Piranha Bytes - Bjorn Pankratz Video Interview

*Waits patiently for the German watchers for a translation*. Thanks in advance guys!
 
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There aren't any new infos on either the Gothic or Risen series. The whole clip is a just a few game developers/pr guys talking a bit about their respective studios. I have no idea if the clips are all there is or if they are just a part of a bigger documentary.
 
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Okay, here a rushed summary:

- the house you see in the beginning is where Piranha Bytes is located.

- Piranha Bytes was founded when some people got together who wanted to make "the msot awesome game that ever existed"

- with Gothic they consider themselves lucky to have fit to the current trends

- Piranha Bytes makes "Ruhrpott-Fantasy" ("Ruhrpott" is kind of a local slang for the area of Germany they are located), which is harsher: "You enter a room and there are a couple of assholes who would kill you for a head band, and they let you know that".

- one of the interesting things in game design is to see which things you can make the player do, such as harvesting beet. In that case, the player can express himself by saying something like "Are you kidding me?" in the options.
 
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The "Ruhrpott" is the area of the "Ruhrgebiet", named after the river Ruhr - and it's THE region of coal and steel, traditionally. All of this hard, dirty labour.

Nowadays, however, there ain't much of it anymore, steel yes, but no more a lot of coal mining since the mines are empty on the surface and mining becomes more and more expensive …

They are trying to transform the Ruhr-Region into something better nowadays, into something with more culture and arts in it. The loss of heavy indistries firms must be counterweighed by something else … and this is what they (the gorvernment there) tries to do …

But because of the closing of so many heavy indistry companies, there was once a relatively high rate of unemployment, too. I don't know how muh this has changed, but as far as I know the region is slowl growing again … Into another direction than heavy industry, though …

If I was to chose from a similar region somewhere else to compare it … I think I'd take the Manchester (UK) region, according to its cliché …
 
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Yeah. having lived in Düsseldorf (close to the Ruhrpott) as well as in Sheffield (near Manchester), I would say that the Ruhrpott is tryng to be what Manchester and Sheffield are today. Ex-industrial cities with a new focus on the quaternary sector, i.e. education, media etc.
 
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Very interesting series of videos. Interesting topics, high production values. If you consider becoming a game developer and you can understand German you should definitely watch all 3 seasons.
 
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I will be frank: the negative attitiude of the NPCs at some point got on my nerves. It was fun the first time in G1, and believable in a felony colony. But since G2 it just got on my nerves. I don't live in the Ruhrpott but in Berlin, and here people are also known to be open and rude, always willing to verbally attack you, and I have so ENOUGH of that in RL already, thank you very much. As a singular exotic experience it was good in G1. But being verbally attacked from EVERY NPC just got on my nerves.

There, I said it. =P
 
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I'm living next to the river Ruhr - I like the region and (most) of the people and their attitudes. Yes, we can be a bit rough and stubborn but most of us are pretty straight forward, fair and square -> Gothic is a Ruhrpott-game ;)

PS: We like beer! :beer:
 
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