MasPingon:
When was the last time you played Painkiller?
Adrian Chmielarz:
It’s been a year or two… I haven’t been playing single player for obvious reasons – I’ve created half of the levels and so I know them by heart. I went through them hundreds of times (and I don’t exaggerate). I don’t play multiplayer because it’s high time I changed priorities and so there are many other things in my life that I’m interested in. Playing QuakeWorld five years in a row and Painkiller for almost a year was enough for me. I’ve got plenty of other interests that I’d finally like to explore. Well, it’s not a mystery that I sometimes long for a swift action as well as flying round the map…
MP:
Do you visit any sites devoted to PK? Did you support anyone during the CPL? Or maybe PK is a closed chapter for you and you don’t care if anyone remembers the game?
AC:
PK is the best thing that I co-created so of course I’m still curious of what’s going on around it. When someone gives me a link to check out, I always will. If someone makes a fragmovie, I always download it. I didn't have a favorite on the CPL, I just wanted the best to win.
MP:
Are you satisfied with PK? What do you see as a failure from today's perspective and what are you proud of the most?
AC:
There are many things I'm proud of, so maybe let's focus on the failures. I can name three major ones.
Firstly, a weak storyline. Our original storyline was a bit different, with a crazy latino-lover hero. I'm sending him to you[a picture], it's an old 5y.o. shit so don't laugh
Anyway, the action took place on Earth etc. But Dreamcatcher decided that the story was.. too difficult for an american gamer, so they made up their own story. In exchange, we got more time to spend on the game, so we agreed. I regret doing that a bit.
Secondly, the construction of the game. The levels are not linked together. This arcade style has its fans, but the game could have more fans if it'd had a more condensed story to tell and if the levels had been logically connected. Or at least half-logical. And if there'd been some real-time cut scenes or mini quests. But we didn't have enough time, people or money to do it, so I guess we did a good job with the budget we had.
Lastly, the multiplayer. There were problems with it, mostly because at the very beginning it was supposed to be an add-on to the game, and then the publisher built it up. It's a really nice multi, but its major problem is that it's not friendly to noobs. If a raw player connects to a server full of good players, they make a mess of him before he notice he already got respawned. In such a games as BF1942 or UT newbies can always do something. They can go for a run trough the meadow, ride a tank, shoot someone from time to time. We done multiplayer as we wanted to, mp we like to play, but it's totally unfriendly for a mass market and I fell that this was mistake.
MP:
Why did you break contact with the community so suddenly? Were you angry about the critics concerning BOOH or was there any other reason? Why has The PCF been silent for 2 years?
AC:
Well, I'm satisfied with BOOH and I don't care about nags. You need to understand how the market works. You believe that PCF has something to say regarding PK? Bullshit. Dreamcatcher has the copyrights and they can do with this game whatever they want. That's the payoff that every young developer has to agree on. A company agrees to finance and publish a product on condition that IP (Intellectual Property) will belong to them. For ever. And now let’s get to the point. After we made BOOH we went for PK XBOX . When it was finished we were just fed-up with Painkiller. Not because we hated it, but we got really tired – we’d spent about 4 four years on this game (since 2001). So we offered to the publisher this really great, cool, big budget game and THQ agreed on our conditions. But Dreamcatcher did not have much money because they had made some bad investments (I’ve always held that PK is the only good thing they had) and they simply couldn’t afford to cooperate with us any longer. And we wanted to develop and make better games. That’s how we (DC and PCF) went different ways.
We’ve lost contact with the community because we have nothing more to say regarding PK. We would give you the whole source code if we could. But we can’t because there’s Havok in the code and there’s no PK without Havok. We’ve been working on some new projects for 2 years now and PK is probably a closed chapter. It’s a pity because we’re all very fond of the game.
And we remain silent, basically because when we were working for THQ we were obliged not to talk about what we were doing for the first year. And after what happened we still can’t say anything because it’s still THQ that owns the project.
MP:
How do you recall the cooperation with DC? Was it nice?
AC:
Yes, it was really nice. Apart from the storyline I mentioned, they let us do with the game whatever we wanted to do. Their main producer Robert Stevenson is someone who understands games as well as the process of making them. You can’t make games so ‘freely’ these days. Today you need a lot of people, planners, managers and tons of paper etc.
MP:
Why won’t PCF make a continuation of PK? Is it the definite end of cooperation with DC?
AC:
In this business, like in any other, never say never. But chances for that are close to zero. We’re interested in big, worldwide productions and that requires a large budget. Still not as large as in the west, but much larger than PK’s budget. And DC (JoWood) is looking for cheap developers.
MP:
Do you (PCF) have any rights over PK?
AC:
Absolutely not, zero, none. If we had, we would be doing PK2 for a different company. You wouldn’t believe how many giant game producers were asking us to do that.
MP:
Don’t you regret that the sequel of PK is going to have a different father?
AC:
Well, of course I do. We put so much sweat, blood and tears into this game. It was really hard work. Cool, but hard. And the fact that it’s somebody else who’s working on that (PK) has one good and one bad point for me. The good thing is that if it’s something nice, I’ll play it with pleasure. The bad thing is that I’m afraid it’s not going to be anything good. People believe that it’s quite easy to create a FPS game, whereas it’s totally not true. If JoWood has found – in a way – the second beginning PCF (cheap, but good), then there is hope that it won’t be crappy. Well, we’ll se. I wish them well – and it’s honest not just curtesy.
MP:
Are you planning anything competitive for PK 2 or maybe yo’re focused on the console market?
AC:
Generally, those two things are not mutually exclusive. I’d love to share some details on our plans/work, but I can’t.
MP:
Your next game was supposed to be created for consoles only. Is it still actual, regarding you’re not working with THQ anymore, or maybe you’re working on something else?
AC:
As I said, it’s a completely new project.
MP:
How do you see the future of PCF? Some people wonder if your website is the only thing that’s left of you.
AC:
The future of PCF is in our hands. I mean, if our present project is a success, we’ll be home. To make it a successful product, we have to work very hard for the next couple of months and that’s exactly what we’re doing. The website is not updated cause there aren’t any official news.
MP:
Do you feel like playing ffa or 1vs1 some day?
AC:
Don’t tempt me, please don’t... I don’t have time for this, I have to work
Best wishes
Adrian
User Comments
No comments yet! Be the first to add your thoughts!
