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Role Playing (Games)

Steve Jackson Interview 28

Posted by Zonk from the ken-hite-is-my-grandpa dept.
heartless_ writes "Gamergod.com has an interview with Steve Jackson, the man behind the table-top company of the same name. SJ Games publishes, among other things, GURPS, Munchkin, Frag, Chez Geek, and Pyramid Magazine. The interview goes into Steve's opinions on the MMOG market, as well as possible involvement in the MMORPG market with his company." From the article: "GG: Does the idea of a 3D MMORPG strike you as a project you want to be a part of, and if so, in what capacity do you see yourself? SJ: (a) Heck, yes. (b)Top-end design and community work / play-test, until I learn the tools to get involved with level design. GG: Given that your claim to fame has been open ended systems, what genre of MMORPG would you most likely use to break into the industry? SJ: To nobody's surprise, I'd like it to be as open-ended as the theme allows. I think that will help get, and REALLY help keep, players."
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Steve Jackson Interview More

Steve Jackson Interview

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  • To answer the obvious question ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:05PM (#14414408) Homepage
    Steve Jackson has been designing brilliant games since before most of you were born.
    The first wargame I bought, back in 1979, was Metagaming's 'Ogre', designed by Jackson. it's an amazing game, moreso for the price of $2.95 back then.
    He designed Ogre and it's add-ons and sequels, 'Melee' and it's successor, 'GURPs', 'Car Wars', and a number of other great table-top games.
    When he started Steve Jackson Games in the early '80s and started publishing "The Space Gamer" magazine, he introduced many to the concepts of game design. The Space Gamer published an early article by Lord British, describing how 3-D graphics could be created on Apple II hardware.
    Steve Jackson probably understands playability and balance like few others, and any MMORPG that he would be involved with would be of serious interest.
    • Steve Jackson has been designing brilliant games since before most of you were born.

      Not only that, but it seems that all games his company publishes are most definitely quality experiences (he doesn't design them all, though...right?). Note that I am not much of a "hardcore" tabletop nor MMO player, yet seeing "Steve Jackson" + "MMO" was an instant OMGWTFAWESOME moment.

    • I bought the boxed set of Ogre used at a game store and made my friends play. My friends until then thought gaming was what you do on a computer, not having the pen and paper experiences I had. I later moved on to FRAG which further sunk the hooks in. Steve Jackson is a brilliant game designer and I hope he brings his skills well to the MMO world.

  • Did the Secret Service (Score:3, Funny)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:29PM (#14414500)
    Ever give those computers back that they took?

  • Car Wars/Autoduel (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Daredevil ( 109528 ) on Friday January 06, 2006 @10:50PM (#14414601)
    Car Wars was such a great tabletop game. It's always dissapointed me that its transition into computer games died so early. By all rights it should have been a massive series of hit games.

    Autoduel was released by Origin Systems way back in the Apple II days, and despite a bunch of bugs, was great fun. That was the only computer game that really carried the feeling of the Car Wars universe. Deadly highways where you could fight with deadly armaments or run using evasive munitions (oil, mines, spikes, etc..). Arena combat where you could get your tires shot out and your car totally disabled and you could still jump out and try to run for the exit on foot.

    The whole courier, bounty, pirate system in Autoduel is the same theme that makes Elite/Privateer and other space games so great.

    I really think Autoduel could have been what GTA is today if they had kept releasing games with that same open ended formula that Autoduel helped pioneer.

    I wonder if Auto Assault will come close, and I wonder if SJ will be kicking himself as hard as I'd like to kick him if it does do well.
    • Auto Assault has some of the flavor, at least in the combat system, but it's not Car Wars. To its credit, Auto Assault addresses terrain that would never be conceivable in the table-top context. It's a great game, and similar in genre, but it's not Car Wars.

    • Re:Car Wars/Autoduel (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ratbert42 ( 452340 )
      Interstate 76 was practically a 3D version of Autoduel, just without arenas and the AADA.
    • The reason why you haven't seen more Car Wars computer games, or any SJ computer games, is Steve Jackson himself. I respect Steve but he is notoriously difficult to work with.

      This may have something to do with how the table top game business works. The two fields are similar in concept but I think their business models are very different. Steve is trying to work with the Big Names (like EA) on his terms and they don't feel like he brings enough to the table.

      Again, this is my understanding of it from the

  • Someone who has an original idea. Open-ended. Amazing. I hope it is successful, but not huge. Because then all they will be able to see is money, and quality will suffer huge.

  • As a fan of SJ games... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MagicDude ( 727944 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @02:17AM (#14415403)
    As a fan of Steve Jackson Games, I can say that they need to do more advertising. I didn't even learn about Chez Geek until 2003. It was some random friday night, and having viewed one of my friend's IM profile, I saw he had added a link to dorktower.com [dorktower.com] so I was reading the comics. As I was doing so, one of my drunk fraternity mates stumbled by my room drunk and saw what I was reading and exclaimed "Hey, those are the Chez Geek guys!!" and I was like "Chez what now?" and he told me about this awesome card game. Now I'm the other of Chez Geek and 4 different expansion packs, as well as several other different SJ games. Apeaking as a member of SJ games target audience (AKA, ubernerds who've never had a date that didn't grow on a tree), they need to expand their advertising a bit more to reach us.
  • Argh, I'm aging myself here but I *loved* Steve Jackson's "Fighting Fantasy" gamebooks. They combined a "choose your own adventure" novel with a simple d6 combat system, which let you play through an original story while avoiding traps and fighting monsters. I viewed them as a portable single-player D&D game, and tried every darned one I could get my hands on. The best (and most popular) was the "Sorcery!" series, which let you choose the path of a fighter or mage in a journey across an epic 4 huge book

    • OMG...the Sorcery series was the first RPG I ever played. It was different from the "Twist-a-Plot" books (aka choose your own adventure) that you actually had a character sheet. I still have the Sorcery books. I can see them on my bookshelf from here.

      I would love to see SJ bring his talent to the MMO world. Just as long as he leaves a few of his MIB cohorts behind :) jk guys...don't kill me! ;)
    • Different Steve Jackson. There are two in the hobbyist game industry: one in Texas, and one in England. The English SJ did the Fighting Fantasy books (plus was involved in Games Workshop there at the very beginning, IIRC).

  • There's someone to whom I'd like to introduce you (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Saturday January 07, 2006 @07:09AM (#14416078)
    I'd like it to be as open-ended as the theme allows. I think that will help get, and REALLY help keep, players.

    Steve Jackson, meet Raph Koster. Raph, Steve.

    I'll leave you two alone to get acquainted. I'm sure you'll have a lot to talk about.
  • I think it is the only card based nerd D&D-esque game that I've repeatedly gotten anyone to play, learn, and love. That includes several girls, jocks, and typical gamers. I'm always astounded by how well someone can pick it up and learn to do insanely Munchkin (read: playfully mean) things. It's very open-ended - people do new things in every game I play, I swear. From learning to use curses both beneficially to exploiting cards in new ways, it's amazingly fun.
  • What an incredibly empty interview.
    Don't talk to him at all in depth about what he wants with an MMOG; don't talk to him about how he would want to bridge the gap from 'puzzle games' (as he referred to current MMOGs) to real role-playing games. Don't talk about his history with RPGs and games in general. Don't talk to him about the current state of the RPG market and why it's dying...

    What a missed opportunity. SJ knows better than most the difficulty of adapting a single system (GURPS) to a multitude of p

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