Question Time: Your Chance To Interview Volition’s Sean Kennedy

23 responses to “Question Time: Your Chance To Interview Volition’s Sean Kennedy”

1. 

   Welshie

   June 24, 2009 at 1:12 pm

   What inspired you to pursue a career in video game development? Bonus points for using world domination or chicks in your answer.

   Reply
2. 

   stalker

   June 24, 2009 at 1:33 pm

   Hey Sean! I want to know why you made Normal difficulty so hard in Red Faction Guerrilla? It’s way more fun to play on Casual and smack dudes with the hammer.

   Reply
3. 

   Cerzel

   June 24, 2009 at 1:55 pm

   Do we get to ask two questions?

   Any thoughts of a sequel being made, or other games using the same engine?

   When playing Red Faction: Guerrilla, the mission that most stuck out to me was the one where you kidnap and interrogate the EDF commander. It made me realise “Man, we really are the terrorists.” Were there any mixed views on this mission during development? Did you question the inclusion of it in the game? Were any big changes made to the mission before you settled on it?

   Reply
   1. 

      David Wildgoose

      June 24, 2009 at 2:09 pm

      Ask as many as you want. I’ll be sending the best ones to Sean to answer.

      Reply
4. 

   Mike720

   June 24, 2009 at 2:18 pm

   Sean, first of all I just wanna say how much I love Red Faction, it’s heaps of fun! My question is about how Volition makes open world games like Saints Row and Red Faction and how you go about doing that differently to stuff like GTA. What’s the most important part of an open world game to get right? Is it the freedom, all the activities, the vehicles, the missions?

   Reply
5. 

   JimmySnuff

   June 24, 2009 at 2:25 pm

   Great game, bringing freedom to Mars was awesome!

   What’s the likelyhood we will see some DLC for this title?

   Reply
6. 

   tomnookisdead

   June 24, 2009 at 2:26 pm

   The destruction aspect of RFG is amazing, it’s so far ahead of anything I’ve seen in other games. How much of a challenge was it for your programmers to come up with the tech for it? And how did it also challenge your designers to build gameplay when they don’t know if the player’s going to destroy an entire building?

   Reply
   1. 

      David Wildgoose

      June 24, 2009 at 2:27 pm

      Good question, tomnookisdead!

      Reply
7. 

   David Wildgoose

   June 24, 2009 at 2:29 pm

   Might ask one myself if no one minds…

   Sean, as part of a promotion for RFG, THQ recently asked Australians to name the biggest eye sore in the country. The Gold Coast won. What are the chances of allowing us to actually take a space hammer to the Gold Coast thanks to a future DLC pack?

   Reply
8. 

   lfc

   June 24, 2009 at 3:53 pm

   Can you give me some tips for playing online? I really suck. Whats your fave backpack and weapon combination?

   Reply
9. 

   Roman Bellic

   June 24, 2009 at 3:57 pm

   Will we ever see a new Summoner game from Volition? I’d love to see what you guys could do with an action RPG on 360 and PS3!

   Reply
10. 

    TamX

    June 24, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    Hi Sean,

    I’m looking to get into game development – I’m studying design right now. I wanted to ask you, since you have worked on a wide variety of games in different genres, how do you maintain enthusiasm for a project if it’s not something you’re personally interested in playing?

    I really want to make games, but I don’t know if I could work on something I’m not interested in, like a sports game or a racing sim.

    Reply
11. 

    Jess

    June 24, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    How does Volition compare to the other companies you’ve worked for, like EA and Rockstar? Is EA just a corporate machine and is Rockstar just full of wankers?

    Reply
12. 

    Ryno

    June 24, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    the destruction element to RFG made the way i approached the missions completely different to any other games i have played.

    with proof the technology works, although built up with a lot of effort. how long do you think till this level of deformable terrain makes its way into mainstream games in a similar way that physics have since seeped in since half life 2?

    for example could we see this level of destruction by saints row 4?

    Reply
13. 

    Mr Waffle

    June 24, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    I suppose I’ve got a couple of related questions…

    There are a lot of design choices that almost seem to ‘limit’ the limitless fun that can with the destruction in the game. For example, buildings that don’t (normally) respawn, an extremely limited number of singularity bombs (that you couldn’t save for later), and almost no walker spawns outside of missions at all. Why were these choices made?

    I assume at least some of these decisions were made to keep the player underpowered to emphasise the guerrilla aspect, but what about the endgame, like in Saints Row 2, where you have access to virtually everything? Will we see Heavy Walkers littering the landscape in DLC?

    Reply
14. 

    Daniel Purvis

    June 24, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    When developing Red Faction: Guerrilla, the game obviously takes advantage of the brilliant destruction the engine allows for. In fact, all of the missions revolve around bringing stuff down or blowing shit up in some way. Were there other key features that you would have liked to include to broaden the mission variety in Red Faction: Guerrilla, or additional methods of destroying stuff that you weren’t able to include, and what were some of the best?

    What were some of the limits the team imposed on themselves in order to ensure each element of the game was polished, rather than include a swathe of elements half-finished?

    Reply
15. 

    Arach

    June 24, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    So uh, let’s say if one was in the process of refinancing a mortgage, selling vital bodily organs and using their unsalvaged remains as a object of sexual slavery – who would one sign the cheques out to to get Freespace 3 greenlit?

    Or would you prefer PayPal?

    Reply
16. 

    qwerty

    June 24, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    Any chance of there being a Red Faction: Guerrilla 2 sometime in the future ?.

    Reply
17. 

    trent

    June 24, 2009 at 9:01 pm

    Why oh why wasn’t Red Faction: Guerrilla online co-op

    Trent

    Reply
18. 

    Jackablade

    June 24, 2009 at 10:14 pm

    If I was to ask really nicely, would you and your team develop a new Freespace game? Pretty please.

    Reply
    1. 

       Jackablade

       June 24, 2009 at 10:19 pm

       I’m less inclined than Arach to sell my organs for the chance at said bestest space flight simulator ever, but I could probably appropriate a few if you wished.

       Reply
19. 

    Joe

    June 25, 2009 at 7:20 am

    May I ask, are you currently in production of a new Saint’s Row game? Or is all of that just rumor?

    Reply
20. 

    Anonymous

    June 25, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    I also desperately want to know what is up with Freespace 3?

    – How many of the original Freespace staff still work at Volition? (ie: could a Freespace be done without losing the original flavor).

    – Does Volition own the IP? Are there any plans? Do people even talk about it in meetings? Would they sell it to someone else? What’s the biggest hindrance to it becoming a reality?

    What gets me is that Freespace 2 won so many awards and didn’t sell strongly, and yet the company said many times it was a fault of not being properly advertised.

    So why don’t they do one on the assumption it’s going to be advertised properly? Argh!

    (I’ve gone through single player campaigns in 1 and 2 at least a dozen times each over the past decade. Silent Threat just once because it was crap).

    Reply