GC: Flagship's plans for Hellgate News

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News by Ellie Gibson

23 August, 2006

There's still a while to wait until Flagship's rather fancy looking PC title Hellgate: London hits the shops - but according to studio boss Bill Roper, they've already got big plans for developing the franchise further.

In a speech delivered at the Leipzig GCDC, Roper said: "In expanding your empire, there are a few different areas you can go. Obviously, there's other games - you've got additional platforms. If you're building the game on PC, you can think about how it's going to potentially apply to console games, or cellular, or arcade."

So does that mean we can expect to see console, arcade and mobile phone versions of Hellgate? Well, "Those are things we think about all the time with the Hellgate IP," according to Roper - so it certainly seems possible.

For the majority of his speech, Roper discussed the importance for developers of building original IP (you can read more about his thoughts on the subject over on GamesIndustry.biz). He also took the opportunity to give his explanation for why Psychonauts failed to shift many copies - despite the fact that, as many of us here would agree, it's an ace game.

So what went wrong? Well, Roper reckons Psychonauts is "A beautiful game, hilarious, really high quality in every sense... I just think that Majesco had no idea how to market it, and the game didn't do well". In other words, it was down to the publisher, not the developer, and as Roper put it, "It wasn't the fault of the IP".

There's an upside, though: "Even though the game didn't do as well as they'd hoped or expected, because Double Fine own the IP, they now have the chance to go out and do something with it... And that's a huge bonus."

Hmm... Does Roper know something we don't? Have his chums over at Double Fine told him there's a second Psychonauts game on the way? Well, he didn't go so far as to say that, but there's no harm in hoping...

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