Gamer Day 3: Into the Fortress of Trion Studios

How often does one get a chance to visit a gaming studio, get a personalized tour and also get to eat dinner with Scott Hartsman? If you’re not a member of the press-at-large, then the answer’s got to be something like, “Almost never!” Rift Junkies has been working hard for almost eight months now and Trion invited out to California to show their appreciation for our hard work. It was a unbelievably fun packed day where Rift Junkies got to get into the heart of Rift and see how it was made. We got to meet everyone, from the art and animation teams, the dungeons and raids guys, to the translators, to the wizards of technology (Engineers), who keep the game ticking, the tireless and sleepless Q&A guys, the UI team and the PR and Marketing folks. Erick “Zann” Adams was the fansite liaison that day and you’ll have to tweet him about his scarf.

The whole event could not have been possible though, if not for the efforts of Cindy “Abigale” Bowens and the Community Team for organizing everything.

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Gamer Day 3 began on a warm winter morning walking through the parking lot heading towards Trion Studios and Redwood City, CA. There is a reason why this article is titled “Into the Fortress…”; as we were lead into the building via an extremely angry elevator, security cards had to be used at least three times. The elevator opened up onto the fifth floor where all the developers were busy making the game we are all playing.

You will probably wonder, as you read this article, why there is so much vague information. After a quick breakfast, we had to sign an NDA saying that we can’t spill the beans. However, there was a round table where we got to speak with Scott Hartsman and Russ Brown. More on that later though. Even the pictures we took of the development area were not meant for public consumption.

The Art and Animation Teams

We were first brought through the art and animation teams. The section was pretty large where you had different groups of devs working on many projects. Just think of all the animations in every aspect of the game and these guys were working on all of them. You know when a rift opens and you see the planar “stuff” coming flying out? We saw how those were created. We got to see a couple of ugly looking NPCs and learned how they animation team made them move around. We even got to see a few guys working on the world itself, texturing landscapes and working on lighting.

The Raid Team

Not much can be said. We were all sworn to secrecy. Here is what we can say though. I saw Hammerknell. It is indeed epic.

.. epic ..

The Rift Event Team

The guys were a group of maniacal and devious developers that are always constantly thinking of clever ways of dropping awesome events on your head when you spawn different expert and raid rifts. Just like the Raid Team, we can’t go into any detail, but just so you’re prepared, there are some very awesome events coming your way and you haven’t even seen the beginning of what they can do so far.

The Engineering Team

Next the Engineering Team gave us a show. We got to see the different tools the developers use to track everything you do. The team has the ability to track everything you do, from the framerates you are getting, to the population density of a specific area in the game, to how many times you respec your character on a daily basis. You know how master loot was added in Beta 6? That guy was there, unfortunately he wasn’t around later at the hotel bar so I could buy him a beer. Maybe next time.

The UI Team

We met everyone that was working on the UI and we chatted a bit about how things work, how the development cycle works and what they have their eye on. There should be big announcements coming down the road for everyone. So hold on tight.

The Q&A Department

These guys working very hard at making sure everything works. They’re almost like medics. They get called into work at all sorts of different times to test out different builds to make sure each build is ready to be pushed out onto the servers. You would think most Q&A departments would look worn out and tired this close to launch. Everyone seemed happy and excited about the game and were having fun working on Rift. I’m pretty sure they weren’t fed any sort of happy pills before we got there either. We got to meet Amary, Queen of the Patch Notes as well, it’s a much more difficult job than you think it is.

Localization and Translation Team

Rift is a game that is being developed in English, but this game is being published in many different countries and in three languages which also include German and French. Every time a tooltip is changed, every time a quest is added these guys have to translate it. And no, it’s not as simple as translating “Hello” into “Bonjour”. The thing about localization is that you have to translate cultural references into something that would make sense for someone in Eastern Europe. Different terms we may use in the US would sound extremely odd or even insulting if they were merely translated into other languages. Even things like the length of the text cause major issues. German, more often than not, translates into more text space than English. This causes all sorts of problems inside different UI elements where their size has to get changed or new text has to be written.

After lunch and an hour or so of demoing different parts of the game we got a chance to sit down and have a round table discussion with Scott Hartsman and Russ Brown. The whole question and answer section will be the part of it’s own article. But we got a full hour of some great questions from everyone in the fansite team. And Scott and Russ answered all of them.

The whole experience was phenomenal. Everyone on the team was excited to see us and were more than happy to show off what they could do. Many people in the community, whether on the Official Forums or elsewhere, think the devs either ignore players or simple don’t listen and read the forums. Well, on almost every single desk there was one monitor that had the forums open. So the next time you might find yourself saying, “How come you don’t read…” you should probably just stop.

Teljair and I both want to thank Trion and everyone on the team all the way up to Trion CEO Lars Butler for having us for the day. It was truly an amazing time.

Zann – Draegan – Teljair