Black Prophecy: Behind the Scenes - Issue #1

[Snowcrash]

Black Prophecy: Behind the scenes with CEO Kirk Lenke and Development Director Simon Bachmann
During a quiet minute, I’ve snatched Kirk and Simon away to get answers to some of your questions and let them talk a bit about themselves and their work at Reakktor Media.

Enjoy the read!

Chris: Thanks for taking the time to participate in this issue. Before we start I would like to ask you to introduce yourselves, for those who don’t know you yet.

Kirk: Hi folks! My name is Kirk Lenke, I am 37 years young. As most of you already know, I am the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and I have been sitting at the helm of Reakktor Media for almost one and a half years now. After my apprenticeship as a health insurance agent, I also studied for the bar. I have two wonderful children and of course a lovely woman with whom I have been living together in a solid relationship for quite a while now.

In my leisure time I like to play tennis and soccer, meet my friends to watch movies or cook for them (Haute Cuisine), listen to music or make my own on my guitar and I am doing my best to grow up.

Simon: Hey ho folks! I am Simon Bachmann and I’ve just reached my 30th birthday. I have been with Reakktor for 9 years now and have contributed to all the games that Reakktor has released since 2000. Currently I am responsible for the whole development team which means that I coordinate all game development in the company, with the current focus being on Black Prophecy. This includes the planning and coordination of both project and team.

In my leisure time I like to read, play one or two games, watch movies or go out to paint the town red with my buddies. Science fiction in whatever form (books, games, TV series like BSG or Stargate), has been fascinating me for quite a while now. As an antidote to the daily “sitting at the PC all day long” I like to take trips to the countryside with my bicycle or on foot or do some mountain climbing if my time schedule allows it.

Chris: The Black Prophecy community has had a marvellous start and is growing and prospering. New community members from all over the world are joining daily. How do you feel when you see that your and the team's work has received such a great reception and that people are excitedly looking forward to the release of Black Prophecy?

Kirk: I am very happy that Black Prophecy is being received that well. It speaks for our team which does an incredible job. At the same time it's a huge motivation to do our best to meet the expectations that our community and fans have of us.

Simon: I second that. A problem which most of the developers have after working on the same project for a long duration is the difficulty in making an objective assessment of your work. To see such positive feedback shows us that we are on the right track. The release of the gameplay trailer was an especially important first test, and that's a tremendous motivation for us to make the game even better.

Chris: We are currently in negotiations with potential publishers who have expressed their interest in Black Prophecy. Some community members are asking themselves why we need a publisher at all; in their opinion a publisher only serves the game financially during the development phase. Theoretically it would only be necessary to find an appropriate host for the servers and a suitable payment model, set up the account management and go.

Kirk: That’s correct, of course. We could do it this way and it still remains as an option. The development of Black Prophecy is fund based and although our original publisher no longer exists it was always planned to release Black Prophecy in cooperation with a publisher. Besides that, a publisher offers access to different markets and territories as well as market studies and other related marketing assets.

Simon: We are a relatively small team and we run into resourcing constraints quite quickly when it comes to things like marketing. A publisher simply affords us greater opportunities and it is of high interest for us to reach as many people as possible with Black Prophecy.

Chris: Lots of players would like to see the possibility to walk around space stations with their characters but as we have previously explained this feature will not be included in the final release of Black Prophecy. Could you explain to our community what the technical requirements and possible difficulties would be to realize this feature?

Kirk: The difficulties are not only of a technical nature but also a matter of budget which does not allow us to implement everything that is technically possible at the current time. I have hopes that we will be able to realize this and other features in one of the planned add-ons after release.

Simon: Like Kirk already explained, it is less of a technical problem and more of a budget/time problem. We have, like most projects in the game industry, a pre-defined budget. When we developed the game design we had to consider what we would be able to implement within the given general framework and in the end we decided to do one thing properly and focus on the combat aspect with space ships. From a graphical point of view especially, station walking would have been a tremendously large effort and if we had taken on both features at the same time it would have been necessary to split up the available resources. Other parts of the game would then have suffered as a result.

Nonetheless the station walking feature is something we all would like to see in the game and in an add-on this would definitely receive a high priority. It is quite important for us to implement meaningful content and simply implementing station walking would not be enough as such a feature has to be a meaningful addition to the gameplay. If you think this concept through, you could quickly end up with an almost separate game. But you can be sure that these are not the only cool ideas we have up our sleeves for further development of Black Prophecy.

Chris: The community is already diligently creating its own fan art in the recently opened fan art forums. During the course of the creation of 3D graphics the question was raised about what kind of applications our art team utilizes for the creation of graphics in Black Prophecy.

Simon: Our art pipeline is quite classical. For most of the 3D elements we use 3D Studio Max by Autodesk and Zbrush by Pixologic. In the 2D area we work a lot with Photoshop, while our concept artists prefer Painter. For the level design we utilize a self-developed application based on the tools that come along with the Gamebyro engine.

For personal creation of fan art, or for people who just want to try out graphic design, there are much cheaper alternatives like Blender or Gimp that work just as well. I also utilize these kinds of applications for my private graphical work. So you really don’t need to spend a few thousand Euros to create graphics of a high quality.

Chris: The background story was received very well by the community and many people would like to see Black Prophecy released as a book. What are the odds of seeing Black Prophecy on the shelves of book stores someday?

Kirk: Certainly it is not possible to transfer the story one-for-one into book format as Michael would have to re-write many things, but from my point of view it is definitely imagined and highly desirable. It is an absolutely terrific story.

