Topic: Novità su Kill Zone: intervista in inglese.

[Obi-Wan]

L'intervista è molto lunga.

PSXNation's exclusive interview with the creators of the PS2's most anticipated title
by - Steve Watt

(7:27AM)- Lost Boys Games has become quite the notorious moniker in recent weeks, perhaps directly thanks to our previous article dealing with the rumours surrounding their supposed PS2 title Kin. While the game has still yet to be officially revealed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, that hasn't stopped thousands of gamers from flooding message boards across the web in hopes of finding even a simple nugget of information about the game. And while we are sworn to secrecy with regards to anything substantial regarding Kin for the time being, we thought it would be a nice change of pace to learn more about the people responsible for bringing this project to fruition. We decided to sit down and talk to Nancy Gatehouse, PR Manager, to get a few facts about the company, and hopefully decipher what exactly makes them tick.
Also interesting of note, is that during the course of this interview being conducted, Lost Boys Games shocked us by going ahead and changing their name to Guerrilla. Read for full details why...

PSXNation.com: Nancy, can you tell us exactly how long has Lost Boys Games has been in existence and maybe some details with regards to its inception?

Guerrilla: At the beginning of 2000, 3 small Dutch game developers merged to create Lost Boys games. The merger was a great opportunity to create a studio full of experienced people without recruiting from scratch. We combined the talent, technology and ideas of these three studios and set about pitching for projects with various leading publishers. SCEE soon signed up one of our teams for a pre-production arrangement, and at the end of pre-production, the full contract was signed for the game that's causing such a stir right now.

Lost Boys Games was spun off from parent company, Lost Boys at the end of 2001, and is now the daughter company of Media Republic. In order to reflect our change in ownership, we are changing our name to Guerrilla. We're currently in the middle of a rebranding process, and we will reveal our new logo soon.

PSXNation.com: Any reason for the change other than the new ownership?

Guerrilla: Our parent company wanted us to choose a name that was linked to the Republic theme. After brainstorming suitable names, our staff voted for their favourite. Guerrilla was the runaway winner.

PSXNation.com: Fair enough. How many aforementioned staff does Guerrilla currently have employed? Any plans to expand in the future?

Guerrilla: There's currently 48 of us, but we're expanding at the moment. We're currently recruiting coders, artists, animators and level designers for projects in development here. Having said that, our aim is never to get too big. At the moment we've got a great bunch of people here, with a great working atmosphere - we want to hang onto that. At the moment we're big enough to get the attention of the major publishers, but small enough that we still know all of our colleagues and that is something we really value.

Amsterdam is a great place to work, and we're lucky enough to be located right in the centre. The small local labour market makes it hard to find experienced staff, but despite this we have a multinational combination of some of the best local talent and experienced people from the UK, Canada, Spain and the US.

PSXNation.com: Is Guerrilla currently focusing solely on Playstation 2 development, or do you have projects for other platforms also in the works? Has this always been the case?

Guerrilla: We are currently working on 2 projects, one of which we are developing for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. I cannot comment yet on the other title.

PSXNation.com: What previous game developing experience do the team members of Guerrilla have under their belts? We've heard some members of the now defunct German Appeal development team found their way over to you folks.

Guerrilla: We've got talent from right across the industry. Off the top of my head, I know that we have people here that have worked for Bitmap Brothers, Bullfrog/EA, Disney, Vis, Ubisoft, Kaboom Studios, and many others. One of our founding studios was Orange games, who worked closely with Epic on the Jazz Jackrabbit series.

PSXNation.com: Have you found working the PS2 to be as difficult as was once reported by many development teams? How would you compare it to other platforms that you are familiar with?

Guerrilla: Our coders found that working with the PS2 was a challenge, but it was certainly not an impossible task. We have an in-house technology team responsible for creating tools, maintaining our engine and r&d. They worked towards finding ways of getting the most out of the platform, and the reaction from people who've seen what we can do says it all. Now that we've tamed the beast, we've found that it suits us and we're really happy with what it can do.

PSXNation.com: Would you consider being based in the Netherlands to be an advantage, or a disadvantage from a PR standpoint? We know that all of Guerrilla's product PR is handled directly by your publishers... is this due to your location?

Guerrilla: It's pretty standard practice for a publisher to be responsible for PR surrounding a game. They tend to have large PR departments with specialists taking care of each country. It's important for them to time the release of information perfectly across all territories, and this is best co-ordinated in house. On top of that, we have 2 dedicated PR and marketing people here to work closely together with our publishing colleagues. Being based in Amsterdam doesn't cause us problems from a PR point of view - journalists seem to love coming over...

PSXNation.com: That's the understatement of the year. Where's my plane ticket? We'll be right over... Nancy, how would you categorize your current relationship with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe?

Guerrilla: We have an excellent relationship with SCEE. We have regular visits from the producer, product manager and PR manager handling our project, resulting in some really constuctive, positive meetings. Sony are giving us everything we need to create the best possible game. They are happy with the project we are doing for them and we're really enjoying the experience of working with such creative people.

PSXNation.com: Your current project has yet to be officially unveiled, and as such, you cannot discuss it. We're cool with that. But we are wondering if Guerrilla as a company is aware of the mounting expectations gamers have recently begun placing upon this project, and if so, how is the company dealing with it? Has your company outlook changed in any way because of this?

Guerrilla: We are obviously not unaware of the incredible amount of attention our company and project has been receiving on Internet forum discussions across the globe, and we are aware of the speculation. We can't however comment on any of this in any way before an official confirmation. Until then everything is a rumour and we don't comment on rumours. Having said this, we're not letting the attention go to our heads, and we're hard at work creating two ambitious titles. Our outlook is, and always has been to create great games that are fun to play.

PSXNation.com: Lord knows we know all about your stance on rumours. You folks are tougher to crack than one of those Christmas Walnuts. Last question, we promise... does Guerilla have a specific goal when creating a project? For example, do you believe in visuals over gameplay, or vice versa?

Guerrilla: We always aim for the best, try to avoid compromises and if we have to do so, we make trade-off decisions on the spot, in conjunction with our publisher's input.

Nancy, thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to fill us in on what makes Guerrilla such a formidable developer for the future. We can't wait to see what you have in store for us next... and just so everyone knows... we love the name Kin, and DESPISE the name Kill Zone. Just thought we'd throw that in there.