Interview: Zipper's Alan Van Slyke on MAG's past, present and future
The folks at Zipper Interactive have been in an unenviable position for the past eighteen months. Ever since the studio's flagship PS3 title MAG was revealed during Sony's E3 2008 press conference, the gaming populace's collective expectation (or, alternatively, apprehension) for the title set an impossibly high bar for the developer to clear.
We first spoke to the game's producer, Alan Van Slyke, during PAX 2009, when he explained a bit of the techno-wizardry which powers the game's internal servers. Yesterday, we got a chance to speak with Van Slyke once more -- this time about the pressures associated with developing a game of this (forgive the pun) magnitude, whether the game's rigorous beta testing paid off, and how one of MAG's three factions has evolved into an unstoppable victory machine.
Joystiq: When did Zipper Interactive decide on making a multiplayer game with 256 players? None of your studio's earlier games are nearly that large in scope - what kind of factors led to that decision?
Alan Van Slyke: Well, I think that specific number actually came more from design than it was just an arbitrary number -- but definitely the early thinking was we want to build something big.
We first spoke to the game's producer, Alan Van Slyke, during PAX 2009, when he explained a bit of the techno-wizardry which powers the game's internal servers. Yesterday, we got a chance to speak with Van Slyke once more -- this time about the pressures associated with developing a game of this (forgive the pun) magnitude, whether the game's rigorous beta testing paid off, and how one of MAG's three factions has evolved into an unstoppable victory machine.
Joystiq: When did Zipper Interactive decide on making a multiplayer game with 256 players? None of your studio's earlier games are nearly that large in scope - what kind of factors led to that decision?
Alan Van Slyke: Well, I think that specific number actually came more from design than it was just an arbitrary number -- but definitely the early thinking was we want to build something big.
