Morning Q&As - Blue's News Comments

Morning Q&As
[Apr 18, 2005, 10:08 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments

Pariah
There's a Pariah interview on Gamebiz as a Windows Media Player video. Likewise, the Pariah Q&A on Gaming Nexus talks with James Schmalz of Digital Extremes about their upcoming first-person shooter: "It was quite a challenge to come up with the weapon system for Pariah. We knew we wanted something new and different from what we've seen and done in the past so we did a lot of prototyping to see what would work and what was fun. The biggest obstacle after coming up with the system was balancing the weapons and the upgrades so that there aren't any obvious advantages from one to the next. Balancing weapons in an FPS is really key to making sure the game remains fun for everyone especially when you're playing multi-player."
LEGO Star Wars
The LEGO Star Wars Q&A on Computer Games Magazine talks with Giant's Jonathan Smith about their just-released game of building block Star Wars: "We set out from the start to create a game that *anyone* could play and enjoy. Obviously, that meant that we wanted to have fun with it ourselves – we’ve been playing LEGO Star Wars pretty solidly for two years now, and that would have been fairly depressing if the game didn’t have so much for us to enjoy, as experienced gamers. But we did also want to make something that we could take home with us, and play with our children; so, yes, the idea of being “kid friendly” was essential to what we were trying to do."
StormFront Studios
The Stormfront Studios Q&A on GameBanshee talks with Don Daglow, CEO of this developer once known for their gold box D&D games: "Ironically, my history with D&D even pre-dates Stormfront. In 1976 I wrote the first mainframe RPG, 'Dungeon' on a PDP-10 at Claremont Graduate University. The original D&D RPG had just begun, and my friends and I were part of the early fanatical fan base that flocked to RPG gaming. (Don’t ask how fanatical we were… but if it had been any worse the President would have named a Czar and a Commission to help cure our addiction.) I’d been designing mainframe games for five years, so it was natural to bring the game to the computer. When the industry began I joined the Intellivision team at Mattel and later became Director of Intellivision game development. We did the first D&D video games in 1982-83, 'Advanced Dungeons and Dragons' and 'AD&D Treasures of Tarmin.' And, although it did not bear the D&D license, I also produced 'Adventure Construction Set' in 1985 with adventure game pioneer Stuart Smith at Electronic Arts."
Music
The Psychonauts Q&A on Music 4 Games talks with composer Peter McConnell about his work on various games, most recently Double-Fine's Psychonauts.