A role -playing game much too ambitious and an unorthodox team are not a good mix. In the case of Gothic, a cult classic arises from it.
At the end of our conversation, Mattias Filler says something very interesting. He worked for many years at Piranha Bytes as an author and game designer and witnessed which extremes can have the game development: excessive overtime, a fraud scandal in the millions and a split development team that only stands in the way and later breaks. His conclusion:
"You just do such a gothic once, or in our case two and a half times."
With Gothic, Gothic 2 and the extension of the raven, the loners from the Ruhr created something unique that still reverberates, although it is not always recognizable as they actually did. We would like to compare Gothic's development history with a roller coaster, but it would be wrong. A roller coaster remains at least on your rails, while Gothic is derailed.
Because the development history of the roles player is full of contradictions that tell of development teams that are annoying in retrospect. Who have a lot of bad luck, but also hold together, even if they have to do without a lot. For this five -part article series, we spoke to over 25 people who have shaped and shaped the brand to understand the development history from debut to Arcania: Gothic 4. Piranha Bytes himself did not want to give interviews, so mostly former Gothic developers talk about their past here.
However, it will not be a complete reconstruction. Almost two decades have passed since Gothic's publication in March 2001. Memories fade, over time turns more and more like a wallpaper in a smoking balance. Some developers were more able to recall the positive experiences, while others were more present in the negative experiences.
Also thanks to the helpwho have been with their favorite games for yearsDetailed archivesAnd youtube videos curated, the events can be arranged and interpret. The first part of our Making of series is initially about a dark big bang, the founding of Piranha Bytes, and how a cult classic began.
Exemplary sub -worlds
"When I haven't studied, I was hung in my student crafts for hours and built worlds with the editor," recalls Bert Speckels. Together with Ulf Wohlers and Dieter Hildebrandt, the computer science student has been working on their own game engine in MS-DOS for a while. Wohlers and Hildebrandt have been working in Bremen since their school days, spurred on by, one of the first games with 3D graphics calculated in real time.
When they move to Oldenburg for studying in the mid-1990s and get to know Speckels there, they form a team of three. At some point the rum tinkering is no longer enough for them. "Then we said, yes we just write down developer studios and jump into the cold water." They give themselves the team name Mad Scientist and pack a demo of their previous work on three disks. Because you are striving for an action role-playing game in dark fantasy dungeons, call the demo "dark".
Eight companies get to see this graphic framework. The only studio is the only studio that can imagine his own game with the Kruden Engine, especially for brittle economic simulations such as the planner and the office. Her main part of Funsoft wants to expand at that time and address an international audience with more ambitious projects.
But not only fun soft the three students are just right. Four Greenwood employees have been thinking about putting the animated Excel tables aside and pouring their enthusiasm for the role-playing genre into their own game. For Tom Putzki, Alex Brüggemann, Stefan Nyul and Mike Hoge, "dark" is the opportunity to wait.
From the initial plan of MAD Scientist to develop a game with her tamed technology for years, but after a few discussions, nothing becomes. At a time when 3D graphics are making greater progress at short intervals, their engine is simply outdated. In addition, the Greenwood people do not want Ultima underground clone from a first person perspective, but a role play in the third-person view with a detailed upper world.
After some persuasion on the part of Greenwood, the students finally recognize the advantages of a restart. "Anyone who knows software development knows that sometimes you are also happy to start again with what you have learned," says Speckels. And so engine number two, the Zengine, a more technically more sophisticated technology with higher resolution, Windows connection and a real polygonn network that can create an immersive 3D world.
The original Gothic design for leafing through
Here you can see one of the first design documents that Piranha Bytes create to convince publishers of their concept. Many elements such as the multiplayer, the two magic systems and a possible console adaptation will never make it into the finished game. Mike Hoge has to laugh today when he sees what she was going to do with Gothic at the time: the concept is far too ambitious, the development team is far too inexperienced. Because Piranha Bytes got the time to try and refine, it was somehow smooth.
A jail arises
While Mad Scientist is planning their new engine in Oldenburg, the conception phase for Orpheus project begins at Greenwood in Bochum, 230 kilometers away. "I know how I always sat in the conference room because it was calm there and fully painted DIN-A3 leaves," recalls Mike Hoge, who, according to his own statements, "has no idea about tutor and blow" at the time.
Together with his three Greenwood colleagues Putzki, Brüggemann and Nyul, he sits about the rough design for setting and gameplay in 1997. The game world should be designed in such a way that your building can also manage a small team. So you need some kind of limitation. However, an island seems too obvious to them. An invisible fence too silently.
“Wait a minute: invisible fence? You could make a magical barrier out of it, «Hoge explains the thinking process at that time. “And then the whole thing was ribbing: magical barrier, why is it there? Do they want to keep something out? Do they want to keep something in it? It could be a prison. Then the synergies came with the film ›The rattlesnake‹. «
However, before the considerations can only become a code line, Greenwood stumbles. Publisher Funsoft turns the money tap, possibly because of inconsistencies between the two companies. This is a disaster for the employees.
»We spent a whole weekend in the office conference room and thought about how it can go on. And then four individual companies were founded, «says Tom Putzki about the foundation of Piranha Bytes in October 1997. In addition to the four former employees, Greenwood founder Markus Scheer as a silent partner is also involved in the emergence of Piranha bytes. Scheer, who later becomes important in this story, pumps around 300,000 marks into the developer studio.
