You never know what to expect at a press event. Sometimes it’s simply you being locked in a tiny room with a sinister east-European man for eight hours, demonstrating the unique merits of their ultra-special hexes. In this case, I’ve spent the last five hours running around obstacle courses and similar outdoors pursuits in the company of NetDevil’s Design Director, Ryan Seabury. It’s an actual press junket. Sadly, there’s little chance to actually point a dictaphone in his direction and talk like gentlemen. Just before we’re whisked in separate directions, I manage to grab five minutes of recorded chat with him. Luckily, Ryan speaks and with enough passion, enthusiasm and speed to fit thirty minutes of normal talk inside this relatively brief frame.

NetDevil are a second-generation MMO team - and in 2005, there’s surprisingly few of them around. Few who’ve made one of the non-blockbusting MMOs have gone on to make a second one. Their first game, Jumpgate, was actually the first to really try to “do” the Elite in space thing which Eve: Online eventually made its own. Their new game, Auto Assault, is a sci-fi Mad-Max-style experience which despite its RPG mechanics moves at the pace of an action game. It’s a product of a lot of things they learned from Jumpgate.

“Jumpgate really was Scott Brown’s idea along with Steve Williams, who doesn’t work with us anymore,” says Ryan when asked about the team’s history, “I’d worked with Scott at a different company as an internship way back in the day and he was talking about game ideas and stuff, which got me excited. Eventually, he went to work for himself for a year in a Garage-start-up. He worked on putting the engine together, and Steve helped out with some of the early physics stuff.”