Chapter Twenty seven - The interview (2)

Though it was not needed to be face to face for the interview, Camelot still came in person to the interview site. The interview set was buzzing with last minute details. The VR assembly work was checked. People wanted to feel they were live audience, thus VR feel should be top notch. Camelot even helped few technicians for small hiccups. These became behind the scenes videos, that the company would milk later on. They also included the hosts getting make up done and doing homework seriously too.

As the primary host of the show, Last Song started the game rolling and Shark started to input his words. A small bio about the guest and bang, the interview was on.

"What work exactly did you do in the game?"

Camelot was not worried with this sort of questioning. " Sorry. No comment. Have signed NDA."

"May be you can tell how many teams worked under you?"

" It varied. We were buch of rag tag people. We shifted from one group to other based on what we did best. So sometimes I had 4 to 5 teams under me, sometimes it could go up to 50 or so."

"So how is this game different from others? From creator perspective, I mean." Shark smiled his signature smile, looking forward to the answer.

" Well it took lot of time to make this game mainly because we wanted to do something more exciting, more realistic yet fun. We tried to push the boundaries between real and virtual to the limit. But we still had to retain something back at the same time. This juggling is very hard and this ate up lot of out time."

"Can you give some examples? For those who don't play such sort of games?"

" Sure. From the beginning, we envisioned this game to cater to all types of people including those who have never tried VR games before to the other extreme, the legends of gaming. You might have seen videos. There are some VR content too out there for those who are interested. You experience it. You feel like you are in that place watching it happen personally. We started with removing symbols and names floating on top of NPCs and players. That gives the impression that it is not real at all. So it was the first thing to go when we started planning this game. The perception and synergy had to be calibrated very carefully and we ran multiple researches on these too. If you feel stabbed and crushed multiple times, even with pain sensation dropped to 1%, it will be horrible. Likewise the gory stuff. You have to show that elites or bosses are strong. But when you bleed them, if you get splashed or drenched in monster blood, it would be too much. And each player would kill minimum of what ten to twenty monsters a day? And the skills used would be different too. So we had account for all those things while planning how to show the damge yet show it within the acceptable gory limit. The initial settings would keep gory to minimum, likewise pain too as default setting. The experts and such can change these based on how they feel. I can talk about many such things which might seem tiny and insignificant but add to the realism in the game."

" Talking about realism, what is the deal with the clothes? It's like a faded boring uniform. Do I have to spend many coins to wear beautiful clothes? Isn't it partiality towards rich?"

" The clothing is to blend with native NPCs. The dressing style, the material used all are similar to normal NPCs. They are in village. You can't expect haute couture at such places unless you are ready to spend a lot more than required."

" So it will change later?"

" Of course it will. We even purchased sketches from different houses of fashion. The fabric used with change too, a lot more options will be available then."

" So the same rationale for same dress code for all players?" Last song asked a bit interested.

Camelot had to laugh at that. " All players right now are novices. Even when fighting normal monsters, they have to run fast. Though it's especially true for melee players, the long range players are not exempted. Long flowy gowns will not be a good choice then. And you may think all clothes are of same design but you are wrong. The long range players' clothes are flared or loose fitting but melee players all have tight fitting clothes. So yeah, we take care of such tiny details too. Don't you think it's these details which form a distinction between normal and a master?"

The hosts had to agree. The masterpieces were due to such tiny added details. Talk then progressed to gaming itself.

" Yeah, that was another headache. We wanted players to play however they want, be it as a solo player or a team player. There was no problem in calculating XP awarded for solo players. We got formulas worked out fast. Instead of giving XP after the monster died, we decided to award for the effort too. So each successful hit or damage to the monster would get you some XP. If you kill, obviously XP would be more than before. The problem was the teams. How to calculate XP for team leader, for supports? When to give those XP? We had to consult many people from various interrelated subjects before making a primitive formula or the outline. Then we had to run scenarios as varied as possible to ensure that every player got their XP rightly."

Shark de Silva changed the subject abruptly again. This time they started chatting about hardware, the VR gears.

" You won't believe me but when we started planning, we had thought of only VR pods. The data required to create such realistic virtual experience is too much. The neural response linkage had to be upgraded beyond what's available, even as an experiment. It was nerve racking to bring the hardware to the limit. Yet, our guys didn't stop. After finishing that, they wanted to incorporate the lessons learnt into other VR gear. Still, we can't overcome inherent problems of the gears themselves. But our team has done it's best."

"What steps have to taken to shorten the distance between pod players and others? We understand that other VR gears need a lot of downtime but the pods just need to be topped with nutrient fluid to work for long time. From the your vision we can see you want to retain experts and elites too."

The interview just got more interesting.