A new interview with Trent Oster
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,724
It doesn't happen often but I have to admit it doesn't happen seldom - it's good that a new interview with the Devs usually is out every several months. The more, the better. It's always a chance to better understand the Devs as the specialists and humans overall. So...
"We plan to make more games. While we’ve had a great run with historic titles, we have a strong desire to step out on our own and develop new stories and new games. We currently have three projects active in the studio and we’re very excited to release them to the world. Some projects are going to take us a while while others, will launch earlier, but we’ve learned our lesson and we’ll launch our games when we know they are the quality our fans deserve."
"When not making video games I love racing sports cars. I have a 1988 (or so) Mazda RX-7 Turbo which has progressed to the point it is mostly custom fabricated parts and not much stock Mazda remaining. The car stinks, rides horribly and routinely scares the heck out of me and I love it."
"I found it impossible to succeed in Bioware leading new IP development after the EA acquisition. The constant threat of project cancellation simply destroyed team morale, leading to a number of experienced team members leaving the studio and the eventual cancellation of the project. Remembering the early days of Bioware, I made one last hard push for the project and ultimately failed, so I left the studio to pursue something new. I called up Cameron (my partner in Beamdog) who I had previously worked with at Bioware years before and told him “it is time”.
"We have a great community on the Baldur’s Gate forums at www.Forum.Baldursgate.com and we listen to their needs and work hard to make them happy."
"We knew Icewind Dale was going to be good. All our previous efforts were shipped under a publishing partner and under a lot of timeline pressure. Icewind Dale was our first effort with just Wizards of the Coast as a partner. We pushed back the project a few times during development to ensure it would be high quality when we shipped and when we were certain of the quality of the game, we made the announcement. We were also working from a much more stable and well tested codebase on Icewind Dale, so the bugs were mostly content related. The Icewind Dale team was mostly made up of former modders who we had recruited over the last few years and they formed a highly functional team, developing, implementing and testing the game as it went from concept to completion. With the combination of great talent, hard work and the patience to ensure a great game we knew Icewind Dale was going to be a great release."
"We made an error when we first shipped Baldur’s Gate II on the other platforms. We shipped it early and it had a number of bugs, which we recognize as an error on our part. We made the fundamental mistake of caving to external pressure and shipped the game before we were happy with the quality. We’ve since addressed those issues with the 1.3 Update and we’ve delivered what we think is the definitive Baldur’s Gate II experience."
The whole interview is here: http://gamesreviewer.net/interviews/trent-oster-beamdog/
"We plan to make more games. While we’ve had a great run with historic titles, we have a strong desire to step out on our own and develop new stories and new games. We currently have three projects active in the studio and we’re very excited to release them to the world. Some projects are going to take us a while while others, will launch earlier, but we’ve learned our lesson and we’ll launch our games when we know they are the quality our fans deserve."
"When not making video games I love racing sports cars. I have a 1988 (or so) Mazda RX-7 Turbo which has progressed to the point it is mostly custom fabricated parts and not much stock Mazda remaining. The car stinks, rides horribly and routinely scares the heck out of me and I love it."
"I found it impossible to succeed in Bioware leading new IP development after the EA acquisition. The constant threat of project cancellation simply destroyed team morale, leading to a number of experienced team members leaving the studio and the eventual cancellation of the project. Remembering the early days of Bioware, I made one last hard push for the project and ultimately failed, so I left the studio to pursue something new. I called up Cameron (my partner in Beamdog) who I had previously worked with at Bioware years before and told him “it is time”.
"We have a great community on the Baldur’s Gate forums at www.Forum.Baldursgate.com and we listen to their needs and work hard to make them happy."
"We knew Icewind Dale was going to be good. All our previous efforts were shipped under a publishing partner and under a lot of timeline pressure. Icewind Dale was our first effort with just Wizards of the Coast as a partner. We pushed back the project a few times during development to ensure it would be high quality when we shipped and when we were certain of the quality of the game, we made the announcement. We were also working from a much more stable and well tested codebase on Icewind Dale, so the bugs were mostly content related. The Icewind Dale team was mostly made up of former modders who we had recruited over the last few years and they formed a highly functional team, developing, implementing and testing the game as it went from concept to completion. With the combination of great talent, hard work and the patience to ensure a great game we knew Icewind Dale was going to be a great release."
"We made an error when we first shipped Baldur’s Gate II on the other platforms. We shipped it early and it had a number of bugs, which we recognize as an error on our part. We made the fundamental mistake of caving to external pressure and shipped the game before we were happy with the quality. We’ve since addressed those issues with the 1.3 Update and we’ve delivered what we think is the definitive Baldur’s Gate II experience."
The whole interview is here: http://gamesreviewer.net/interviews/trent-oster-beamdog/
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Comments
No new announcements or anything. Just figured people might be interested in reading it.
Keep up the good work.
In this interview Trent mentions they have three current active projects. So one's Adventure Y; the second's Beartrap; anyone know what the third project is? Thanks.
More info midyear, hopefully!