PlanetCricket Cricket Life 1 Q&A

MattW

Administrator
Admin
Big Ant
PlanetCricket Award Winner
Melbourne Stars
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Profile Flag
Australia
Recently PlanetCricket conducted an interview with James Carlton of Gamebience, about the future of what is a game that sounded brilliant in theory, but failed to deliver.

PC - PlanetCricket
JC - James Carlton

gamebienceweblogo_small.png

PC - Many of our members have been frustrated by the apparent silence from Gamebience? after missing the initial 7/7/07 release date, what steps are being taken to reassure potential customers to trust that Cricket Life will be released and that the delay was justified? Has the delay meant a scaling back of the initial plans for the game, or an expansion of the feature set?
JC - It's always difficult for any new setup to enter the full-efficiency phase immediately. Considering the fact that we have fused two different aspects/elements - career management and 3D game-play into one game, it must not be surprising if it takes over 2 years to develop. Especially when you consider that other projects of similar magnitude have over 100 people assigned while on the other hand we don't enjoy the same privilege, it is only fair to expect a development time of at least 2 years (which would still be a challenge for a start-from-scratch development).

Due to limited resources, from time to time, many members developing the game had to be transferred to other divisions of our parent company for completing other development works. There have been certain instances when we had to revamp our creative team as the publishing team was not satisfied with them.

It is very important to prepare the framework as flexible as possible so that future editions can be built over it efficiently and get rolled-out smoothly in a normal development course of about 8-12 months. Furthermore, it has been our policy to extend development or incorporate future features into the product whenever we anticipate a significant delay, so that the gamers get features that's proportional to the time spent in the overall project. Although the actual development time was just under 2 years, we have delayed it over 8 months since last August for reasons other than development issues.

We also need to analyse the market, predict the entry of other market players and then strategically time our release. We had a target release of a summer or a pre-X-mas release this year, but I wouldn't say that the release is around the corner yet due to the other market releases this year. The good news for the gamers is this would push in more features into the game, possibly including a full-fledged Online/Multi-player mode (if you see the) official feature list of Cricket Life 1, only a partial online playing mode was included) among other features.

It is certainly a financial burden for the company whenever it delays a product, and I assure the gamers that we are here to get it released. We have spent a lot of resources in the development of the game. We also signed-up Mike Hussey as the brand ambassador of the game, and all these were done with the intention to get the product out. The Cricket Life that would have released on 7/7/7 would have been mostly a career-management oriented-game whereas the Cricket Life that would relase now would also incorporate full-fledged 3D playability. The development since then has been focussed on 3D playability. The previous framework was only PC-based and very restricted, whereas the new framework we have adopted is cross-platform and flexible.

In short, the game has evolved since from being merely a career management-focussed game to being an HD quality 3D sports game with career management.

PC - Every time we ask users on PlanetCricket what they want in cricket games, a Career mode always comes up as a major want for players. To date however, no game has really achieved this, with the exception of the more management based games. Where does this leave Cricket Life? Is it a case of untapped potential or real difficulty in making a cricket game with a good career mode?
JC - It is certainly not difficult to bring out a product being only a Management genre or a 3D Sports genre. If we were to release Cricket Life as only a management game with no 3D playability, or, with scaled-down 3D playability (as was initially planned), then it would have been released a lot earlier. Likewise, it wouldn't have been a big task to release a 3D Sports genre game as well. In fact, some members of our publishing team had seriously considered limiting the 3D sports genre part of the game, and to release the game in Q1 2008.

However, it wouldn't have made sense to release a scaled-down 3D version of the game, as it would not have given the gamers the best experience and the essence of Cricket Life. What we are trying to do is not only to keep the career-management part realistic, but also to incorporate a full-fledged 3D playability. In short, we want to give the user a lot of options to choose from, and the flexibility to modify and adapt the game the way they want it.

PC - The new name of Cricket Life 1 leads to the obvious idea that a Cricket Life 2 is planned. What things haven't made the cut for CL1 that you would like to see for the next version, and are updates/bug fixes going to be made for the original game?
The delay in releasing the 1st edition of Cricket Life has automatically pushed in a lot of features that were initially planned only for Version 2. The game's not been under significant development (except for Online/Multiplayer feature development) since mid-last year as most team members were transferred to other divisions. This is because we had planned a release for mid or late 2009, as explained above.

If there is a considerable delay further, the game would go under development to incorporate some of the features that were planned for Version 2. We expect to make visual changes to the game so that it looks and feels like the game of the next decade.

PC - In our previous interview there were talk of every domestic cricket competition, and very high customisation, is this all still available?
JC - We have not scaled-back any feature that was planned earlier. Customisation is the key to the game. The game also provides a scripting engine, to customise the game further, with ease.

