It’s been over two decades since the release of the first space trading and combat simulator from Egosoft. Since then, the X series has expanded rapidly with three sequels and three standalone expansions. The release of X4: Split Vendetta in 2020 shows that the studio is still on the road to create the perfect space simulator. That’s why we’ve decided to ask one of its founders a bunch of questions concerning games… and space, of course.
GOG.COM: Why do you think people keep staring at the stars, wishing to explore space?Bernd Lehahn: I like to believe that it is human nature to be curious and to explore. Space is of course one of, if not THE ultimate frontier. Whenever I get a chance to look up to the stars, I cannot help but wonder about the vastness of it all. These unbelievable distances, the ability to look so far back into our past, and even today, with our very limited knowledge, we are only just beginning to grasp so many incredible things about this universe.
So yeah, the real question should be why we are not staring upwards a lot more every night…
When you started to develop the game, did you ever think about how big the universe created by gamers would become?Not really. When we started with the first version of what would eventually later turn into X: Beyond the Frontier, we had no idea it would gain so much traction. We were an extremely tiny developer and used to developing titles for our local market only. We had made adventure games out of a love for it, more than for the money, and X: Beyond the Frontier was really the first time, after almost 10 years of work in this industry, that a game actually made us money. That it would kick off an online community and still be a growing universe with mods and all this online madness 20 years later never crossed my mind at the time.
Which one of the game’s many cool features made you most proud?I am personally coming from the graphics engine programming side, so I tend to be overly interested in technical features like the volumetric fog of our latest engine incarnation or the shadows we already had in
X2: The Threat back in 2003 when I was still coding myself. But looking at the big picture, the single biggest achievement of the entire series is always the bottom-up simulated universe and especially the living economy. We are always simulating thousands of ships and agents acting in this whole complex universe and the result is a game that behaves differently and sometimes unpredictably, every time you start it new. So yeah, that’s probably number one.
If you could choose - travel to space tomorrow or have a fantastic holiday in warm weather for two weeks - which one would you pick?Just asking this question seems like an insult! I would probably give my left arm for a chance to travel into space.
When, in your opinion, do you think people will start to colonize space?Thanks to the new efforts driven by private corporations (hello, SpaceX), I am optimistic that the first steps in this direction may happen sooner rather than later.
It is all driven by economics this time around and I am quite sure there is a lot of potential money in this business. Not so much colonizing Mars or the Moon I’m afraid, but definitely mining asteroids for example. I am not sure if the completely profit-driven approach is necessarily the best for this field, as it comes with some high risks too (think Kessler syndrome), but it is undeniably bringing much faster progress than the last 50 years since the moon landing… So count me in! :-)
If you love to travel through space, stay tuned for the X4: Cradle of Humanity DLC, a next great expansion to the X universe that is coming soon on GOG.COM 