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Rob Bartel Interview Part 2 at Jeux Online

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Dec 16, 2005.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Jeux Online's part called Les Nuits de Padhiver (French for Neverwinter Nights) has interviewed BioWare's Rob Bartel again. Here's a snip:

    JeuxOnline : While many companies would have simply developed a sequel or third expansion to a successful title like NWN, BioWare decided to develop a whole new economic model and expand NWN via the Digital Distribution project and their new online store. What is Digital Distribution and why did you set it up? As Lead Designer, what role did you play in its development? And what implication does your online store have for BioWare’s licensing and publishing partners, WotC and Atari ?

    Rob Bartel : From the beginning, the core development team and I had designed NWN to support a very specific post-release development model. That model consisted of multiple small, independent modules relying on a steadily-advancing centralized code base. Based on our experiences with the Baldur’s Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, we felt that a traditional expansion-based model would take too much development time and would focus energies away from ongoing support of the core code base. What’s more, multiple expansions would result in multiple patch streams that would divide the community and proliferate exponentially with each mutually exclusive expansion released. In short, traditional expansion packs would cause all manner of headaches that we felt were not in the best interests of the community.

    With the last-minute shift towards a more Baldur’s Gate-oriented design for NWN, however, the decision to pursue the familiar expansion pack model was nevertheless made. While the Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark expansions were of great benefit to NWN in many ways, those same benefits could have been achieved much more gracefully had they been handled as originally proposed. Meanwhile, the Live Team was gutted of staff (including myself) and the development of the online store was delayed for over a year.

    The Digital Distribution project, then, actually represents a return to the development teams original vision for NWN, where multiple premium modules could be sustainably supported by centralized, incremental patches. While the idea has certainly evolved in the years since NWN’s release, the core idea remains the same. Thankfully, it’s been working very well both for us and for the community. The Live Team is actually expanding quite rapidly now and, based on the new art and features getting added to the engine every day, I would say that this is one of the most exciting times to be involved in the NWN community.

    As for Wizards of the Coast and Atari, they’ve been very supportive of the Digital Distribution project and have been working with us to ensure its success. Contrary to trendy conspiracy theories and popular belief, it’s actually in everyone’s interest for us to work together on such an innovative project.


    Read the whole thing at Jeux Online. In French, if you like.
     
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