These Interviews with Lehan are all in german
I do not have the time to translate but if any other german people has the time then I would love if he could translate the interviews and post them in this topic. I will then edit the starting-post
Edit Scroll down to see a post with a google-translated version of all interviews; posted by hisazul <- thanks
-----------------------------"Real" translations and links----------------------
1. Interview with PCG
Page 1: Not translated
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The second part of our interview was conducted with Christian Moriz, the production director at Deep Silver.
PC Games: X Rebirth came to be released to market with substantial errors, which made it largely unplayable. To what extent was this quality level known to you?
Moriz: The X-Games are based on a very sophisticated AI, which - especially in the beginning - tends to trip itself up. This is the great strength and at the same time, unfortunately, a common weakness of all the X games because, on the one hand it provides a potent and challenging game, but on the other hand, it can also lead to errors. That it also came to performance problems, mainly relating to high-end systems, was a bad surprise for all of us. We find it very unfortunate that many players, who have been looking forward to X Rebirth for so long, were initially struggling with errors. The eight patches that have appeared so far, have already addressed the most pressing points. Egosoft provides very good product support to help the players who have difficulties as quickly as possible.
PC Games: Are you as a publisher, in the course of development, involved in the quality assurance? If so, in what form terms with regards to X Rebirth?
Moriz: In X Rebirth different partners have worked on different tasks. Our mission as a European publisher was to produce the boxes for our area and to control parts of marketing and sales. In America, there was another publisher and the development and quality assurance was taken up by Egosoft. During the distribution of tasks in production, we take care of what comes in the box: We edit and create manuals and organize the printing and manufacture and the printing. We tested the extras of the Collector's Edition. We check print quality, put together bonus content, and burn them to Blu-ray, test the functionality of LED lights etc.
PC Games: Why did you not make an exception, given the obvious shortcomings of a traditional release cycle, and choose a different distribution channel, such as open beta or Early Access?
Moriz: What is obvious is usually easier to see with hindsight. Both would certainly have been good approaches. The possibilities for doing this came too late for X Rebirth. The game was in development for seven years. When we started the project and drafted the contracts, there was no sign of "Early Access". To go this route, the entire development process would have needed to be set up differently many years ago - with other partners and other funding. So by mutual obligations we arrived in a situation that has not given the players the best possible game. Without such obligations, however, we would have to ask ourselves the question as to whether and how X Rebirth would ever have been made.
PC Games: How satisfied are you with the X Rebirth release so far?
Moriz: X Rebirth went from zero to No. 1 on the German PC Charts - this means the interest for the game is there and that makes us very happy. Despite the initial errors, which Egosoft is working to resolve, people still buy the game and there was also a lot of good feedback from the players, which with such releases is often buried. As for the bugs and performance, clearly, of course, a lot must still happen. We know and appreciate Bernd Lehahn and his team, so we are sure that X Rebirth will be running for the vast majority of players soon.
PCG: Do you think that patch-intensive and complex games like X are still suited to going to market with a traditional, boxed-version and via a publisher? Do such "broken" versions like Rebirth not harm a publisher too much in terms of reputation?
Moriz: Ultimately, the players choose whether they want simple, well-functioning games or challenging strategy games and simulations that are more vulnerable to errors by their very nature. It is important that the game gets enough financial support BEFORE release to enable the developer to develop the game, either from players or from a publisher. If that does not happen or does not happen enough, complex games of this size would disappear from the market because the pre-financing is not available. And that would be very unfortunate for the many players who have a lot of fun with games like X Rebirth despite the initial difficulties.
PC Games: Thank you, Christian, for your answers.
PC Games: X Rebirth came to be released to market with substantial errors, which made it largely unplayable. To what extent was this quality level known to you?
