JVC Interview on Twitch

[{CH}ArticleBot]

Today's Twitching session about the H7 map editor also featured an interview with Jon Van Caneghem, who had some interesting things to say about the early days of the franchise and the road it has taken to today. It starts about 1 hour and 26 minutes into the video and here's a short summary of it.

• Currently works on mobile games. Still races cars.
• Tells of what it was like Heroes 1 and 2.The size of the team when working on H1 was 10-15 people, H2 needed about 50.
• H2 started out as a strategy game, but went in the direction of RPG with the expansions.
• Why was H3 such a success? They had learned from the earlier games, and lots of time was put into the editor.
• Was surprised and pleased to hear that Heroes games was a success in Russia and China. Sales were low there (the games were pirated instead), so they didn't know.
• Favourite Heroes game: H3 since he spent lots of time on it.
• Some stuff about the Forge faction and mixing fantasy with sci-fi.
• JVC felt the pressure to turn Heroes into a real-time game as more and more games went in that direction but eventually decided for it to stay turn-based.
• Excited that Ubisoft took over the franchise and continued making games - that they would live on.
• JVC was approached by Ubisoft back in the days of creating H5 but was busy with his new company and couldn't dedicate his entire time to they decided not to work together.
• Favourite features of the Heroes games: balance and replayability, and having an editor players could use.
• Questions from the VIP fans:
  • Would he still mix fantasy and sci-fi together if creating the games today? For the RPG games, yes. That was part of the original canon.
  • Kreegans invented as a race that would invade and cause havoc. Not the same as the Creators, which started off as being the dev team. The Ancients started out being the same thing as the Creators - the people making the game. It was integrated into the game when fans put the story together.
  • Did want to make an MMO but never got to try that. Also liked the direction Dark Messiah took, but generally just likes that new games are created.

Watch live video from Ubisoft on Twitch
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[Ironmallet]

JVC, I worship thee.

[Skullmane]

Would you guys mind removing the autoplay from the Twitch embed? The music's great, but I don't really want it playing every time I open the site.

[mr.hackcrag]

[*]JVC was approached by Ubisoft back in the days of creating H5 but was busy with his new company and couldn't dedicate his entire time to they decided not to work together.

And with one dark turn, fans were doomed to a tragic fate. Well, at least H5 turned out quite well in the end.

[overall]

looks quite simple and clear i was thinking giving it a try if i end up liking the game....

[Kalah]

I asked the developers to create Youtube-videos of the Twitch streams, which they now have. I was as annoyed with the auto-play feature as everybody else, but I don't see a way to turn it off - at least not on Twitch. Youtube is therefore the best alternative solution.
In the future, I will not embed the Twitch videos directly. Instead, I will create a hyperlink within an image of the video.

[hellegennes]

How come no one asked him if he would be willing to reconsider working for Ubisoft in the future? How awesome would that be?

[Kalah]

Basically, they did; if you read between the lines it would depend upon his having the opportunity to dedicate all of his time to the project, and if he has another career going (which he does), it won't work for either party. I also assume that it depends on whoever is going to make the games and whether they are willing to work with him or prefer to go it alone.