08/18/05 >> Genesis

Genre: First-person RPG

Developer: Gridwerx

Publisher: None yet

Official site

We all know who the big name developers are and what games they are working on. But what about the small indie developers who are working on their first title? Today we speak with Peter Jarrett, Managing Director of Gridwerx, a small indie studio based in Australia. Their first title, Genesis, is a "neo-cyberpunk" first-person shooter with role-playing elements. Read our interview to learn more about Genesis and what it plans to offer.

Please introduce yourself and your game.

Gridwerx is an independent games development company established in Brisbane, Queensland, in July 2003. Gridwerx has formed a tight-knit, talented and aggressive team of dedicated enthusiasts to collaborate on the development and commercialization of Gridwerx Genesis (Working Title), a first person action sci-fi RPG thriller. This project, currently in prototyping phase, represents the company's initial foray into the development of games which appeal to science fiction and cyberpunk enthusiasts, with a series of related projects planned for coming years.

Our Vision:

We combine our talented team with clever concepts and proven technology to create thought-provoking, innovative entertainment of tomorrow.

Our Mission:

To create a profitable game development company based in Brisbane - a tight knit, talented and aggressive development team which efficiently builds future-focused, original games and gamer toolkits; this will capture the imagination of the publishing and gaming community. Gridwerx Genesis (Working Title), a first person action sci-fi RPG thriller which immerses the player in a turbulent, overcrowded and dark London of 2097, where you are both hunter and hunted, chasing the traces of someone who has stolen your virtual identity and marked you for death.

Set amongst warring Megacorporations and equipped with cybernetic and genetic enhancements, your cyberpunk character will use their contacts and intel, weapons, gadgets and gear to hack, bribe, steal, fight, deal and double-cross your way through a complex and chaotic future. Your actions directly influence the reactions of the factions you ally with or oppose as you navigate through this dangerous future.

Our goal is to have a working prototype for the Australian Game Developers

Conference in Melbourne in December this year, and perhaps to head to E3 and IGF next year in the US.

Why did you choose the cyberpunk genre for your story?

Well, to be fair, we are revamping the genre so "neo-cyberpunk" might be more appropriate. We felt that the genre was ripe for renewal with new authors like Richard Morgan coming out, and cool films like The Matrix and Minority Report. We also felt that the "everything old is new again" where 80's concepts come back into fashion would continue this trend. We thought that this genre was due for a refresh - for example - why "plug in" or "jack in" when these days everything is going wireless? That then represented some interesting gameplay. Finally, with current trends in technology and world events, we thought that this would be a great vehicle to present the challenges of the times.

Sometimes when games try to encompass several play styles (FPS, action/adventure, RPG), the game fails to do any one of them well, resulting in mediocre play. What steps are you taking to ensure this does not happen to Genesis? Were there specific games you looked at as examples? (Good or bad)

Fair point. We initially started pen & paper prototyping of the game to determine gaps in gameplay and found out rapidly some key flaws – for example, we had skimped on the "break a barrel, get a prize" approach of RPGs for the sake of realism. Unfortunately, without this approach as an incremental improvement to the character, it left the player to either (a) talk to someone or (b) shoot them as they hadn't acquired any skills or gear to do anything else. We've addressed this and other gameplay design issues through community feedback, and iterative development with regular playtesting. Ultimately, we have settled on four modes of play which can be used to solve each challenge in front of you to accommodate different playing styles. However, like any iterative development, it's an evolving beast. Good examples to compare us to is something like a cross between NeverWinter Nights and Deus Ex. On the bad side, we are trying to avoid the Fable-esque approach where the town is full of dull, uninteresting plebs who are just timewasters. We also want to incorporate some deep story interactivity harking back to the old - point and click adventure games. It will be interesting to see if we can get the balance off and pull it off!

Will the player control only one character or multiple ones?

Only one character; although in the longer term we do have a vision to extend the prototype to multiplayer. However, we have left the player's character somewhat of a blank canvas (which did our writer's head in) to allow the player to mould their character over time the way they see fit.

From the website you have concepts of Gangs, Suits, Guards, and more. Tell us a bit about each one and how they are involved.