Moriz: The X-Games are based on a very sophisticated AI, which - especially in the beginning - tends to trip itself up. This is the great strength and at the same time, unfortunately, a common weakness of all the X games because, on the one hand it provides a potent and challenging game, but on the other hand, it can also lead to errors. That it also came to performance problems, mainly relating to high-end systems, was a bad surprise for all of us. We find it very unfortunate that many players, who have been looking forward to X Rebirth for so long, were initially struggling with errors. The eight patches that have appeared so far, have already addressed the most pressing points. Egosoft provides very good product support to help the players who have difficulties as quickly as possible.
PC Games: Are you as a publisher, in the course of development, involved in the quality assurance? If so, in what form terms with regards to X Rebirth?
Moriz: In X Rebirth different partners have worked on different tasks. Our mission as a European publisher was to produce the boxes for our area and to control parts of marketing and sales. In America, there was another publisher and the development and quality assurance was taken up by Egosoft. During the distribution of tasks in production, we take care of what comes in the box: We edit and create manuals and organize the printing and manufacture and the printing. We tested the extras of the Collector's Edition. We check print quality, put together bonus content, and burn them to Blu-ray, test the functionality of LED lights etc.
PC Games: Why did you not make an exception, given the obvious shortcomings of a traditional release cycle, and choose a different distribution channel, such as open beta or Early Access?
Moriz: What is obvious is usually easier to see with hindsight. Both would certainly have been good approaches. The possibilities for doing this came too late for X Rebirth. The game was in development for seven years. When we started the project and drafted the contracts, there was no sign of "Early Access". To go this route, the entire development process would have needed to be set up differently many years ago - with other partners and other funding. So by mutual obligations we arrived in a situation that has not given the players the best possible game. Without such obligations, however, we would have to ask ourselves the question as to whether and how X Rebirth would ever have been made.
PC Games: How satisfied are you with the X Rebirth release so far?
Moriz: X Rebirth went from zero to No. 1 on the German PC Charts - this means the interest for the game is there and that makes us very happy. Despite the initial errors, which Egosoft is working to resolve, people still buy the game and there was also a lot of good feedback from the players, which with such releases is often buried. As for the bugs and performance, clearly, of course, a lot must still happen. We know and appreciate Bernd Lehahn and his team, so we are sure that X Rebirth will be running for the vast majority of players soon.
PCG: Do you think that patch-intensive and complex games like X are still suited to going to market with a traditional, boxed-version and via a publisher? Do such "broken" versions like Rebirth not harm a publisher too much in terms of reputation?
Moriz: Ultimately, the players choose whether they want simple, well-functioning games or challenging strategy games and simulations that are more vulnerable to errors by their very nature. It is important that the game gets enough financial support BEFORE release to enable the developer to develop the game, either from players or from a publisher. If that does not happen or does not happen enough, complex games of this size would disappear from the market because the pre-financing is not available. And that would be very unfortunate for the many players who have a lot of fun with games like X Rebirth despite the initial difficulties.
PC Games: Thank you, Christian, for your answers.
Page 1-3: translated (thanks to Noimageavaiable)
Spoiler
Show
GS: How did it come to X:Rebirth being released in such an unfinished state?
Bernd: There are many reasons that played together. The release date was determined quite a while ago and after seven years of development time you have to release the game at some point. But the problem wasn't the date but our struggle to add ever more features even very late in development.
We always want to offer high variety and it did become an X game even if I always emphasize that it is not X4. I didn't want to create that impression either but it is nether the less difficult to release a game where between trade, station building, fights, plot and tutorial so many things are possible.
For example we completely redesigned the landing platforms just in early 2013. Up until late 2012 we had a modus where you land through a button press and then interact once without free walking. But we weren't satisfied with this and added many things too late.
But the bigger problem are actually the small bugs, the small crashes. And that is the main reason for the bumpy start, we just didn't have enough testers there. I underestimated that a lot. With 150 people we had more testers than ever before but the game is very popular. We achieved our goal on one hand, to have more people play the game.
