Feargus Urquhart Interview
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On one hand, obviously, a lot of lessons from RPGs are spreading out. Do you see hard core RPGs as a lot more mainstream as they used to be? Do you think, to a certain extent, it is and always will be more of a niche than some other game genres?
FU: That's a tough call. It's sure your choice in what kind of game you want to make. As a game maker, do you want to go make something that five to 10 million people are going to buy, or are you okay with two to five million people buying it? I think that one of the things is that if you get to where you want to sell five to 10 million units of every game, you have to start making a lot of decisions... In essence, you're trying to make a game that's going to appeal to everybody, right?
So, it's sort of like the difference between... I'll use stupid examples, but there's Ivory Soap. "This is for everybody. It's not special. It's not anything, but it's soap, and it's cheap and for everybody." And then you have something like Dove, which is much more expensive and it smells funny, but it's made for a particular kind of person. I think what happens, though, and maybe the analogy is that Ivory is very generic, Dove is not.
And so, I think a lot of thing is that -- and not that you can say Gears of War, Call of Duty, or any of those things are generic. They're great games and a great experience, but they've been funneled down a line of "How do we sell as many units as possible?", you know what I mean?
And which is the right line? I mean, this is a business. If you're going to spend 30, 40 million dollars on a game, well then you gotta get that many people to buy it. It just makes sense. There's no reason to make a movie, a very niche-y indie movie, and spend a hundred million dollars on it. You can still make money.
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If you look at the sort of pretty mainstream success of Fallout 3, do you think that they found a way to make a hardcore RPG much more mainstream than has been done in the past? Or when you look at how Fallout 3 is suceeding compared to what you've done on Fallout 2 or other RPGs that you've done...
FU: I think Bethesda did two things, and I'll start with that sort of thing. Any great game, it's beyond how exactly you play it. It's how you play it, and a specific "Are there numbers? and "Are there not numbers?" and all that kind of stuff. It's more of a feeling.
What really was great about the original Fallout, Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, was the feeling of being in this world. And that was attractive. Well, attractive is maybe the wrong word. It was compelling. (laughs) That's a better word.
I think what Bethesda did an incredible job at is making you feel like you are in this Fallout world. And that's what we did back at Black Isle, to make you really feel like you were in this Fallout world. The whole thing -- from the loading screens to the main menu to the Pip-Boy to all that kind of stuff -- it really felt like it was a whole cohesive unit of feeling like you're in this world. And they did that.
When you do that, it is instantly more compelling to any kind of gamer. As long as they feel like they're not being hindered by something or that something is annoying in the game, then they're probably going to enjoy it. And I guess part of that is also taking it, obviously, from a turn-based PC game to using the Oblivion engine and learning how to use their Oblivion engine and make it Fallout. And that's not to say that it's just Oblivion: Fallout.
I think the second thing that Bethesda did an incredible job at -- and this is what they do really well -- is they are just behind their games. I think a lot of the success of Fallout 3 in particular -- because there are people probably at Bethesda that Fallout 3 is not the kind of game that they play -- but they jumped in with both feet, like, "This is the game. We believe in this game." And I think that is why you see a success, too. It's almost catching.
In other words, you have a publisher who's like, "Well, we have these seven games. What do you think?" Bethesda is, "No, you're buying this damn game." So, I think that the success was from both ways. They were able to get the feeling of Fallout, and they really believed in their game. And that belief in the game came through in how they were talking to everybody and pimping it and all that kind of stuff.
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Are you guys working on the Aliens RPG at all?
FU: (laughs) No comment. And it's for the reason of, obviously, Sega announced that we were doing their game. It's their game. We have confidential agreements with them, and so really -- whatever might be or might not be going on with that game -- they're the ones that would have to say something...
