During our time in Austin, we had the opportunity to speak with
Damion Schubert,
Star Wars: The Old Republic Lead System Designer. The name should be familiar with those heavily following the game's development, as he frequently authors guest columns for
Game Developer Magazine, and we watch his
blog like hawks for possible clues about potential game systems. One of his
past presentations to game developers inspired us to start
specific forums to allow the Darth Hater community to discuss the
implications to endgame design. Since Schubert is extremely busy working on the lucrative game systems we'll see in action soon,
we are grateful he took the time to have his first casual conversation in over a year with us.
What do you consider yourself in the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology?Damion Schubert: I am an achiever/explorer first and foremost. The interesting thing is -- and there is probably good research on this -- that every time I took the test in my life, it moved a bit so I am fairly well-centered. When I was running my own company,
Killer actually spiked to the top. Now it is back in last place again which I think means I am in a relatively healthy place again.
Can you describe for us what you do and what you specifically work on in Star Wars: The Old Republic?I am the Lead Systems Designer for
Star Wars: The Old Republic. This means I am in charge of pretty much all of the systems in the game that don't relate to combat, the RPG, or story. That includes guilds, crafting, and some of the other systems that are coming down the pipe. Those are in my domain; imagine character creation, etc. My daily job is to interface with the gameplay programmers to get those features into the game, then iterating on them so they get to the point where they are fun, interesting, and balanced. And the team that I manage does the itemization for the game as well as creating the maps for the game. That is pretty much what my crew does.
How big is this crew?I have a four person team under me. Most of our job is design documentation, itemization, and maps.
Are these some of the people we saw in the Developer Dispatches?Not yet. Emanuel is currently the Associate Lead Designer. He works on basically whatever is our hottest topic is at the time, "hey, this needs to be fixed and focused on." And then Georg is Lead Combat Designer and is pretty much my equal inside the structure. He is worried about the RPG as well as the class balance and the class structure. That is what he spends all of his time focusing on, and he has four or five people under him. My team and his team sit in the same office together, so we have a lot of interaction with this because it is pretty important. The itemization speaks to the balance, and we want to be sure that crafting is important in the game. It is really important to us that crafters are a viable and important part of the economy so we need to make sure they fit into the balance there. There is a lot of back and forth between the two groups.
Of the systems that you work on, which one is your favorite?We're really proud of the crafting system. We can't wait to talk to you about it, and it is going to be really soon.
