't know what ice means or what it feels like? You get a little taste of it in character create because we took that extra time to put in these animations and effects to make people visually understand what they're selecting for their character.
The other things were just getting all of the animations, special effects and combos for the action combat locked down and as polished and smooth as possible. We also needed to make sure that all of our content is bug free. Here's the cool thing about DC Universe Online: we've been putting this game in front of people for a long time, way sooner than most companies would put a game in front of people. Not only were we putting it in front of people, we were letting them play it and get their hands on it at conventions. To me, that really indicated some maturity on our part, not just because we're confident in the game, but we wanted to make sure we were going in the right direction and making something new and different. It's not just an MMO and it's not just an action game. It's something new. It was very important for us to get the game in people's hands early so that we weren't making fundamental mistakes that would surprise us as we got into this phase. The reason we were doing that is because it was a reality check for us that we were making the right decisions. Make the right decision early and you'll benefit from it. Make the wrong decision early and change it late and your game will suffer. Putting it in front of people helped us make the right decisions. The delay wasn't because the game's in trouble or there's something wrong with it. We just want to make sure our first impression with players is a good one. We want it to shine.
ZAM: I know the game's scheduled to launch in early 2011, but do you have an internal date you're working toward?
Andersen: The second we can get it out and release it to the public, we will. We have an idea of when it's going to be, which is why when we say early 2011, we mean early. I can't give a specific date in that window, but unless something else changes, it's not going to be June or sometime halfway through the year. It will be sooner than that.
ZAM: You're in closed beta right now and getting a lot of feedback. What type of reaction are you seeing from players? Are they coming up with anything that surprised you?
Andersen: We're getting tremendous feedback, actually. When I say tremendous, I mean very positive impressions from people and they're really having fun with the game. We're also getting really valuable feedback in areas where we have problems. Have there been any surprises? Maybe a few, but we have a very seasoned and eclectic team. We have a lot of experts and experienced people from action console games and we have a lot of veterans from MMO games that have been working at SOE for awhile. There are a lot of competent people steering the ship. Of course, players are going to find thing on the micro level that are broken or bugged, which is expected.
We've only had one or two major “gotchas,” but they weren't earth-shattering. They involved us just setting up the data differently. We had a concept and it didn't work, so we shifted it back to something more traditional. We've made adjustments like that. For the most part, we haven't had that many huge surprises. It hasn't happened because we did our due diligence early by releasing this out the public in a limited way. Also, we've been live in the company for a long time and constantly have focus groups coming in from the local area. That prevented us from getting into trouble by painting us into a corner. We're already aware of some of the issues we're getting back from testers. They're issues because they're not in the game yet, and once they're in place the issues will be solved.
ZAM: Speaking of things that aren't in DC Universe Online yet, will there be an auction house in the game at launch? Also, are there any other things you want in at launch that haven't been implemented yet?
Andersen: Going on the second part of your question, I could give you a huge list of things I want in at launch that won't make it. But the good thing is this is a live service and launch isn't the end, it's the beginning. I just want the launch title to be as solid and cohesive as possible.
We will have a broker in the game. It will definitely be in the game. We have an economy planned. We want people to be able to sell their items.
ZAM: So the economy will be mainly item-based. There's no crafting planned, correct?
Andersen: We don't have any crafting in there right now and I'm really not going to comment on where we're going with that in the future. Our fundamental decision was that superheroes don't sew. We really wanted to make sure the combat and content was as solid as it could be. Crafting is important to some people. I don't know if it's important to the action gamer, and we slant toward action. It didn't initially have a place on the long list of things we wanted to do with the game. Crafting was more on the list of “you must have it because it's an MMO feature.” We didn't want that to govern our decisions. There's a list of things on the action and superhero fronts I would want to put in the game before I put a crafting system in it. I get that you can be a reporter and photographer in DC Comics. It's very Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen. I understand it. We had initially talked about secret identities, which was going to be our hook into that, but we've needed to put it on hold for now in lieu of other things we're trying to do with the game. We want to get back to that because we do have ideas for it. I'm not saying we won't do a traditional crafting system, but I guarantee you, knowing this team and the creativity that's on it, that we're going to look at what would be perfect for DC Universe Online, not what has worked in MMOs in the past. We're not ignoring that, we're just not letting it rule us.
ZAM: You actually jumped right into my next question about secret identities. Is it still something players can expect at some point? Could you give us any details on the form it may take in the game?
Andersen: Secret identities will not be in at launch. It's on the back burner now. Secret identities are such an important part of the DC Universe, and it was originally an important part of our design. We were thinking of an offline component for it, believe it or not. Kind of a “you are the secret identity” thing. We all liked and gravitated toward it, but when push comes to shove we realized we needed to focus on the game itself. As for what form it will take in the future, I don't want to speculate at this time. It's too soon.
