Here at TGB one of the most excit­ing things we get to do is talk to the peo­ple who actu­ally make the games we know and love. Recently we got the amaz­ing oppur­tu­nity to sit down with Bernd Lehahn the direc­tor of Egosoft, devel­oper of the X series. Dur­ing our inter­view with Mr. Lehahn we were able to get some insights into why they make their games the way they do and we also got some excit­ing new details about their upcom­ing release X: Rebirth.

TGB: First I want to say thank you for tak­ing the time to talk with us at TGB. We are very thank­ful for the time you are spend­ing with us today.

TGB: The X series seems to be your pri­mary title as a com­pany. What has inspired you to con­tinue devel­op­ment of the x uni­verse instead of expand­ing into other areas?

Bernd Lehahn: This was really an easy deci­sion. We all love space games. Yes it is true, that only few devel­op­ers have the lux­ury of con­cen­trat­ing on one series, but I am sure this is not because they wouldn’t like to. It is rel­a­tively rare today that a devel­oper keeps full con­trol of his own IP and directly makes money with every sold copy of a game. Once you are in this posi­tion how­ever, it is great to work with a com­mu­nity of fans and build some­thing larger. This is also the rea­son why we were able to sup­port our games much longer than a nor­mal game devel­oper can afford. So it is all closely con­nected with keep­ing con­trol and build­ing a larger IP. Hmm… I hope I can answer some of these ques­tions with a sim­ple: Yes or No 😉

TGB: The X uni­verse has been quite suc­cess­ful for Egosoft. Why has Egosoft cho­sen not to expand onto other plat­forms such as the Xbox 360 or Playsta­tion 3? Are their hard­ware lim­i­ta­tions? Con­trol Problems?

Bernd Lehahn: Well it’s cer­tainly not a triv­ial task to bring such a com­plex and hard­ware hun­gry fran­chise to a con­sole. Our games have stood and will stand in the future, for total free­dom inside a very large uni­verse. I don’t think it’s impos­si­ble to bring this to a con­sole, but it’s a big task. So as a small devel­oper we have to con­cen­trate on one plat­form at a time.

TGB: Many pre­vi­ous PC exclu­sive devel­op­ers have com­plained that piracy is a big prob­lem for them and have moved away from the PC plat­form as a whole in some cases. Do you, as a devel­oper, feel piracy is a huge prob­lem for you?

Bernd Lehahn: Piracy sure harms us, but I think we found a good com­pro­mise in how we pro­tected our last two games (and in how we removed that pro­tec­tion after­wards). It is always impos­si­ble to judge how much more we could sell, but I do not believe any devel­oper moves to another plat­form just because of this. Con­soles are a big mar­ket and devel­op­ers would be stu­pid not to develop games for this market.

TGB: The X series, while it has some story ele­ments is pri­mar­ily an open sand­box. Has Egosoft ever con­sid­ered doing a more focused cin­e­matic cam­paign to drive the story behind the X uni­verse?

Bernd Lehahn: Yes, in fact with every game we have tried to improve on the sto­ry­telling and exper­i­mented with ways how to com­bine the open sand­box with a plot. X2 had some cutscene dri­ven plot ele­ments, X3:Reunion had plot minigames etc. But this was all not per­fect because we had to stick with a lot of the exist­ing designs. That’s another rea­son why X Rebirth had to be redesigned from scratch and is not just X4.

TGB : Speak­ing of X Rebirth are there any excit­ing new fea­tures that you can tell us about?

Bernd Lehahn: Many… I am writ­ing a series of post­ings for our own forums for the next few days in which I describe in depth a lot of the new game design and cool features.One very cool new fea­ture is drones for exam­ple. The player will have only ONE ship to fly him­self. But this one ship is super cool. You can move around inside, trans­port and talk to NPCs aboard etc. But you also can still own and con­trol drones and cap­i­tal ships. Drones can even be con­trolled in first per­son, so in real­ity you still have lots of ships to steer from cock­pit view. The only dif­fer­ence is that this is done using a vir­tual real­ity sys­tem (gog­gles come down from top of your cock­pit and the co-pilot takes over fly­ing the main ship) and you won’t die if these drones get destroyed. This sys­tem gives us a lot more free­dom in design­ing new and very diverse experiences.

TGB : Are you going to be adding some FPS style game­play to the X uni­verse? Plan­e­tary Inter­ac­tion perhaps?

Bernd Lehahn: No. Not that we didn’t think of it. Mar­ry­ing an X game with some­thing like Mass Effect sure brings some nice ideas, but again: We are a small devel­oper and have to do one step at a time. You WILL how­ever be able to step out of your ship and stand on plat­forms. Talk­ing to NPCs is a big and impor­tant way of con­trol­ling the game and a step to mak­ing things eas­ier (less com­pli­cated menus and sim­pler conversations).

TGB: Will X Rebirth uti­lize some of the newer graph­ics tech­nolo­gies such as DX11? Does DX11 present devel­op­ment chal­lenges for developers?

Bernd Lehahn: That’s not decided yet. X Rebirth will run on DX9 API as long as all the fea­tures that we need from the API are pos­si­ble with it. That does not mean we may not at some point also sup­port DX11, but for now we do not see a need. Our engine is quite dif­fer­ent from all the big estab­lished names, because it is designed specif­i­cally for a space game. We would love to use an engine like Unreal or the CryEngine, but unfor­tu­nately we had to develop it all our­selves, because this was the only way to have cut­ting edge space graphics.

TGB: So X Rebirth fea­tures an entirely new graph­ics engine?

Bernd Lehahn: An entirely new every­thing engine 🙂 The graph­ics engine was actu­ally replaced between X2:The Threat and the X3 games, but the X Rebirth engine is a much big­ger step, because it also means a whole new tech plat­form to sup­port mul­ti­thread­ing for AI, physics and other tasks.

TGB: The X titles have tra­di­tion­ally been very friendly and open to the mod­ding com­mu­nity. Your in game script gen­er­a­tor is a prime exam­ple of this. Dur­ing the last 10 years the num­ber of devel­op­ers who sup­port the mod­ding com­mu­nity have been greatly reduced. The recent announce­ment that Dia­blo III would not fea­ture any mod­ding sup­port at all had the mod­ding com­mu­nity in an uproar. Why has Egosoft cho­sen to be so closely tied to the Mod­ding com­mu­nity? Why do you think so many devel­op­ers are not releas­ing Mod sup­port with their new releases?

Bernd Lehahn: I can’t speak for oth­ers, but for us it’s an easy choice: Sup­port­ing mod­ders helps adding to our games and bring­ing more cool con­tent to our fans. With X Rebirth it is a bit harder than in the past because the whole tech plat­form has changed at once, so peo­ple can’t work with it before the game comes out. But we aim to release tools and doc­u­men­ta­tion as soon as pos­si­ble after the release of the game. TGB: last ques­tion 😀

Bernd Lehahn: phew…

TGB: Has the idea of adding multi-player ever been con­sid­ered for the X Universe?

Bernd Lehahn: Yes and the other half of the answer is again the same as twice above men­tioned: We are a small team and have to focus, but .… yes