Posted 10/24/2008 at 9:43 AM By boothby
We are honored to have gotten the chance to interview Bernd Lehahn, Founder and Managing Director at Egosoft recently. Egosoft, for those of you who don't know, is the developer behind the 'X' series of space-combat/sim titles starting back in 1999 with X: Beyond the Frontier and culminating with the release of X3: Terran Conflict this month. We would like to thank Bernd Lehahn as well as Jerry Whitehead III at Reverb, Inc for making this interview possible.
Q) First of all, let me say thank you for taking the time to answer our questions Bernd. The original X: Beyond the Frontier came out in 1999, and when you look back at the path from X to X3: Terran Conflict, what have been the best and worst parts of the journey for you?
A) Hello! Well, we are talking quite a long journey here. In retrospect, it is always great to see a game being released. We have always been proud of our games and were always excited to see how people received them. On the other hand, X3:Reunion was developed under extreme time pressures, and when the game was finally being released, we had to release a number of patches in a row. So the release of a title has both good and bad aspects. On the upside: THIS time, with X3: Terran Conflict, we had a lot more time to fine tune and balance the game. X3: Terran Conflict is by far the best game in the series and we are focusing almost entirely on new features with the updates that are currently being developed. So this feels good too :-)
Q) Take us back to 1999: what was the process like in developing X: Beyond the Frontier. How did it come about?
A) It sounds like ancient past now already, but even 1999 was not the start. It was the end of a story that started almost another 10 years earlier. The idea to create a space simulation game was with EGOSOFT almost since the company was founded. In the late 80s and early 90s, we worked for the Commodore Amiga and the space game was just a prototype called 'Starlight One'. It never saw the light of day for the Amiga and unfortunately the platform disappeared before the game was finished. So X was born when I first heard of 3D accelerators for Windows 95. Microsoft was promoting their games’ SDK (later renamed into Direct X) and we thought that this was a great opportunity to re-start with a space sim. The work on this spanned from 1996 to 1999.
Q) The original X: Beyond the Frontier is, without question, one of the best space sim/combat games ever made. It had a sense of realism to it due to your character's origins as well as stock equipment. X2: The Threat seemed to take a more stylized approach with campier dialog as well as well as an oddly-named antagonist species. Where did the 'Khaak' come from in terms of name and design?
A) Hehe...unfortunately most of the developers on the team at that time were still non native speakers here from Germany. Nowadays, our team became a lot more international. The name was actually already mentioned in the back fiction of XTENSION (the expansion product of X: Beyond the Frontier) and we wanted to stick to the facts established with the first game. In retrospect, it was not a wise decision ;-) But apart from this naming problem, I would not say that the story of the game was any more stylized than X:BTF. That was never our intention. It just continued the saga and that meant it could not start with earth anymore.
Q) If you had the chance to do one thing over again in the course of developing all of the X games, what would it be?
A) I would not have agreed to release X3: Reunion in Q4 of 2005.
Q) Now that X3: Terran Conflict has been released and is being enjoyed by gamers, what is EGOSOFT up to? Are you officially done with the X universe or can we expect a new X game at some point?
A) We are not necessarily done with the X universe, but we are done with the X games as such. What I mean with this is that I strongly believe that X3: Terran Conflict is the best possible game inside the gameplay definitions of the X games so far. We listened to what our fans wanted and implemented as many of these things inside the framework that was established with this series. We do not want to continue this development inside these boundaries forever. At the same time however, as with our previous games, X3: Terran Conflict WILL be improved with further (free) updates. X3: Terran Conflict has introduced a new mission design system which allows us (as well as modders) to rapidly create cool new missions for this game. We hope to make more good use of this system and also inspire modders to use it. So you can expect a number of updates for X3: Terran Conflict and hopefully also mods.
Q) X3: Terran Conflict looks to provide the same open-ended gameplay we have all come to know and love in the X series. What is the longest anyone on the dev team has played X3: TC for?
A) Phew...I would have to set up a poll to answer this. I am sure none of the devs can compete even remotely with some of the 'X-TREME gamers (tm)'. If you look at the X3: Reunion UPLINK statistics on our website, you can see that indeed many of our fans play the X games like a single player MMO. More than 1,000 in-game hours - need I say more? But our current team mostly consists of people who joined us after they became fans of the series. So we are all players as well. Just not extreme enough to make it into the UPLINK charts ;-)
Q) What is the current status of 'X Online' and what can you tell us about it at this point in terms of gameplay and social mechanics?
A) Since the very beginning of this series, we wanted to create an MMO based on this series. It just fits perfectly well. Unfortunately, our last attempt with 'Online-Universe.net” back to 2002 was stopped by the lack of financial backing, so we concentrated on more manageable projects first. We have many plans for the future and an MMO is certainly one of them. But not the first.
Q) Has there been any talk of creating a new space-based IP? Starting over with a proverbial clean slate?
A) I would not see why. See my answer about continuing the universe as opposed to the game series. The fictional universe is much more than the sum of the games that played inside of it and it would be a waste not to use it anymore. On the contrary, we try to broaden it into new areas. In Germany, for example, there have been three books released by Helge Kautz already and the next one is coming out soon. Farnhams Legend, the first book which describes among other things the start of X:BTF and the odyssey of Kyle Brennan into the X Universe, is now also available in English (check out our webshop at www.egosoft.com).
Q) Have you considered moving into other genres of gaming? RPGs or, perhaps, some hybrid space/land combat game?
A) We are a team of fans of this game series. If I would decide that now we have to make something very different to make good profit, it could never be such a good game. A team is best if it works on something it loves. Hybrid on the other hand is a good keyword. I would say that the X games already are VERY hybrid and we sure keep our eyes open for other genres to merge the X universe with.
Q) And finally, if there was one thing you wanted to tell us gamers that we did not cover here, what would it be?
A) How about this: Please read the quotes at the start of X3:Terran Conflict. They contain a lot of wisdom.
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