JohnJ interview

[barmyarmy]

Interview by BLIC Executive producer and Planetcricket forum member johnj.

IGN: How easy is it to translate the complex moves of cricket into a video game?

John Jennings: You're right in that cricket's a sport with incredible subtleties. But a lot of people just want to pick a pad up and slog the ball around the field. They don't want an overblown control system that requires the ambidextrous - and cramp-inducing - simultaneous use of both analogue sticks, D-pad and face buttons. But neither do they want dumbed-down 'press X to hit the ball with bat' gameplay. So the answer is to give a wide range of actions, but make things context-sensitive. We think we've achieved this pretty well in the game.

For example, the batting controls are grouped into defensive, offensive and lofted strokes. There's a huge variety of different types of these moves (front-foot, back-foot, square cut, pull shot etc), but the one that's used is determined by the timing of your action and position of the ball. For the hardened fan there's endless subtley in the bowling that you don't really need to know about unless you want to. The age of the ball can affect reverse swing. Aiming the ball into the cracks on a crumbling wicket can add subtlety to your bowling too. It's not essential to know everything but there's plenty in the game to master if you plan to play it for a while.

Rest of interview (from ign.com)

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

Nice find colin Now this interview makes my hopes a bit more from this game

 

[king_of_slaves_]

Thnx for informing BarmyArmy. :hpraise

 

[manee]

Not insightful into BLIC 07, but it does seem to hint heavily at a wii game and it paints JohnJ as a nice person, very good.

 

[rubbergenius]

I can vouch for that - John's a nice bloke

 

[Sureshot]

Does he pay your wages?

A good bit of depth there.

 

[rubbergenius]

No, but he's a workmate and I've worked with him on various LMA Manager games as well as this year's BLIC, so of course I'm biased

 

[rajeev]

from the description of the game it looks like blic 2007 is brilliant and well designed.

its worthy to be pre-ordered which i have already done.

i predict this is going to be the best cric game ever made...

 

[puddleduck]

He doesn't pay me anything and I can confirm Rubber ain't lying, John does seem a top bloke. Although if you ever wanted to see a grown man look geniunely scared and the most nervous laugh ever you should have been in the Codies open day when a very, very rare bug popped out for the first time with the game already shipped

 

[Deleted member 11215]

what was the bug?

 

[puddleduck]

Just don't play Pakistan v Bermuda in an unlicensed 6 over game on slog mode at Birmingham I think it was. Not unless you want to see what Mulik (Malik) looks like with a dodgy polygon that leads to a massive brown line stretching from his nose across the length of the pitch

 

[Deleted member 11215]

i dont think ill be playing that match ever

 

[puddleduck]

Yep, I think it's safe to assume it won't exactly destroy people's game. Only someone that eats kittens and steals candy from babies would play it on those settings, considering ODI cricket is where the main licenses are in this game, the chances of people actually playing it on those settings are slim to none. Oh and I think it's only on the 360 version as well.

 

[Punk_Sk8r]

I swear I posted this befor, just wanted to say its nice to have someone like JhonJ around and its great that the site has some good contacts....

 

[handsome]

Yeah.........I Agree