Q&A With Magicka Developer, Arrowhead Game Studios

Features
By Kevin Parrish
published

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.

Magicka On Consoles: Maybe, Maybe Not

So, what kind of limitations do mobile devices impose that require an approach that differs from developing on a PC or console? And will those limitations be addressed any time soon? What can actually be achieved on a mobile platform, given current hardware?

"The limitations are mostly in how much data you can push," Stenmark said. "There are already people running relatively high-poly 3D scenes on both iPhone and Android. You can achieve basically the same visuals on an iPhone as you can on a medium-end PC, although the frame rate is horrid. The hardware is improving tremendously, though."

Naturally I had to ask if Arrowhead plans to bring Magicka to mobile platforms like the Apple App Store or Google's Android Market. And, given that Torchlight just landed on the Xbox 360, it would be easy to see Xbox Live gamers trashing each other with misfiring spells. But the last we heard, it was up to Microsoft and Sony to green-light a console version. Arrowhead is reportedly ready to rumble.

At this point, Lasota chimed back into the interview. "I won’t speculate on the mobile market for now. It is a big market though, and having products for it would be great," he said. "Concerning the console versions of Magicka, it is something we would very much like to see, and we are working to make it happen."

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