Q&A With Magicka Developer, Arrowhead Game Studios

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Tom's Hardware talks with Arrowhead Game Studios' Patrik Lasota and Anton Stenmark about its new PC game Magicka and the recently-released Vietnam-based DLC, DirectX, Intel's place in the GPU market, and the studio's use of deferred shading.

The Future Of Mobile Platforms

Stenmark said that he wants to see better debugging and performance monitoring tools with the next-generation GPUs. He even admitted that the tools and hardware for the PS3 development kit are presently years ahead of PC and Xbox 360. This allows developers to truly push the hardware to its limits. As for what he'd like to see roll out today, it'd be augmented reality or perhaps even tactile feedback for touchscreens.

The mention of touchscreens drew my eyes down to my Motorola Droid, reminding me of the debate about smartphones becoming the next laptops. I've seen numerous ports of classic PC games running flawlessly on both the Android and iOS platforms. At one time, these games required expensive hardware to run. There's one phone on the market now that even connects to a dock hosting an LCD and keyboard. Clearly, the mobile phone is creeping into personal computing space.

So, I posed this question to the studio: at the rate mobile technology is progressing, do you see smartphones replacing notebooks, and tablets replacing desktops? Will there be a day when hardcore PC gamers will have the ability to build a modular tablet that will support external peripherals? Stenmark admitted that handheld devices will become a larger part of the gaming scene if not the biggest part, but there are physical limitations that will prohibit them from ever becoming powerful enough to compete with a desktop computer.

"At least in out lifetime," he added. I suddenly felt another gray hair sprout on my head.

Kevin Parrish
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • vexun11
    This is a fun game, worth the $ for sure
    Reply
  • belltollsforthee
    Great game, love the comedy and elemental spells
    Reply
  • Ragnar-Kon
    Great game, that is for sure. Arguably the best $10 I've spent in my life.

    Also a great article, particularly regarding DirectX/OpenGL and APIs. I remember reading an article a while back talking about removing the API and coding on the hardware directly. Having done some DirectX/OpenGL work myself, the first thing that came to mind for me was "wooah, thats gonna take forever." Glad someone else on this planet agrees with me. Just not feasible for smaller studios.

    Although he does seem to be a fan of DirectX, which I am not. Not only do I think OpenGL is easier to code with, using OpenGL could easily open up a whole new market for games, especially with the ever-increasing Mac popularity (not to mention make our Linux friends happy).
    Reply
  • jrnyfan
    This is one of my top 5 games I currently play, it's worth ~$20 but the fact that it is ~$10 makes it amazing. I haven't had this much fun in multiplayer since Goldeneye64...
    Reply
  • cknobman
    I just picked up Torchlight off of Steam and am currently having a blast. Magicka looks very appealing, especially for $10, but reading reviews it seems as though the game is very very buggy and unpolished. As the game was released 4 months ago can anyone comment on the state of the game now? Have any of the bugs been fixed or is it something you just have to live with?
    Reply
  • Bought this game on Steam a couple of weeks ago. It's fun, but be aware that multiplayer may not be on the standard that you're used to. It's very much P2P hosting, which comes with its usual problems of having the right ports open/forwarded. The hosting machine has the save file, so if the person who's been hosting isn't available, the rest of you will have to start anew. Dedicated server software is something that would be pretty desirable here.
    Reply
  • teaser
    cknobmanI just picked up Torchlight off of Steam and am currently having a blast. Magicka looks very appealing, especially for $10, but reading reviews it seems as though the game is very very buggy and unpolished. As the game was released 4 months ago can anyone comment on the state of the game now? Have any of the bugs been fixed or is it something you just have to live with?So far ....21 updates since january,the game is in a much better state then it was on release day........
    Reply
  • sirmorluk
    Best $10 I have ever spent. My 6 year old spends hours on it and has completed it a couple of times along with the Nam challenge. Me? Well I suck at it.
    Reply
  • Camikazi
    sirmorlukBest $10 I have ever spent. My 6 year old spends hours on it and has completed it a couple of times along with the Nam challenge. Me? Well I suck at it.QRSAER as weapon enchantment or as AE spell is very helpful :) and FQFQAAS for a beam :)
    Reply
  • Gman450
    Magicka is a great game. Really nice.
    Reply