Comic book junkies take heart! The ZAM team had a chance to sit down with the DCUO devs at GDC 2010, and we came away with nothing but excellent info. Read more to find out!

The video game industry trade shows are really like great big reunions. Everyone knows everyone and there’s always an interest to hear about what’s been going on with the development of upcoming games. So at GDC 2010, the ZAM staff had a chance to sit down with DC Universe Online’s  art director, Mike Daubert, who filled us in on some of the more key elements of DCUO’s art direction and what’s planned for the future.

All that and more awaits after the break, so what are you waiting for? Keep on reading!

ZAM: When you initially got started with DC Universe Online, what were the teams goals with the project in terms of art direction? It seems like art styles are really important right now in order to capture an audience. World of Warcraft’s a great example in that people were drawn to the style and it proved to have a high degree of longevity. What are you doing with DCUO that leads you to believe you can pin down a similar sort of art style?

Mike Daubert: The very first thing we did when we started on the art direction was bring Jim Lee on board. We wanted to take DC Universe to the next level. It needed to be a modern DCUO, so we asked ourselves, what’s out there right now? What are the next generation of comic books? Who are the best artists?

Every single person on the team knew that we needed to get Jim Lee. His style of art was what we work looking for. He represented what we thought people were looking for in terms of longevity and we think his style will hold up ten years from now. For WoW, the art may be very simple, but the color palette is tremendous and it always looks like one person made that game.

I mean, who knows the DC Universe license better than Jim Lee, right? So from the very beginning, every single piece of concept art went across his desk. On top of that, Jim is a diehard MMOer, so he knows MMOs inside and out, and he had a vision of what he thought this game should look like. It’s funny, because we’ve already surpassed that level. He’s at the point now where he is just amazed by what the artists come up with. The game’s art style has really just taken on a life of its own.

Frankly, we think that not only does the game look excellent for an MMO, but it also is on par with modern PS3 games as well, competing with games like Infamous or Prototype.

ZAM: God of War?

Mike: Not so much God of War because that game is linear while Infamous and Prototype are more about the world exploration and interaction. DC Universe – like those games – has to give you the whole world, but so much more on top of that. You have to be able to run up the side of the building, but you also have to allow other players and NPCs to do that as well.

It’s every nightmare that you can think of in an MMO *and* a console game all mixed into one.