Forgotten Interview Revisits Fond Chris Roberts Memories (November 24, 2020)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator



Paul Dean has posted a "lost" interview that he conducted with Chris Roberts back in 2013. It's a fantastic and in-depth conversation about Mr. Roberts' history getting into games, his thoughts on early Wing Commander development and what he's doing now (then). The piece was originally intended to be part of a larger profile, which ended up not working out. But the interview is still great, so I'm glad it was posted! You can find it in full here.

CR: I remember when we did the mission packs for Wing Commander. It all came out of the fact that when I made the game, I had all these assets created and I didn’t have enough disc space for some of the ships so I basically had to shelve them. They were sitting around and Wing Commander was doing so well. It was going to take a while to do the next one. Everyone’s like, “Well, what can we do in the meantime? Everyone loves this.”

I said, "I used to play D&D, they had this little campaign modules that you would get. Why don’t we do something like that?"

Everyone was like, "Ooh, I don’t know if that would work!"

We would have to put a disc in a game and in a box and get it to retail and we couldn’t charge full price for a game. I’m like, "Well we could maybe add $20, the cost of one of those D&D modules. Let’s try that out".

We had this big debate. The marketing and sales guys weren’t sure whether the retail guys would want it. We said, "Ah, what the hell, we’ll give it a try" and we thought we’d sell 10,000 copies which wouldn’t be bad back in those days. We sold, I think, about half a million copies of the first couple of mission discs on Wing Commander. It’s amazing for back then, because just selling 100,000 units of anything was a huge deal.

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Original update published on November 24, 2020
 
Before DLCs became commonplace... only additional content in those days was actually worth the while!

(I think it's great when new content is added that expands upon the original release, as the Secret Missions and Special Operations did. But I hate it when the base game is not complete in and of itself because of the reliance/expectation/enforcement of the remaining content being walled away in paid DLC additions.)
 
Finally read the full interview. Some things discussed were things I remember reading elsewhere already, but there's plenty of new things too.

Assembly programming is very pain-staking, impressive that he got into it.

I definitely remember tape for storage in the 1980s.

I liked the sense of collaboration in pre-EA days. And being able to 'own' the games you developed. While no doubt it's a team effort, it makes sense to me that Mr Garriott was responsible for Ultima and Mr Roberts was responsible for WC. Helping each other out during 'crunch times' sounds really nice too.

Learning film-making on the job. Much how I like to learn things too - on the job, rather than through specific education, although that is also important in laying foundations and such.

The immersion aspect is familiar but that's part of what I loved in WC as well.

On Hollywood's interest in game FMV, I remember both Mr Hamill and Mr McDowell really espousing the good parts of working in a game as actors. Then the industry moved to animating things in-game instead and only requiring voice actors (no less a job than 'normal' acting).

Being a well-rounded person interested in more than just games - I'd agree, but I still feel like a lot of 'mainstream' folks would consider game culture such a niche thing, not hold it as an art form next to theatre, or books, or radio, or film.

On Star Citizen being partly player-driven, as opposed to tightly-controlled, scripted narrative: The impression I get of on-line games is that there's never an end to the story - it never really ends because if it did, that's the end of the game (and thus the end of your income). From a story perspective there needs to be a well-structured arc, with a satisfying crescendo and resolution. Story is what drew me personally into WC, so I'd prefer a single-player experience over a multi-player one, in terms of story presentation.
 
Great interview! I was left wondering if a fan project could create a new mission pack, maybe Special Operations 3?
 
One slight correction to the timeline is that The Secret Missions was actually intended as the era's equivalent of day 0 DLC -- the decision to make it came during Wing Commander's development and the idea was that the missions would be ready to ship with direct sale 'Special Edition' copies of the game. It ended up being delayed and those that purchased the Special Edition got it delivered two months later in a cardboard envelope (one of the rarest Wing Commander packages today!).
 
They show up from time to time but are typically missing pieces. I hadn't ever even seen the Secret Missions mailer until about a year ago! And don't get me started on the hat... (they're also frequently accidentally faked... since the only difference on the box was Chris' signature in the corner and he's continued to sign WC1s over the years in the same place!)

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