Jack Emmert (City of Heroes) - Interviews

Snagging a Q&A with Jack Emmert, Lead Designer on City of Heroes, was a plus/minus for us. We sent the questions off near the end of May -- about the same time City of Heroes was largely acclaimed as "awesome!" and was heaped with praise (with one or two digs for lack of capes). So, we had to wait nearly two months until we received the answers back. Apparently, the team on City of Heroes wasn't swimming in Cryptic Studios' Scrooge McDuck-type money bin -- they were busting their butts to provide lots of free content and pushing City of Heroes toward perfection! (And I can't fault them for that because I've spent so much time playing the game.) We asked Jack about the storylines running through Paragon City, the most complicated aspect of working on an MMORPG, how City of Heroes will maintain its subscriber base, and City of Heroes critical response (and so much more). Thanks for your time, Jack!

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Review: City of Heroes (PC)

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City of Heroes Q&A Conducted by Omni

We’ll start things off easy. What is your name, how did you become involved in City of Heroes, what is your role on the project, and how long have you been in the games industry?

Jack Emmert. I’m the Creative Director of Cryptic Studios and I was the Lead Designer on City of Heroes. I’ve been in the games industry since July 2000.

Although I’ve only really been playing the game a week, my biggest complaint about City of Heroes is sleep deprivation. What has the team identified as the number one complaint of the City of Heroes community?

Honestly – out of combat activities. In a fantasy MMORPG, it’s trade skills. But armor making doesn’t exactly make sense in a super hero MMORPG. So we’re working on something right now that’s unique, but also expands gameplay outside of our already exciting combat.

The engine powering City of Heroes is quite robust, but there is a distinct lack of capes. Will capes be added at a later date or are they just too complicated to execute with any success?

Capes are part of our second free expansion called “A Shadow of the Past.” We wanted to make cool, flowing capes, so we decided to postpone their addition until we could get it just right. The fictional reason within the game is that capes haven’t been donned to honor the great Hero 1, who perished during the Rikti War. The time of mourning is ending, so heroes can once again wear capes!

The team dynamic plays a big role in earning experience points, but the “lone wolf” approach still works. Some like partnering up while others take the solo route. Was it difficult getting the balance right between the two?

Definitely! It’s a challenge to make a game experience challenging for both; groups can obviously hide their weaknesses easier than a solo player can and are thus far more effective than just the sum of their individual parts. Our solution for that was to create areas that are tuned for groups (certain zones, Task Forces, Trials, etc.), but make everyday tasks, such as missions, work for groups AND solo players.

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Who wrote the storylines that run through Paragon City? Was it a collaborative effort?

Rick Dakan penned much of the initial fiction of the City. It’s our talented writing team that’s brought it to life. Sean Fish, Matt Miller, Jane Kalmes and Brian Gilmore have set a new standard, I think, in the quality of quests for MMP’s. Many players view our storylines as much of a rewards as any XP!

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Have you been pleased with the critical response City of Heroes is generating?

Certainly. As a developer, Cryptic hoped that City of Heroes would be a success, but we’re absolutely blown away by the response. We took a number of risks; many said that a MMP such as ours wouldn’t work. But so far so good!

What is the most complicated part of developing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG)?

As a Lead Designer, I can tell you that the hardest part of the job is keeping the details straight. There’s so many things that go into the game – from the stats to the text, from the UI to the animations, from the code to the art - and a designer needs to keep them all pretty much in mind. It’s a constant juggling act.

Developing any game is usually an arduous task, but for an MMORPG there’s the initial development then constant housekeeping. What stage is more time-consuming? Are you still burning the midnight oil at this stage or are you able to do the 9 to 5 thing? Did the team shrink in numbers after the game shipped?

I’m not a fan of all nighters. I did that in my late teens and early twenties; I think my heart would stop beating if I tried it now. I want my employees to have their own lives and enjoy work; it isn’t a point of pride around here if someone works all night. If that happens, I’ve failed as a manager. I haven’t scheduled something right. So we’ve never been big on lashing our employees to work extra long hours. With a few exceptions, we didn’t burn the midnight oil.

The great thing about having a publisher like NCsoft is that they believe strongly in having constant, free expansions. That’s the way NCsoft handles Lineage I & II. So NC Soft has our live team be as large as our development team. That way we can add not just “more of the same” type of content (new villains, new areas, etc.) but also substantial new systems. For instance, our new expansion adds a “badge” system that rewards players for finding certain hidden areas in the city. That’s something a smaller team would not have been able to do.

With so many MMORPGs on the market, how will City of Heroes maintain its subscriber base?

First, we’ve got to respond to the needs of our customers. We’re not just selling a game, we’re selling a service. People pay a monthly fee to see things added to the game on a regular basis. We’ve got to make sure that we’re adding the things that players like. Plus we need to adjust whatever isn’t working so well in the game.

Secondly, we need to stay true to the super hero genre. It’s easy to point to mechanics or systems in other games and say “we need that.” But if we shoehorn in something that just plain doesn’t make any sense, then we’re ruining the immersion factor. And that’s part of the appeal of any RPG (MM or otherwise).

Lastly, we need to keep our eyes on the most important thing in any game: fun. If something isn’t fun, we shouldn’t do it. If someone can’t have fun with something in a short time, then it probably isn’t nearly as fun as we imagined. Sometimes I think designers become obsessed with the process of design and create very intricate systems – but forget that in the end, it’s all about a player sitting in front of a computer and enjoying himself.

When you play the game, have been surprised by the variety of characters that players have created? Or surprised by how they play together?

The biggest surprise is how many first-time MMP players have picked up City of Heroes and really embraced it. I expected long time MMP players to understand the basics and form super groups and figure out tactics together. But even the first time players are role-playing and enjoying themselves as much as the hard core players. That’s been especially rewarding.

Has there been any interest shown by Marvel or DC (or others) to include trademarked characters? Would the team even be receptive to this? It just seems that part of the allure is being able to create your own unique character.

NO ANSWER PROVIDED

There’s a comic book series based on City of Heroes. What other spin-off merchandise is possible? Action figures?

We’ve already announced a terrific promotion with the hit Heroclix game – Statesman is being made into a Limited Edition figure. Cryptic and NCsoft are both investigating many avenues such as this. The bottom line is that we’re looking at anything that seems “fun” to us. We’re all geeks at heart here and we’re constantly thinking of “wouldn’t it be cool if….”

Does the development team have the power and flexibility to instigate catastrophic events in the game? Like a meteor hitting Atlas Park and releasing an alien horde? Or would that upset the storylines already in place?

We closed our Beta with a second Rikti Invasion – which the players turned back humanity’s dreaded foes. That, however, was just the beginning. Many more such events are planned in the near and far future.

What initial ideas, that might have looked so good on paper, were cut from City of Heroes?

Initially, our character creation was rather free form, similar to Ultima Online and Asheron’s Call. Any player could choose any power – after all, isn’t that the way superheroes are created in the pages of a comic book? Unfortunately, alpha testing revealed the flaws of the system – a player could easily choose a combination of powers that effectively made the character useless or a player could min/max a create an “uber” character. We tried coming up with a variety of ways to balance this problem and ultimately we turned to the Archetype system. And, given the game’s success, I think we made the right decision.

(August 2, 2004)