{"id":832,"date":"2008-01-09T15:28:38","date_gmt":"2008-01-09T19:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/01\/09\/soren-johnson-interview\/"},"modified":"2008-01-09T15:28:38","modified_gmt":"2008-01-09T19:28:38","slug":"soren-johnson-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/01\/09\/soren-johnson-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Soren Johnson Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soren Johnson is also good for a quote, so it’s only natural for Rock, Paper, Shotgun to hit him up for an extensive interview<\/a> about the PC market, game design and inspiration.<\/p>\n

Some highlights:<\/p>\n

On the shrinking range of AAA titles:<\/p>\n

[T]here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a few blockbuster Triple-A franchises that are still cranking out\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but if you look back at 98 or 99 there was a huge range of games available. So if you wanted an off-kilter RTS like Majesty\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, that stuff can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be made anymore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On feature bloat in RTS games:<\/p>\n

Yeah, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make it without a campaign and scenarios and an editor and cutscenes and all that extra junk. Really, that junk is preventing us from making more interesting games. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of a paradox. Obviously, people want that junk, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing for those people. And the editors which people make their own scenarios is great\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but that stuff all comes
\nat a cost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On old computer games:<\/p>\n

[T]here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always a primordial soup thing with the C64. You can see the roots of a lot of PC games there, but if you think of it strictly as PC\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll perhaps forget things like Sid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pirates, back when it was on the Commodore and whatever else. It was really like a console game. It relied on the joystick. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t one of the Microprose games which came with a big keyboard overlay\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it was a joystick game<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On AI:<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another level, which is the difference between the good and great strategy games, is that the AI is not only just trying to play the rules smartly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if you really want to take it to the next level, you need to think about whether the AI player is actually making the game more fun for the player.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Go to 2007’s best PC gaming blog for the full deal, and the promise of more on Civilization in coming days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soren Johnson is also good for a quote, so it’s only natural for Rock, Paper, Shotgun to hit him up for an extensive interview about the PC market, game design and inspiration. Some highlights: On the shrinking range of AAA titles: [T]here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a few blockbuster Triple-A franchises that are still cranking out\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,8,86],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-dq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}