Senior producer Rob Hill talks to us about the intricacies of building a universe, developing a console and PC MMO, and keeping the shooter fresh.

ZAM: There have been several MMO shooters that launched recently, such as PlanetSide 2, or in beta, like FireFall. There’re even recently released cross-platform shooters like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Apart from the TV tie-in, what defines Defiance as a unique experience?

Hill: I think that biggest thing – and FireFall has some of this – I think the biggest thing is the massive co-operative experience. PlanetSide is three sides against each other and that’s it. [Defiance] is a very quick, visceral experience; we have a ton of upgrades. We have those overland competitive maps that don’t necessarily happen in any of those games, with the AI included. You may be hunting down a player, and then all of a sudden you get attacked by AI, and you have to decide “am I going to take out this AI, or am I going to go after the player?” As far as I know, none of those games have that. Those are some big things, and regardless of that, we’re the only one on three different platforms.

ZAM: If I’m playing on the PC, will I encounter Xbox or PlayStation 3 players?

Hill: No. We can do that right now – the PCs are playing with the PlayStations – and every day we put out a build for each, and we all play together. Unfortunately the first parties – Sony and Microsoft – aren’t too keen on us doing that, so no. We’re not allowed to.

ZAM: The current generation of consoles is reaching the end of its lifecycle. Will your build method handle new platforms?

Hill: It depends what those platforms are. We don’t have enough information to really make that determination yet. We’re hoping so, but right now we’re really focused on the current generation platform, and the reason is there’s just a ton of them out there. The market is gigantic, for all three of these platforms. Starting on a new platform’s great, it’s fun and the team loves to do it, but you start slow with that new platform, and then it grows over time. We really want to hit this thing while it’s got a ton of units and it’s still got some life left in it.

ZAM: Rather than going for a far-future look, Defiance has a near-future aesthetic. Was this a deliberate choice to make the setting feel familiar?

Hill: Yes. The whole universe of Defiance is to make things seem very familiar and alien at the same time. For the game itself, since we have to be this large-scale game, you have to be able to explore things. You have to not be able to go “oh, I can pull up a map of San Francisco, and now I know exactly where to go.” We had to take it and we had to alter it to make it unique, so you’re exploring. And that’s where the terraforming comes in, the new creatures that came with the aliens, or evolved with the terraforming. But at the same time, we didn’t want to go so crazy that people look around and go “really, I have no context here”.

So, with regard to the weapons or things like the golden gate bridge, or the St Lois Arch, that kind of stuff, it really ties it back to the familiar. We have the fantastical that we  take advantage of, but really kind of grounding it at the same time, so it’s not so fantastic that people are like “I don’t get this, it’s not interesting to me because it’s so far-out.”.

ZAM: Is there a risk that European players might have that problem?

Hill: I don’t know that that’s entirely true. Everybody knows what the Golden Gate Bridge is, as far as I know.

ZAM: The St Louis Arch though, is a bit more…

Hill: A little bit more, but that was a conscious choice by SyFy, for a number of reasons. They can make it fairly secluded, because of where it’s at. It’s a big city and everything, but they can destroy most of that and just have this central area, and have all this emptiness around them that they can explore. They also have the river that they can use, if they decide to go further. But outside of New York, it was the most iconic thing that they could really cling on to.

ZAM: In terms of launching, you’ve got a hard date to meet...

Hill: We do!

ZAM: I don’t remember anyone saying they’d hit a date four months out. Are you confident, are you under pressure?

Hill: Oh, it’s a lot of pressure! Game development, hitting your dates on something this ambitious is very difficult. It’s not just a massive game, it’s not just a massive shooter that’s never been done like this before, but it’s on the three platforms and we have to go through all the certification requirements and all that kind of stuff on the PS3 and the Xbox. So yes, it’s very daunting. But we’ve been building toward this date for quite a while, knowing it wasn’t going to move, and tailored the game and the things that we’re going to put in it to hit that date.

ZAM: Have you chosen a monetization model yet?

Hill: We haven’t picked one 100% yet, but we’re looking at a boxed product, so you’ll go to the store and you’ll buy it, or potentially download it through something like PSN. And then you have a choice – it’s dual – where you can decide “I want to pick things and pay for them piecemeal”,   or “I can pick a subscription, and get all of that stuff as I go, and get all of the DLC free as long as I’m subscribed.” So that’s kind of the model we’re looking at. Like I said, it’s not a 100%, but that’s where we’re shifting toward.

ZAM: Can you see other things spinning out from Defiance, such as books or comics?

Hill: We’re definitely talking to people about that kind of thing, whether it be comic books or novels, or whatever. Right now, both SyFy and we are really focused on the game and the show, but in the future, yeah, we’d really like to explore that thing. And again, that’s why we developed the universe the way it was. Because there are all sorts of places in the world that are completely different to what you have in North America, and we’d really like to explore that any way we can. Including the history; being able to tell the history that we can’t effectively tell in an hour television show. Or even in the way we tell stories - give them an idea of why the world is the way it is, and lots more detail that we can provide.

Defiance is currently in a Friends & Family alpha, and will expand to closed alpha soon. A closed beta test is set to follow before launch in April next year. On release, Defiance will be available for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Senior Contributing Editor