Simon: The story has what it takes to make an exciting book, absolutely, and I would really appreciate holding a Black Prophecy book in my hands! Until this happens I can highly recommend reading the other Books Michael Marrak has published. Personally, I have read most of them and had great fun.

Chris: The community is already quite busy discussing their future faction alignment and some have even decided which side they are going to join. What is your favorite faction and what is the reason for that?

Kirk: Honestly, I really can’t decide…

Simon: I also haven’t finally determined that yet. Currently I am playing a Tyi character most of the time. I have already put lots of blood and sweat into this character and his ship and I seriously hope that the programmers think twice about deleting the database again!

Chris: A question that will be of interest to many computer game fans is how you got into the games industry and what you would recommend to those who want to do likewise.

Kirk: Many ways lead to Rome and he who builds at these ways has many masters. Jörg (Schwiezer) approached me in 1999 and told me that he was looking for someone who could act as his substitute and build up a web department. So I took the deal and landed at Reakktor. Therefore I am the classic career changer. However, these are becoming increasingly more rare as the industry's professionalism grows. Apart from that I can only tell you to be brave, be creative, and first and foremost be open to new things.

Simon: Like Kirk I am a classic career changer and autodidact. I started to create computer games in my early school days and applied to be a graphic artist to several companies after I finished my studies and my military duty. Reakktor was interested in me and I was extremely excited about the project they were working on at that time; Neocron! After a visit to Reakktor everything was looking good and just a month later I was already creating 3D models for Neocron. As there wasn’t anything like game development studies or education at that time, I simply taught myself the knowledge of game development.

For everyone who wants to gain ground in game development, I recommend starting with a small project, e.g. a game mod to see if it’s the right thing for you and to gain experience and work samples for future applications. Every time I get a new application on my desk I primarily view the provided working examples and decide if the applicant is of interest or not on this basis. The second thing I take a look at is the curriculum vitae and the rest.

Kirk: Correct! But even if many don’t want to hear it, a good school education is still a requirement.

Chris: Do you find time to play other computer games in your leisure time? If so, which games are you currently playing and what are your all-time favorites?

Kirk: At the moment I mostly play console games, although I still can't get used to playing first person shooters with a game pad. Maybe I'm just too old for that! On the console my current favorites are Fifa 09 and PES, Virtua Tennis 3 and 2009. On the PC my favorites are Fallout 3, James Bond, Mafia, NOLF, CoD, Age of Empires 2 as well as the expansions, GRAW 1 and 2 and Wolfenstein ET.

My all-time favorites are No One Lives Forever (NOLF) – a shoutout to my old clan buddies from HC - RTCW, RTCW ET, Elite, Descent, Privateer, Great Courts 2, Jimmy Connors Tennis, Bioforge, Half-Life, Pitfall, Virtua Tennis, Fifa Soccer, Age of Empires 2 and Mafia.

Simon: I am currently moving away from mainstream games more and more and I play independent games most of the time. Many of the new big games are simply too mindless for me and are quickly losing their appeal. Currently I am playing Cryostasis, Albion (once again) and some independent games like Penumbra, the demo of Geneforge 5: Overthrow and some others.

My all-time favorites are Ambermoon, Wing Commander, System Shock, Fallout 1+2, Cadaver, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Daggerfall, the Half Life series, the Monkey island series, Anachranox, Shadow of the Beast, the Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder series, Ultima 6,7 and 8 and Ultima Underworld, Populous….I better stop listing here. There are of course some more pearls on my all-time favorite list but I'll save those for the Community Q&A for Black Prophecy 2.

Chris: Pirates or Ninjas?

Kirk: Pirates but not the Johnny Depp like type. Something more honest like the “Red Corsair”.

Simon: Ninjas…or maybe pirates after all…?

Chris: Thanks a lot for taking the time and answering my questions!

We hope that was good read and that we gave you a little behind-the-curtains view of the people who work on Black Prophecy. Stay tuned for the next issue of Black Prophecy: Behind the scenes coming to you soon!

[wannie]

So say we all, great information there and i second pirates over ninjas!

One question, where is Reakktor located. I'm guessing in Germany but where?

[Nidhogg]

KK's home is Hannover, Germany.

N

[Delphi]

What a great set of questions, and small insight into the two top people at Reakktor,

Thanks guys,

Delphi

[Brammers]

Nice little insight there.

Question - Whats the best way to submit question sugguestions for the next Community Q&A?

P.S. Pirate!

[Kirk Lenke]

Originally Posted by Delphi

What a great set of questions, and small insight into the two top people at Reakktor,

Thanks guys,

Delphi

Thanks Delphi BUT there are more than two top people 40 to be correct. I just have the honor to be their head honcho.

BR // Kirk

[Parallax]

Thanks for the insight guys. Very interesting

[Stevil]

Thanks for taking time out. It was a good read.

I hope you guys stay positive about station walking for future expansions. I know it could be a big job but it would be the one thing that sets Black Prophecy apart from it's competitors. I've said in other threads that the problem with space games is the lack of depth and it's very hard to involve the player in the universe. Having an avatar that gets out of your ship and walks around a station is one small step to actually feeling like you connect with your character.

It connects space with reality and shows a sense of scale.

[Blackstorm]

Thanks for the clarification, especially on the publisher and "walk an stations" questions. Really a good read! Hope something about joystick support and different shiptypes will be included in the next Q&A

[Doc Holliday]

simon. thanks for your part in neocron. its been a lot of fun over the past few years