But that also meant that we were surprised by many technical problems that occurred especially on fast computers. We underestimated the amount of problems that would occur on high-end machines. We didn't even have a computer in our office that was as powerful as some of the systems Rebirth is played on now. We always assumed the game would also run well on these computers if it ran well on out midline computers.
GS: Now Rebirth isn't just criticized for its bugs but also because of poorly thought out or poorly functioning game mechanics. Did you never get the feeling during development that you had to draw a line at some point?
Bernd: No. This problem isn't new after all and it is always that way: We could go on and on. We could theoretically include everything after all. And that is how we will continue working once the bugs are fixed. There is already an endless list of new features we want to include.
However I see the gameplay changes as different from the technical problems which are annoying and could have been avoided if we would have had something like Early Access. If you would just test with more people. Many hardcore fans might dislike some gameplay changes but it is another game after all. It was also clear to me from the beginning that many hardcore fans would prefer an X4. And maybe we will do that at some point. But we can't reach new customers with that. The introduction to the game as well as the pacing of all the gameplay mechanics will always differ between those two directions.
GS: And you reached more players with this release?
Bernd: We sold more games in the first weeks since release than with any X game before.
GS: But was it a fair start to charge 50 Euro for a game in this condition?
Bernd: We also received lots of positive feedback, it is sadly overshadowed by many technical problems but there are many people who play this game and are satisfied with it. It is of course regrettable when part of our customers, regardless how small that part is, experiences performance problems or gets stuck in the plot for some reason. And these things are avoidable.
But things like the change to highways. These specifics that are radically different. The game is supposed to be faster and more action oriented. Trade for example is supposed to run in parallel instead of forcing the player to personally experience this slow part of the game. It doesn't make sense to discuss things like that with our fans. With these fundamental things the question weather it is better or worse doesn't make much sense because you're comparing apples and oranges. It is just completely different. If you make a game where the players trade themselves and pilot their trade ships you'll have a significantly slower game. But we will never change that about Rebirth.
On one hand we have detailed plans to expand X:Rebirth and also enable many things old fans in particular are missing. But as much as we are going to add, X:Rebirth stands for many changed mechanics and those will never change. You have to differentiate there.
GS: You mentioned Steam's Early Access program. Why didn't you use that option since you're already going with the controversial mandatory Steam activation?
Bernd: We would have liked to do it but the opportunity came too late. And it didn't work for reasons of distribution too. It would have fitted our style of publication well and we probably would still have the game in Early Access over a longer period of time.
GS: But on Steam you're publishing the game yourself, aren't you? And Early Access on Steam isn't that new either.
Bernd: As you said on Steam we publish the game ourselves. But unfortunately only on Steam. I can't go into details there but fact is that we cannot do whatever we want. We also have to consider Retail. That is how it is unfortunately.
GS: Was the game released in this unfinished state because your publishers Deep Silver and Tri Synergy pressed you?
Bernd: No, our publishers aren't at fault. I do not lay the blame with others either. The problem is you have to plan completely different for a retail release. You have to announce early when the game will hit the shelves, packages have to be produced, it has to be listed. You can't just change your dates half a year in advance when Steam offers Early Access.
GS: Yet other developers managed to do it, Bohemia Interactive with ARMA 3 for example (also self-published on Steam with local Retail-Publishers). The possibilities have been there for a while.
Bernd: For our plans for the retail release these opportunities came too late anyway. We will certainly work differently in the future.
GS: Since we're talking about the future. How does the future look for the series, more Rebirth or will we see an X4?
Bernd: We certainly won't be working on an X4 in the future. Our near future sees the development of Rebirth. There will be many smaller patches with gameplay improvements in the next two months. For the next year we will then switch to monthly patches to include bigger changes as well. But for now we have to do our homework with performance and stability before thinking about things like exterior view.
GS: Looking back on the release of X:Rebirth. Would you say it was a mistake to include features to the very end instead of finishing the present elements particularly regarding the UI and the general control scheme?
