Interview: GraphSim's Jeff Morgan May 14, 2001 | Tuncer Deniz

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GraphSim Entertainment has been creating games for the Macintosh since the early 90's. The authors of the popular Hornet and Korea flight combat sims, the company has slowly moved away from creating original titles and has recently been concentrating on bring titles such as Baldur's Gate, Summoner, and Red Faction to the Mac.

We recently caught up with GraphSim's CEO, Jeff Morgan, to discuss progress on some of their upcoming titles.

IMG: Can you give us a status update on some of your projects? How is Summoner and Red Faction coming along and when can we expect them to be released?

Jeff Morgan: Summoner should be going gold any day. Right now Trey Smith is fixing a few small polish items. But, otherwise, it is ready to roll. Red Faction is still on schedule for simultaneous Mac and PC release in September. Tales of the Sword Coast begins shipping next Friday.

IMG: The Baldur's Gate expansion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast, took quite a long time to finish. Can you tell us why it took so long?

Jeff Morgan: Yeah it did, we were mostly waiting to get the multiplayer support done. That part took a much longer time than we ever would have dreamed. And, in fact, we are still working on it. But we could see no good reason to hold up Tales any longer. Game Ranger support is in and working well, thanks to Scott Kevill.

IMG: Will Summoner and Red Faction be carbonized for OS X?

Jeff Morgan: Summoner will be but not at release. It will be a post release patch. It may be too early to tell for Red Faction. My guess is that it will be Carbonized for release in September.

IMG: You picked up a smaller title recently...Pro Pinball Fantastic Journey. Is it available now and can you give us some insight on how you came to publish this game?

Jeff Morgan: It is available now in the States. We are partnering with Application Systems-Heidelberg to release it here. It is a classic pinball game but it is so well done that it simply had to be available in the US. It was developed by an English company for both Mac and PC. And it is simply the best pinball software game ever made - bar none!

IMG: What's your overall impression of the Mac market these days? Is it growing? Are you comfortable? What problems are still out there?

Jeff Morgan: We are in an interesting time. The release of OSX has created some new technical challenges for us. There has been an overall slowdown in PC sales and, coincidently, software sales. So it's not a perfect world but, on the upside, Apple is doing more than ever before to help the game publishers increase sales. So I believe that, in the long run, things will be headed upwards.

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