Adding to the Shadowrun news this week, FASA studio manager Mitch Gitelman sat down and and answered some questions. On the docket include the number of players per game, how PC users will be able to use Live functionality, and how many maps will be shipping with the game.

One of the most crucial aspects of Shadowrun is going to be how the PC and 360 versions will interact. Gitelman takes time to defend his game’s control scheme and explains the length at which it was playtested, and according to Joystiq’s recent test it seems to work rather nicely. Gitelman also covers how the Windows users will interact with Xbox Live.

It’s not just like Live, it is Live, but on Windows Vista. You can voicechat, you can create a Friends list, and you can earn achievements. If you’re already a member of Xbox LIVE, you’ll see your friends, messages, gamerscore – all the great stuff that makes Live a great online games service. You use the same gamertag, and can show off same gamerscore and achievements on each platform. The rest of the Xbox LIVE features, like Marketplace are coming later.

Gitelman offered an interesting answer to a question about Shadowrun’s lack of a single player campaign. He explains that at FASA, multiplayer always comes first. After designing the mulitplayer for Shadowrun, and after creating a few single player prototypes for the game, the team realized that the core multiplayer game stood on its own, and that a single player campaign wasn’t needed. While this worked perfectly well for games like Battlefield 2, its not clear whether or not Shadowrun will be able to do the same. A big reason that games like Battlefield 2 did not need a single player campaign was due to the massive games that it could spawn, and the endless possibilities that having this many players presented. Shadowrun will support 16 players, and Gitelman explained that due to the possibilities of the magic system in the game, 16 players is more than enough to ensure variety between games.

Gitelman also covers why Shadowrun will be shipped with 8-10 maps rather than other FPSs that ship with more. Unlike other FPSs, Shadowrun’s magic system will deeply affect how players approach a map, and as such make the maps much more difficult to design. With abilities like flying across a map, looking through solid objects, and teleporting through walls, the maps have to be planned out more carefully in order to manage balance issues. Gitelman explains that rather than shipping with 15 mediocre maps or more, he would rather ship with 8-10 good ones.