Well, we did a bunch of research on cyberpunk character types over time. Initially we had 12 "roles" the players and NPCs could play, but for the sake of gameplay and expediency for the prototype, we cut it down to four main modes of gameplay for the player. The rest of the characters in the game belong to one of seven factions which are archetypes for different dimensions of this dystopic future. You can see a profile of these 7 factions on our web site along with a teaser intro story and a political

timeline. These are the characters which the player will align themselves too or compete against to achieve their goals. We've added some real variety in there as opposed to your standard suits v punks, which neo-Hippie types, and other competing interests to create a truly interesting universe for future conflict and "guild-esque" clans for future multiplay.

Your storyline sample describes a world familiar to fans of cyberpunk. Did any authors (William Gibson), films (Blade Runner) or games (Deus Ex) serve as an inspiration?

We spent months researching "what is cyberpunk?" - Clearly Gibson, Blade Runner, Deus Ex, ShadowRun, GURPS Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk 2020, Neal Stephenson, and Ghost in the Shell all had an influence, but only as a basis to understand our target audience. From there, we threw out everything old to start anew with our own unique approach and style. This is a risk because some "old school" cyberpunk fans may disagree with the direction we are taking, but we hope that they will appreciate the new face to an old genre.

What kinds of RPG elements will be in the game?

All the usual suspects - skills, experience and leveling up, inventory, trading, so on and so forth. One unique aspect however is that we are not creating locked in classes like the old "fighter, magic user, thief" - instead we have a blank character that can increase and swap their role based on the scenario. This is essential as it allows the challenges to be solved in different ways. Over time however, a player will become more skilled in their primary path. A good analogy to this is if I have trained in construction my whole life then decide to try brain surgery, nothing's stopping me, but I may not be very good at it (at least initially!).

Give us an example of how negotiating, hacking, and bribing will be handled in Genesis.

Ah, that's our special sauce! Let's just say we are trying to ensure that these elements of gameplay are strong enough to offset the "shooter" aspect and that we hope that we bring some interesting approaches to this.

How has it been working with the Torque Engine?

Well, as our fresh team really only formed in January 05 and started with the Torque engine, it's been a steep learning curve. Some of the other guys had worked with Direct X, Open GL or OGRE before, but we spent the first few months testing the ability for it to cope with the AI and RPG aspects we are baking in. So far, it has proved a reasonable engine to prototype in. We have incorporated the Synapse lighting engine to include dynamic lighting, and we are contemplating down the track incorporating the ODE physics engine, but for now we are focusing on gameplay. Our audio lead has taken a good long look at the audio code and has several things he intends to improve upon in the months ahead. The community is great to have - and, as an out of the box starting point, we are very happy. Certainly it is better than building our own engine from scratch!

When gamers hear "Torque Engine" some may think "budget engine." What kind of features does the engine have? How does it compete with other 'mainstream' engines?

Well, it is at the lower cost end of the spectrum, certainly, but it is great as an entry point to the formal coding environment (as opposed to simply modding a game). We evaluated over 30 engines before settling on Torque. Sure, if we had a bigger budget, there are more advanced and modern engines out there, but we felt for the purposes of prototyping we wanted to focus on gameplay over eye-candy (even though we are trying to squeeze every bit out of the engine), and Torque fitted the bill. Further, their licensing and pricing model makes it quite accessible to create an Indie game on. On the smaller end of town, we compared it against the likes of Auran Jet, AMPII, OGRE, and 3D Game Studio, but we felt it was the best fit for what we are trying to achieve.

When can gamers expect to see more of Genesis?

As mentioned prior, we have a 55Mb teaser which we will try to compress and make available on the site as a work in progress soon. Beyond that, our next solid target it the working prototype for AGDC in December this year.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Yes. Rather than just building a game, we are trying to build an Indie Games Development company from the ground up. It has been a challenging and interesting rollercoaster, but I think we have a unique and talented team working on a great concept. Like any Indie artist/company, we live and die by the support of our fan base. We encourage the gaming community to get behind one of the little guys (i.e. us) to build a game that isn't just another run of the mill FPS, but something truly unique and fascinating. Jump on our site, shoot us your words of encouragement and support and your feedback, and we will evolve this game together into something truly awesome!

Interview by Alex Hammond