PC - The original plans were for Cricket Life to be basically a cricket simulation with a 3D match engine, if the delay was to expand the 3D side of things, just how extensive is this now? Especially in terms of the quality of the graphics, animations and stadiums. Is there any side of the game that isn't covered in the 3D play?
JC - I may have answered a part of this question in one of the above answers. The majority of the development time has indeed gone into developing a full-fledged 3D match engine. We have evolved it into a very flexible and a great quality engine. I am aware from the emails we receive that some people think the recommended 1 GB Graphics card implies inefficiency of the engine.

However, this isn't the minimum requirement. You can still run the game in your laptop with the integrated graphics card but you will be playing a game that certainly won't look like the game of the next decade. If you wish to experience the full graphics capability of the game, then you really need at least a good quality 512MB dedicated graphics card. The more knowledgeable person will know that there's a vast difference in performance between one graphics card model and the other. You can't just say you need a 512 MB or a 1 GB graphics card. There are other factors to consider, such as the transistors or the bandwidth, the clock-speed and so on. The average user may not know these figures and hence we can only say you need a 256 or 512 or 1 GB Graphics card. Of course, if your 512 MB graphics card is one of the latest ones, it may be more than enough to run the game with full graphics quality.

If some people consider adding more 3D stuff (like 3D Hairs instead of 2D), more mo-cap animations and high resolution textures as inefficient, then it is certainly inefficient. As for the question on stadia, it is certainly not of inferior quality and has been improved a lot.

PC - Has Gamebience? looked at the feedback on both management games and the simulation games in order to guide the path for making a successful combination of the two? What steps have been taken to keep one side of the game from dominating the other?

JC - It is up to the user to decide whether he wants to focus on managing the career of the player or to focus on actually playing the entire match or both. Some users prefer to 'skip' the matches by releasing the control to the computer to auto-complete the match, while others may like to only play their own player's part - such as while his player is batting or bowling his overs and letting the computer to auto-complete the rest of the overs. If the user himself is a captain, then he certainly may not want to spoil his reputation (if any!) by losing matches if the computer auto-completes the match on his behalf.

PC - What commentators (if any) are being utilised? Also, what role does game icon Mike Hussey have in-game?

JC - Initially we had planned for having multiple commentators in the game, but due to lack of time we had to scale it down to only 2. I am not sure if more commentators will be added, but only in case of a significant delay in release. Mike is the brand ambassador the game, the face of the game. We will be utilizing his promotional appearances to promote the game when in market.

By questioning the in-game role of Mike, you may actually want to ask, do you have licensed players in-game? Some of our channel partners too want us to get licensed in-game players. They try to compare Cricket Life 1 with other games and get it some kind of licensing. Not too long ago, our Aussie channel partner negotiated with the concerned authorities to get the Aussie & NZ teams licensed. But a lot of restrictions were imposed by the authorities which would have taken away the essence of the game. For instance, there are many endorsement/sponsorship companies featured in the game(some are real-life while others are fictional) to simulate the real-life market dynamics. If we don't get the game licensed, we have the luxury to include all such companies, and also let the users to add/modify more. If we get licensed teams, we are supposed to restrict the endorsement of the players to that of their real-life counter-parts.

For example, if Mike Hussey's real-life bat sponsor is Kookaburra, then in-game we can't give the user, who may choose to play as Mike, the ability to choose another bat sponsor after the contract with Kookaburra ends, for example, in year 2015 of in-game time. This indeed is a big restriction and does not make any sense to the game. Moreover, we are obliged not to let the gamers (at least in theory) add or modify the endorsement deals, sponsorships and anything that's tied up with real life. This will definitely take away the freedom to depict the game as real as possible. While this is just one instance of the potential restrictions that would be imposed on the game, there are more, which would paralyze the game-play.

That is why, for a game like Cricket Life, it is certainly not a great option to get the licensed teams as it imposes unwanted creative restrictions. I am sure this isn't such a big problem, as the gamers and the gaming community can modify and/or create a replica of the real-world teams soon after its release.

PC - What platforms is Cricket Life 1 planned for? And how do you intend to distribute the PC version, will it be in stores or an online purchase?

JC - Initially we planned a PC-only release, but we are getting very frequent emails telling us to release the game in XBox-360, PS3, and as well as in Wii. Our current engine is fully flexible and cross-platform but this is all I am allowed to say. Although its too early to talk about these things, the game will be sold through retail channels - both in-stores and online.

------------

Also, Gamebience note that the old screenshots do not represent the game in its current form. They hope to be able to provide us with some new ones soon. They were non-committal on an exact release date, probably for the best. However they promise to keep on working on the game up until the release, so a delay means a better eventual game, well that's what they are saying at least.
 

coolz_hari

International Coach
Joined
Jul 27, 2008
Location
City of Destiny
Is it an arcade game or Simulation game or both features are there.

If both features are there it will be a revolution to the cricket games.

I hope they will do what ever they said .
 

maximus76

School Cricketer
Joined
May 29, 2009
Online Cricket Games Owned
this is going to SUCK so much its not funny...problem with it being a next decade game is it will look crap when its launched next century!

The fact that they have two blokes working on this who get moved to other divisions at a whim means stay clear of this crappola
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top