Bernd: Regarding the controls, no. There we always advanced in small steps and included new concepts only late. Whenever you solve old problems you also create new ones. Even another year of development wouldn't have changed that.
We already made some cuts with features after all and didn't for example implement AI commands that we would have loved to have on release.
But I think when you started the game on release, you didn't have problems with those endgame features in the first 10 hours. There the UI works and you're mostly annoyed by the by now mostly fixed bugs. Those are also the things that annoy me the most.
GS: So disregarding bugs the controls are especially in the beginning of the game good in your opinion?
Bernd: For the things you can do in the early game, yes. Trade with one ship, when you want to transport small amounts of goods, is sufficient. There are certainly things that can be improved but as long as you only have one ship it works actually. Difficulty arises when you want to concentrate on trade, which of course is something (not only) our old fans want. They want to control and build large fleets. We have yet to expand those features. There the UI isn't good.
GS: You kept the spreadsheet-menus from previous games for Rebirth. Rather than for example using symbol- or graphic-heavy menus everything works through classic lists. Did you try out other menus at some point as well?
Bernd: No, that's even a feature we removed. We decided against it due to expandability alone. Although you could certainly improve quite a few things in terms of presentation.
GS: So far Rebirth received the worst test results in the series. Do you think you can still turn the opinion on the game?
Bernd: I'm certain that we can positively influence the opinions of a lot of people over time but that is of course too late for the tests. And we obviously loose potential customers that way. Although it is certainly even worse for the players that bought our game and are now rightly displeased with it due to bugs. First we have to win those back. We can only do what we always did in the past as well: Not only fix the game far beyond the release but also expand it massively.
GS: How do you want to avoid a start like this next time?
Bernd: The team worked hard and I don't blame anyone. It is sad that the start went the way it did. But on the other hand the game is very successful too. There are many people who like the game in its current form. The game sold extremely well so we did some things right there as well. Even now we sell more games per day than with any prior X game. Which also means that for many people the features that didn't work properly on release aren't that important. Though in some cases that is also sad since we want to bring the depth of the economy and building to the new players as well.
Ideally I want to offer people who expect a Wing Commander a Wing Commander first and show them the depth of the universe later.
GS: But does that mean for you the good sale numbers justify the bad release?
Bernd: No, of course not. We always want to do it better. Especially the bugs that destroy the present game design are very annoying.
GS: Do you think you will still get it done?
Bernd: Of course. I already explained that in the forum. Phase One is stability for now. There we really need more testers. In the future we will certainly do that with Early Access. But we fixed more CTDs in the three weeks since release than the year before and the stability is already pretty good. But there are also always customers who run the game below minimal requirements such as 32-bit systems.
After that we will take care of the performance. Even if I don't want to say too much here. Those improvements take time. We currently do betas for the patches too. And we will continue the next weeks in the same way.
But of course you also have to mention that it apparently runs well for many people, after all we had always more than 10.000 players in the week after release. You have to consider the critiques with that in mind too. If you sell a lot of games and only one percent doesn't get it to work those people are of course legitimately angry and make themselves heard on the Internet. But you can't conclude from that that those are 50 percent of players. But regardless how many customers are affected it is always annoying.
GS: If you could turn time back a year. What would you do differently regarding features and the release?
Bernd: I probably wouldn't have changed any features and instead concentrated more on a bigger test before release.
Bernd: There are many reasons that played together. The release date was determined quite a while ago and after seven years of development time you have to release the game at some point. But the problem wasn't the date but our struggle to add ever more features even very late in development.
We always want to offer high variety and it did become an X game even if I always emphasize that it is not X4. I didn't want to create that impression either but it is nether the less difficult to release a game where between trade, station building, fights, plot and tutorial so many things are possible.
For example we completely redesigned the landing platforms just in early 2013. Up until late 2012 we had a modus where you land through a button press and then interact once without free walking. But we weren't satisfied with this and added many things too late.
