Supreme Commander

Interview with Chris Taylor

Chris, Supreme Commander is your first realtime strategy game since Total Annhilation in 1997. What took you so long?

Well, I actually intended to do another RTS after only a few years, but I got carried away on Dungeon Siege and then Dungeon Siege II. And when I went to sell the idea of Supreme Commander to find a publisher for it, it was a lot of more work than I thought it was. It took me several years to get that publisher. It's just a series of delays but I got it done.

Why was that? One should think that Chris Taylor would be a name that still rings some bells.

You are probably in a better position to analyze that. I just run out there like I always do. Everybody is excited about the idea but when it gets right down to it, its difficult to get a deal together. Deals are complex, but we got it done and we got the game made, so we are happy.

As you said, you got carried away with Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege II. What was your motivation for another RTS?

I love RTS. They are just so fullfilling to do because you can play them early on in development and they just get better and better. The community is really supportive and its a different kind of thing, when you make a mod for an RTS you experience that mod every time you play. When you do modding in a RPG it takes a long time to experience it. I really missed that since Total Annhilation. It's just a really fullfilling genre to work inside.

Supreme Commander recieved pretty good ratings from critics all around the world but was deemed a game rather for hardcore gamers than for the casual strategy gamer. Did you design the game specificially to be that way?

Absolutely. I said, when it comes to that business you can't compromise your vision. You go for the hardcore gamer or the mass market or the casual gamers. But you don't make a game that's for everyone – not with the time constraints that I have. So that's what we did: We made a game for the hardcore gamers.

If you don't want to compromise your vision of the game, how important is the commercial success for you personally?

Well, here is the thing: If you compromise your vision, you will actually be less succesful. You will have the casual gamers that don't want to play the game and you will have the hardcore gamers that don't want to play it. So I think that this is the way to maximize your success.

The success of the game has to be important for me, or I won't be able to make another game ever again. But I try to focus on the art first and the money second.

What's next for Supreme Commander? I first patch was released just a few days ago, a DirectX 10 Patch is in the works...

Yeah, we got some stuff in the works. And we will make an official announcement this spring/summer about what we got going on.

So there is an expansion coming?

Yeah, I mean if we are going to announce something, it wouldn't be that there is nothing coming. (laughs) So you can do a little detective work on that without getting me in trouble, most importantly.

GPG did RPGs, you did a RTS with Supreme Commander, what's next? Any other genres you want to explore?

Absolutely. I have a family now with a bunch of boys. And I want to make a game that I can bring home and play with my boys. I am really excited about that, and we will explore that – in fact, we already started on something. We will be announcing that later this year.

German version of this interview can be found here.

Autor: Lennart Dahmen (ld)
Erstellt am: 25. Februar 2007, 18:03 CET