Games Press, a free resource for game journos across the world, carried out a slightly 'tongue-in-cheek' interview with Lionhead Studios about the online community features of their upcoming game, The Movies. The interview covers topics ranging from how people will be able to share their creations with other players, through to how loud the servers required to host the movies are.
The online segment of the game brings another level to the game beyond the files sitting on the user's hard drive. You can get feedback on your movies from other players, alter the movies to suit your audience and as a result earn more virtual bob for your virtual box office.
The full interview is featured after the jump.
[Thanks, JamesO]
Hello Georg, could you tell our readers first who you are, what you do and how your experience with Coca Cola Light has affected you these past two years? Was it really that exciting as we read on the Lionhead website?
Georg Backer: Yes. Very much so. Thanks for brining it up. It only took me years to make sure less and less people
know about it. Pah! Imagine being entered and voted into competition behind your back. Imagine you get a phone call one
day telling you that you've just made it into the second round of a big soft drink competition. Imagine yourself with
twelve other people who not only knew that they took part in the competition in the first place but also had the time
to work out and sunbath. And now combine all those thoughts and imagine yourself with a pale body and no strength to
lift up even the smallest of bugs standing next to those trained bodybuilder bodies. Then try to smile and embrace the
situation.
(No, honestly. It was good fun. And I'm still resenting the idea of going to the gym.)
Ok, slightly changing the subject now; the Community Website! With something big like The Movies Online, you
can't just get some free web space and host it? Serious equipment was needed I presume. Did you have any problems
finding reasonable hosting for the website and its movies?
Georg Backer: Well, the Community web site is much more than just free web space. It is a complete system which the
game connects to. Remember, it is not only about uploading your movies, it is also about other people watching them,
rating them and hopefully liking them. Depending on how you do you'll either climb up the box office charts or you'll
descend into the unknown depths. Every month will reward the top movies and the better your movies do in the box office
the better your reputation for your online studio will be. And you get virtual credits for every film uploaded (the
amount depending on your reputation) which you'll then be able to exchange for additional content and other things in
our props shop.
For us the community site is a very important game enhancing feature: It allows the movies to be easily seen by lots
of other people. Also the system is easy to use and as mentioned above we think it is very important to let the
community give feedback on the movies.
If you'd compare the community site to the real movie world you should think of it as the biggest movie
distributor.
It took us a while to find a sensible and affordable way to host the community system. We thought carefully about the
architecture of the whole system. Our main goal was to make it as efficient and as fast as possible (optimized for
performance, speed, etc) and keep it maintainable and affordable at the same time. We have a huge amount of storage
space just for the movies. But storage isn't enough so we had to make sure we've have a reasonable amount of bandwidth
so people can stream and download the movies.
The website will be used by everyone who has a copy of game and wants to show his/her movies on the internet.
That can become a very large group of people! Do you have an estimate of how many players will use the
website?
Georg Backer: We hope lots of people will use the community web site. We also hope people who don't have the game will
browse through the site and watch the movies other people have created. It is difficult though to pin down a number: We
obviously worked with estimates but I'll keep hush, hush on those ones for now. But the system and its architecture can
be easily expanded if needed.
This isn't going to be like a 'normal' website, the pressure on hard- and software will be tremendous because
of all the user info, extra content and downloadable movies. Were any special measures taken to test if it was possible
to provide so many people with a good service?
Georg Backer: Lots of calculations on paper, lots of stress testing on the actual production servers, lots of thoughts
went into the architecture right from the start so its powers are used efficiently and of course - as mentioned earlier
on - we planned with the future in mind.
This must have been a massive investment for us - Lionhead Studios - as well as for The Movies' publisher -
Activision. Were their any arrangements made for this unique feature of the game?
Georg Backer: Both Activision and Lionhead are very keen on the online part and we strongly believe that it is a very
important part of the game. It is not only a gimmick: It provides an additional layer of game play: Expose your movies
to the public and let them compete against movies from other players. See what the audience likes best and go back into
your game and make even better movies to get fame and (virtual) fortune.
So rest assured: publisher and developer are working very hard together and both have made not only a financial
commitment but will also devote a lot of time on and after the release of the game to keep the excitement going.
Players can get virtual money in many different ways. But I read in the design documents of the Community
Website that players also get virtual money when they upload a movie. This is just a small amount, but this could mean
that if I upload a movie and get the money for it, I can delete it straight away and upload it again to get the virtual
money again. And I can repeat this over and over... Wouldn't that be cheating?
Georg Backer: No. You can't. Because if you immediately pull out your movie after you've uploaded it we'll take back
the virtual money - better call it virtual credits - we gave you. You have to leave the movie online for a certain
amount of time before you can delete it and keep the virtual credits. We've spent a lot of time to ensure the system is
fair.
What did you find the biggest challenge in setting this all up?
Georg Backer: The whole system. The technical architecture for once because: We have several servers, several storage
devices, several operating systems and other advanced technical equipment; we wrote quite a lot of software ourselves,
we designed and planned the whole technology carefully right from the very start, and so on and so forth.
But we obviously had to put lot of thought into the design itself: All the features of the site, which features make
sense, how should things work, etc. I remember us also spending a long time discussing virtual credit and rating
formulas.
How much heat do the servers produce on average?
Georg Backer: Without a proper AC enough to host a BBQ. When I had to setup the final production servers in our office
I felt like I'm in a sauna. You should ask how loud those servers are (they are louder than me and apparently that
means something).
Do you get the chance to watch a movie every now and then? What do you like in movies?
Georg Backer: The community system is up and running (on our testservers of course, we're not exposing it to the
public just yet) and I therefore get to watch quite a few movies people make and upload. It is very interesting and
encouraging to see people within Lionhead and Activision using the site not only because they have to make sure
everything works but also because it is fantastic fun to show off the movies and check out what other people
think.
One of the coolest things of the game is the amount of content. We want you to make your own movies, we want you to
come up with your own stories, your own music, your own sound effects, your own ideas. It is very exciting and
refreshing to watch movies where people took the time to make an original piece based on their own idea. That's what we
want you to do: Come up with your own original idea and show it to the world via our community site and don't rip off
other peoples existing ideas or content because for one it isn't very nice and secondly it is very unfair.