But the bigger problem are actually the small bugs, the small crashes. And that is the main reason for the bumpy start, we just didn't have enough testers there. I underestimated that a lot. With 150 people we had more testers than ever before but the game is very popular. We achieved our goal on one hand, to have more people play the game.
But that also meant that we were surprised by many technical problems that occurred especially on fast computers. We underestimated the amount of problems that would occur on high-end machines. We didn't even have a computer in our office that was as powerful as some of the systems Rebirth is played on now. We always assumed the game would also run well on these computers if it ran well on out midline computers.
GS: Now Rebirth isn't just criticized for its bugs but also because of poorly thought out or poorly functioning game mechanics. Did you never get the feeling during development that you had to draw a line at some point?
Bernd: No. This problem isn't new after all and it is always that way: We could go on and on. We could theoretically include everything after all. And that is how we will continue working once the bugs are fixed. There is already an endless list of new features we want to include.
However I see the gameplay changes as different from the technical problems which are annoying and could have been avoided if we would have had something like Early Access. If you would just test with more people. Many hardcore fans might dislike some gameplay changes but it is another game after all. It was also clear to me from the beginning that many hardcore fans would prefer an X4. And maybe we will do that at some point. But we can't reach new customers with that. The introduction to the game as well as the pacing of all the gameplay mechanics will always differ between those two directions.
GS: And you reached more players with this release?
Bernd: We sold more games in the first weeks since release than with any X game before.
GS: But was it a fair start to charge 50 Euro for a game in this condition?
Bernd: We also received lots of positive feedback, it is sadly overshadowed by many technical problems but there are many people who play this game and are satisfied with it. It is of course regrettable when part of our customers, regardless how small that part is, experiences performance problems or gets stuck in the plot for some reason. And these things are avoidable.
But things like the change to highways. These specifics that are radically different. The game is supposed to be faster and more action oriented. Trade for example is supposed to run in parallel instead of forcing the player to personally experience this slow part of the game. It doesn't make sense to discuss things like that with our fans. With these fundamental things the question weather it is better or worse doesn't make much sense because you're comparing apples and oranges. It is just completely different. If you make a game where the players trade themselves and pilot their trade ships you'll have a significantly slower game. But we will never change that about Rebirth.
On one hand we have detailed plans to expand X:Rebirth and also enable many things old fans in particular are missing. But as much as we are going to add, X:Rebirth stands for many changed mechanics and those will never change. You have to differentiate there.
GS: You mentioned Steam's Early Access program. Why didn't you use that option since you're already going with the controversial mandatory Steam activation?
Bernd: We would have liked to do it but the opportunity came too late. And it didn't work for reasons of distribution too. It would have fitted our style of publication well and we probably would still have the game in Early Access over a longer period of time.
GS: But on Steam you're publishing the game yourself, aren't you? And Early Access on Steam isn't that new either.
Bernd: As you said on Steam we publish the game ourselves. But unfortunately only on Steam. I can't go into details there but fact is that we cannot do whatever we want. We also have to consider Retail. That is how it is unfortunately.
GS: Was the game released in this unfinished state because your publishers Deep Silver and Tri Synergy pressed you?
Bernd: No, our publishers aren't at fault. I do not lay the blame with others either. The problem is you have to plan completely different for a retail release. You have to announce early when the game will hit the shelves, packages have to be produced, it has to be listed. You can't just change your dates half a year in advance when Steam offers Early Access.
GS: Yet other developers managed to do it, Bohemia Interactive with ARMA 3 for example (also self-published on Steam with local Retail-Publishers). The possibilities have been there for a while.
Bernd: For our plans for the retail release these opportunities came too late anyway. We will certainly work differently in the future.
GS: Since we're talking about the future. How does the future look for the series, more Rebirth or will we see an X4?
Bernd: We certainly won't be working on an X4 in the future. Our near future sees the development of Rebirth. There will be many smaller patches with gameplay improvements in the next two months. For the next year we will then switch to monthly patches to include bigger changes as well. But for now we have to do our homework with performance and stability before thinking about things like exterior view.