ZAM: I thought your comments during the DC University presentation about time sink versus having fun were quite interesting. Can you elaborate on that concept?
Andersen: We want to entertain you, not age you. We don't want you to just grind through and feel like, “oh, we have to have 60 levels in the game because we need 120 hours to max level.” And then it's great to max out your character, but what do you do at the end? It takes a long time to create 60 levels worth of content and 100+ hours of gameplay. To do that much and make it meaningful is difficult. The fidelity of our content moment to moment is higher than you'll see in most MMOs. The story that we tell is more deep because of the property that we're using. DC Comics is based on stories. That's what drives the entire game. This isn't about rat tails and beaver pelts. It's about defeating Scarecrow and taking down Black Adam. That's the story. The bosses aren't afterthoughts that you get loot from at the end. They are the culmination of these great narratives.
When we say we want this to be about the end-game, that's not saying we don't care about your journey there. You have an origin story and spend significant amount of time in the game getting to max level. Once you get to max level, we want it to be a fun cycle that you go through with your friends daily, weekly, or whatever you choose. Our game is highly soloable. If you go in with a group, it will go faster. If you want to blaze through to max level, good for you, but you're going to miss all those feats, collections and exploration. People can take their time with our game. I hope they don't feel like they have to rush to the end. The end will be there. Enjoy the moments as you level because they have more story and immersion to them than you would normally see in an MMO. Come into the game one day and play an episode for an hour and a half. Want to play another? Great. You can also take a break and come back tomorrow. We also don't lock you out of raids. If you want to run the same raid five times in one night, go for it. You will only get loot on that first time you go through until your victory flag expires, but we don't care if you keep cycling through it.
We want casual people to get in there and have fun with our game and interact with these great characters. Once you get to the end, that added challenge comes in the skill and coordination that's required to pull off the great feats and earn those extra skill points. But it's not like, “I'm in the 20s now and I have to get to 30 and it's going to take forever.” That's not really fun. Our goal is for you to be entertained moment to moment. We wanted to focus on how much entertainment we could add to the game, not how long we could make the game. When we move forward and put out more episodes and more content, we want to meet that fidelity bar and not have the content that came before it feel lackluster because we rushed through to add too much of it at once.
ZAM: Speaking of updates, you mentioned in the presentation that DCUO will have monthly updates that will feature different characters. How much new content can players expect to see after launch?
Andersen: We're going to have a focus character every month, and usually that character will be available to be played in our Legends system. So let's say we did Two-Face somewhere down the road as our featured character. You would get a Two-Face episode. Heroes and villains would get to play in this new episode, which is a full story that adds various content pockets in the cities. At the end, you'll fight a boss in an instance, which will drop loot that's new to the game.
ZAM: So there will be new items added every month?
Andersen: Yeah, totally. And that's just the focus character. And then there will be an additional character for the Legends system that you can usually purchase. So one of them you can get through the content, and the other one you'll be able to purchase if you want. There will be the content episode itself and various feats attached to that, so you can try to accomplish them to get more skill points to buy weapons and movement mode stuff. You'll also have duo modes and hard modes you can play for some of the alerts and previous boss fights.
We also have seasonal updates. Valentine's Day in February, St. Patrick's Day in March, that kind of stuff. These will be available for a window of time, but the focus stuff will be added permanently to the game. Our Legends system grows as a result of this, your appearance collection grows, you'll get more items, and you'll get fun content. And that's just monthly. There's also the trimester updates, which focus on larger things like the Fortress of Solitude. We have a whole bunch of Kryptonian stories and themes to explore there.
ZAM: And I'm sure expansions are also planned, correct?
Andersen: Absolutely. We have three types of content updates planned right now. For your monthly subscription fee, we're going to be giving you the monthly updates that include the focus characters and seasonal content, as well as a trimester publish that includes a major content update. They will be larger, such as adding a bunch of content and characters for the Fortress of Solitude. We can add places like Kandor and the Phantom Zone, which gives us areas to focus on for alerts, raids, episodes, iconic characters, PvP maps, duo modes, hard modes, and so on.
And then we'll have expansions. For launch, we're focusing on Earth and places around Earth, like the moon. In expansions, we'll eventually get off the planet and into the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, and other dimensions. We may even see Darkseid at some point. We're trying to work our way up to that stuff.
ZAM: What would you say to fans who couldn't attend the DC University press event?
Andersen: Get your hands on the game. Putting your hands on our game is the ultimate way for you to understand what we're doing here. It's really hard to evaluate what the appeal is when you're just watching it on a screen. It's the scope and the scale. It's the open world. It's thousands of people coming together and creating their own hero and villain in this universe. It's just a lot of fun. It's something new and different. It's not your dad's MMO.