Crytek CEO discusses his vision for the future of gaming and Crysis

In a recent interview CEO of Crytek, Cevat Yerli, talks about Crysis 3, what's next in the franchise, free-to-play, his desire for players not to have to think about the cost of the game to access it, Homefront 2 and Gface, their social gaming platform.

The interview comes courtesy of RockPaperShotgun and kicks of with what's in store for the Crysis title. Yerli goes into finding the balance for specs on the third Crysis, "In Crysis 1, many people complained about the high specs. Many people couldn’t play it. Or many people saw that they couldn’t. Because when many people say, I can’t play, they always assume they can’t maximize it. But that was completely intentional, because we were building a future-proof game. A future-proof game by definition doesn’t run at its highest settings on today’s machines. So that was our philosophy. Let’s give this a four year lifespan on PC specs."

"That was our intention, but it backfired in Crysis 1. So then we said, OK, Crysis 2. Let’s make it much more accessible, so that people can max it out quickly. We approached the whole production very differently. But then people [got upset about that]. So it backfired again [laughs]. So now we’re making Crysis 3 accessible at the low end, but really pushes the future-proof graphics at the high end. In a way, it’s the best of both worlds."

The balance found for the next game is explained some more in terms of environment, "We wanted to have very expansive areas. So we decided to take a 70/30 kind of approach, which is 70 percent nature and 30 percent urban. We wanted to make an environment that’s never been done before: the urban rainforest. From a fiction perspective, it also made sense, because this is like a terraforming operation to cleanse the alien remainders."

Yerli goes on to talk about what will follow after this upcoming installment of Crysis, saying that the opportunity to move away from this story line and technology will be available as it's coming to an end with Crysis 3. There is a desire for the team to explore new ideas with the world and characters and that creative freedom will soon be available to them. He maintained his stance on F2P being the way of the future but played it down for any immediate releases saying that future isn't tomorrow.

When asked about Homefront 2 and THQ's difficulties, Yerli expresses his concern for the team members involved as well as the importance of Homefront 2 for the publisher. "Our support and collaboration with THQ has been really strong. But obviously, it’s an unsettling experience at times when you read this news [about trouble at THQ]. I mean, we’ve constantly had a great relationship and communication with THQ’s top management. What’s more unsettling isn’t when we read the news – because we kind of already know these things before the public – but when some of the team members don’t know the details, and they get concerned. And then the fanbase gets that way as well. When the fanbase of Homefront or Crytek gets worried, we need to fix that."

"That being said, we’ll see how it turns out. We know how our relationship is, but we don’t know what’s happening to fix THQ’s financial problems. That’s THQ’s prerogative. But we have hopes that THQ is going to turn around, and Homefront 2 is a very big part of that turnaround. I would say it’s probably the most important project, actually. I would say it’s the IP that’s most relevant along with Saints Row. Those two are pretty much THQ’s flagship."

The narrowing of the triple A gaming field is put down to player changes by Yerli. He sees players moving away from traditional platforms without publishers keeping up. His solution, at least for them, is the Gface, triple-A core F2P focused social gaming platform, giving everyone access to real-time social networking for their games.

Cryris 3 is maxing out current gen consoles, according to Yerli, and is out on February 19 in North America and February 21 in Europe for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.