Any Chris Taylor reaction on Planetary Annihilation ?

Hi all, Hi Neutrino,

In Pc Gamer interview, John Mavor / neutrino said :

Since then, did Chris react ? His tweeter account is inactive

Thanks

This was his face when he saw the Kickstarter movie:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/a ... 788254.jpg
But actually rumor has it he's really cool with it. And why shouldn't he?

I let Chris know about the game before we launched the kickstarter just so he wasn't caught by surprise if the press started asking him questions. We haven't talked about it a whole lot though. Realistically Chris is a busy guy who runs a fairly large and busy game company (much much bigger than Uber).

Did he also say anything about Supreme Commander 3? As you state: he is a busy guy with a fairly busy company (Gas Powered Games).

Seeing Supcom 2 came out 2 years ago

they work on Age of Empires Online, as far as I know.
Would be funny if they were developing a Supreme Commander 3, though.
But thats not happening.

Why not?

hmm maybe you should listen to the interview gowerly and tbo made with him

somewhere there http://www.twitch.tv/gowerly

but even if they wanted, Supreme Commander belongs to Square Enix now

There http://de.twitch.tv/thebigonetv/b/326816836 starting @ 1h:27
Part2: http://de.twitch.tv/thebigonetv/b/326817108

But as Cola said,won't happen since Chris will move on to web based games(browser).GPG is currently searching for Web Application Programmer & some more,so after the developent from AoEO there will be most likely a browsergame.


Vollatze aka. Prince

Thanks for the answer

I followed up on that interview when TBO and I met up with him at Gamescom. We didn't really talk about work that much, though. More about ice cream. He knows his ice cream.

Bump. Really interested to know Chris's reaction. Last thing I read was an interview with him talking about a sequel to TA (other than sup com, I guess..?? ). GPG has been acquired by Wargaming so maybe his work slates been cleared...

Unless he posts on these forums himself, which I really doubt, I don't think we are going to get much of an answer.

The chances of there having been word regarding PA and it not being posted about are pretty slim, so I doubt there has been anything said beyond what he's already said on the subject.

Mike

Edit: after I posted this I realized there was another thread discussing the below quotes - sorry for the double-up.

I found this:

Chris Taylor: Yeah. When I saw that, I kind of saw the old Chris, you know? I’ve been a firm believer that multiple battlefields is not a good idea. You look at chess and you try to go to 3D chess, it just blows your mind. The brain is powerful, but the brain has limits. Only savant genius type of people can play on multiple boards at once.

Of course, I have no details as far as what they’re doing. I just saw the video like you did, and I can only infer. But that was the old Chris thinking. One of the things we’re doing in Wildman is single-player.

(He then goes on about Wildman - a since aborted Kickstarter project).

In the same question, he also says this, which I found interesting:

The old adage goes, “I designed this game for me.” It sounds good. It sounds good politically. It sounds like you’re an artist with a vision and you’re building the game for yourself. But it’s actually not quite right. I’m not going to say it’s dead wrong, but I’m going to say that when you’re building a product… When you jump in your car and turn the key, you really hope that they were thinking of you when they designed the car [laughs]. So that’s my way of looking at it.

I think its interesting because I remember him talking about how he wanted to make TA more like an RTS he wanted to play, I especially remember a comment about how he never saw an RTS where the units could attack while moving. TA seemed very much a "designed for me" game, IMO.

Has Chris buckled under popular demand pressure since?

I completely agree with Chris on this. Multiple battlefields really isn't a good idea.

I think having more than one player per army solves the multiple battlefields problem pretty well. The result of course is an RTS unlike anything ever seen before. An idea which I find incredibly appealing.

Chris also said this in his Reddit AMA:

I like the video a lot, but beyond that, I'm pretty skeptical... I know what it takes to make an RTS game. TA took 20 months, and I (and the team) worked 7 days a week. SupCom 1 took 3.5 years and cost over 10 million. I don't think they stand a snowballs chance in hell to make that game for 2M.
But now that I've said that, they're really going to have to work extra hard to prove me wrong... good luck!!

To which someone replied "But you think you can make this for only 1.1 million (the Kickstarter goal for Wildman)? I'm confused."

Then: I don't know what to tell you about Planetary Annihilation... For all the people who have pledged in support of that game, I sure hope Uber doesn't F it up... and from the video, I'm looking forward to playing too!!

Chris sounds quite the cynic

All of CT's comments have really been dodgy and non-commital at best. I personaly don't put much emphasis to them. I view it rather that PA is going in a direction that is beyond CT's Limits, or maybe PA is going where CT doesn't want to follow.

Whatever anyone thinks, what matters is you're own personal opinion and in that regard I find CT to be way off the mark.

Mike

I think he had to. Let me explain:

GPG was larger than Uber (no idea if it still is). You can't make a RTS game on a small budget if you have to pay like 50 employees every month unless you have a big publisher behind you. RTS games are considered risky. A large publisher expect certain things of a game before he commits several million dollars to its development.

First you have to reach a wide target audience. That means you have to cater to more casual players and try to get the game on a console. Second, the game has to be easy to learn and look visually pleasing. Depending on the publisher they might expect a campaign story and cinematics of some sort. Those things are expensive as hell.


Now lets take a look at SupCom2:

• On a console? Check.
• Tries to appeal to a larger audience? Check.
• Simplified economy for flat learning curve? Check.
• Focus on Experimentals for visuals? Check.
• Spectacular maps that look good in the press? Check.
• Campaign story that is supposed to appeal to the console audience? Check.

Looks all great in theory but completely misses the original SupCom fans. Having a large target audience means nothing if they are hardly interested in your genre or game. You end up with a game nobody really cares about.

At some point Chris wanted to make that big casual game everybody plays. That would have been perfect for GPG. But you can't force your luck. And while GPG was still trying to recover from SupCom2 some Swedish guy makes a game where you mine and craft little cubes into whatever you like. Jackpot!