GS: Looking back on the release of X:Rebirth. Would you say it was a mistake to include features to the very end instead of finishing the present elements particularly regarding the UI and the general control scheme?
Bernd: Regarding the controls, no. There we always advanced in small steps and included new concepts only late. Whenever you solve old problems you also create new ones. Even another year of development wouldn't have changed that.
We already made some cuts with features after all and didn't for example implement AI commands that we would have loved to have on release.
But I think when you started the game on release, you didn't have problems with those endgame features in the first 10 hours. There the UI works and you're mostly annoyed by the by now mostly fixed bugs. Those are also the things that annoy me the most.
GS: So disregarding bugs the controls are especially in the beginning of the game good in your opinion?
Bernd: For the things you can do in the early game, yes. Trade with one ship, when you want to transport small amounts of goods, is sufficient. There are certainly things that can be improved but as long as you only have one ship it works actually. Difficulty arises when you want to concentrate on trade, which of course is something (not only) our old fans want. They want to control and build large fleets. We have yet to expand those features. There the UI isn't good.
GS: You kept the spreadsheet-menus from previous games for Rebirth. Rather than for example using symbol- or graphic-heavy menus everything works through classic lists. Did you try out other menus at some point as well?
Bernd: No, that's even a feature we removed. We decided against it due to expandability alone. Although you could certainly improve quite a few things in terms of presentation.
GS: So far Rebirth received the worst test results in the series. Do you think you can still turn the opinion on the game?
Bernd: I'm certain that we can positively influence the opinions of a lot of people over time but that is of course too late for the tests. And we obviously loose potential customers that way. Although it is certainly even worse for the players that bought our game and are now rightly displeased with it due to bugs. First we have to win those back. We can only do what we always did in the past as well: Not only fix the game far beyond the release but also expand it massively.
GS: How do you want to avoid a start like this next time?
Bernd: The team worked hard and I don't blame anyone. It is sad that the start went the way it did. But on the other hand the game is very successful too. There are many people who like the game in its current form. The game sold extremely well so we did some things right there as well. Even now we sell more games per day than with any prior X game. Which also means that for many people the features that didn't work properly on release aren't that important. Though in some cases that is also sad since we want to bring the depth of the economy and building to the new players as well.
Ideally I want to offer people who expect a Wing Commander a Wing Commander first and show them the depth of the universe later.
GS: But does that mean for you the good sale numbers justify the bad release?
Bernd: No, of course not. We always want to do it better. Especially the bugs that destroy the present game design are very annoying.
GS: Do you think you will still get it done?
Bernd: Of course. I already explained that in the forum. Phase One is stability for now. There we really need more testers. In the future we will certainly do that with Early Access. But we fixed more CTDs in the three weeks since release than the year before and the stability is already pretty good. But there are also always customers who run the game below minimal requirements such as 32-bit systems.
After that we will take care of the performance. Even if I don't want to say too much here. Those improvements take time. We currently do betas for the patches too. And we will continue the next weeks in the same way.
But of course you also have to mention that it apparently runs well for many people, after all we had always more than 10.000 players in the week after release. You have to consider the critiques with that in mind too. If you sell a lot of games and only one percent doesn't get it to work those people are of course legitimately angry and make themselves heard on the Internet. But you can't conclude from that that those are 50 percent of players. But regardless how many customers are affected it is always annoying.
GS: If you could turn time back a year. What would you do differently regarding features and the release?
Bernd: I probably wouldn't have changed any features and instead concentrated more on a bigger test before release.
Page 1: Not translated
Spoiler
Show
I will mention this in the starting-post
![[ external image ]](http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/apps/201310/f68de88f7d04142131974ba9ee6970bc1a9aafaa.jpg){kind=link}
![[ external image ]](http://media.steampowered.com/steamcommunity/public/images/apps/201310/727b6ae6ed53148a7b735aecd8641073ee150513.jpg){kind=link}