Rush, Boom, Turtle: Sins of a Sins Developer

Blair Fraser confesses that Sins of a Solar Empire could have been a very different game.
3/10/2009 7:51 PM | 1 Comments | Page 4 of 8

Chick: Oh god.

Fraser: Ships were spinning around the planets. It was possible to control or predict anything.

Chick: That's kind of endearingly naïve.

Fraser: Welcome to the early Sins development. And then we had this huge fallout because there were all these ultra-simulation people who went on a slag-fest, trashing us when we took all that out. I was getting threatening emails. It was ridiculous.

Chick: We RTS nerds can get very angry. So I want you to fess up. The game is called Sins of a Solar Empire because either you lost a bet or you were drunk.

Fraser: Neither.

Chick: I have to say I love the title in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.

Fraser: I was on the phone with my brother before we merged companies. He was in Nova Scotia and I was out here in Vancouver. We were trying to think of these names that resonated with us from the old sci-fi books. All the classic Golden Age sci-fi stuff. This was the name that just brought up those emotions. I'll admit it doesn't make much sense, or it's cheesy, or whatever, but it got the emotional response we were looking for within ourselves, so we stuck with it.

Chick: Do you remember other names that were being considered?

Fraser: Oh yeah, we still use it. Our entire code base in abbreviated by the term "GS". It's basically a vestigial remnant of the original name of the game. Galactic Supremacy.

Chick: Ouch. Wow. Yeah, that's as generic as you could imagine.

Fraser: Generic games work very well for working with code.

Chick: Galactic Supremacy. Holy cow.

Fraser: That really comes from this old board game I used to play called Supremacy.

Chick: Oh yeah. I loved Supremacy. Going for the early nukes.

Fraser: And your L-Stars and whatnot.

Chick: So that name sort of raises the question of what exactly are the "sins." I doubt there's an answer for that, but it leads to another issue. Some players have complained about the lack of a storyline. They want a campaign that tells the backstory, but they don't get one. So there's no indication of what these sins are or which solar empire is even sinning. How do you guys feel about these complaints that there's no single-player campaign?

Fraser: It's a very popular complaint and we are listening to it, but let me address something first. There is a backstory. There is a ton of lore. All the sins are known, and we know how it all plays out. All the races and abilities and the research and the names of the ships -- everything is unified under that umbrella. However, you're right. There's absolutely no campaign and very little storyline.

Chick: Well, let me interrupt you real quickly. Could you say in a nutshell what the sins are?

Fraser: Yeah, but it's probably better explained if we ever do a campaign. We were very influenced by the events going on in the US in the early 2000s. We were trying to think about what if things had gone this way or that way. I know I'm being vague, but I don't want to get into the details because I'm hoping we will put this out. We think it is meaningful.