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Flashpoint will feature a diverse set of character classes with unique traits. What philosophies do you take into balancing elements like leveling and character class?
Andrew Trese: At a high level in the game, we are balancing player agency--picking the exact bonuses from your level and class--with gameplay-driven impacts like gaining Traits in reaction to your actions or things that happen to you like getting shot or shredded. The interplay between these two create all sorts of new opportunities and enticing angles for players to explore. It's one of the most exciting parts of our core RPG system which we call the Motivation Engine.
Your promotional materials suggest the game might come to consoles as well--have you spoken with any representatives at Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft?
Cory Trese: We have had some preliminary discussions, and we have a good working relationship with Microsoft, Nintendo and in the past, Sony. We're working on a port of Star Traders: Frontiers to the Nintendo Switch and we discussed an Xbox port with Microsoft. Nothing is certain for Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, and that's why we didn't make any firm promises in the Kickstarter, but based on our experience with Star Traders: Frontiers we believe those ports are pretty likely.
Do you have any interest in developing multiplayer games in the future?
Cory Trese: We absolutely do have multiplayer dreams. We both have enough experience as software engineers to know that multiplayer isn't free--and supporting multiplayer infrastructure to a level we'd be proud of won't be easy or free. For us to release a multiplayer game, we'd need to be confident that it could live up to our standards of quality and support over the long-term. Secretly I want to make sci-fi ARGP MMOs but I'm not willing to bankrupt the company trying to make them.
