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Yeah, it's definitely true. And I think it's unfortunate that not enough people are doing it, really. I feel there's a slight lack of invention, because there's a lot of me-too-ism once something does get popular.
JY: Yeah, I think that's probably pretty normal, though. You look at all media. Media tends to be like that in general.
It's just a shame.
JY: It is a shame, and it's a shame in our case because of the scope of what we build. It takes so long to build these things, and they're so expensive, that yeah, you're right, in the sense that it would sure be nice if we could do more innovation, but, you know, you look at the business issues that go along with the marketplace issues, and so on.
Another factor that's interesting about our business is that if you have three years to build a product, what you think is going to be successful when you start may not be what's successful when you're done. Because it takes so long, and audience's tastes change, and other competitive products come out, and various other factors come into the equation. So that only makes things worse too. So, it's really a crapshoot.
It's true. Back to what you were saying about branding stuff, I was wondering what -- I mean, it's kind of a silly question, but the name of the company doesn't sound like a game developer to me. So, what was the decision about that?
JY: Why are we called Cheyenne Mountain? Well, originally when we started the company, we thought our sole and exclusive mission in life was to build Stargate Worlds. And, because of that, if you watch the television series, the Stargate Command is actually located in the Cheyenne Mountain. It's a military facility there.
So our original founders came up with the idea of calling it Cheyenne Mountain -- when they first started looking for funding, and everything else. This is years before I joined the company. So it's sort of the path of least resistance, actually. They were calling it Cheyenne Mountain. I was like, "There's nothing wrong with that name; it works for me." And, over time, it just kind of stuck.
Having said all that, our marketing team now is in the process of re-evaluating that, and we're contemplating coming up with a different name for our company. Because we've always been into brand recognition, and establishing a brand. And one of the problems we have to wrestle to the ground is, what brand do we want to be known for?
Because obviously, when we launch Stargate Worlds, we have this relationship with MGM, and with the TV show, and our own company, and all these other things that kind of mix together.
So we're trying to figure out a way to really identify who we are as a company, but at the same time start establishing in consumers' minds what our brand is, and what it stands for.
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It is extremely rare for a new studio to have it's first game be great (especially great enough to take on WOW or EVE or...). The odds are low on this one.
Star Wars Galaxies anyone?
You see in order to get the Unreal "look" you have to maintain small "hallway" looking levels OR downgrade your graphical look OR go completly stylistic. At that point you really don't need to be using Unreal.
Unreal's material editor, it's material instructions and its "look" are tied together. You would need a high level filter to give the world a completly different feel and rewrite graphical instructions to get a new look aswell.
From my experience, level design wise, using the terrain editor it optimally maxes out at around 300m x 300m before you have to get streaming involved. Streaming and AI are whole other issue on the console I can only imagine what its going to be like online.
Another prime example and major hurdle these are going to be faced with is the issue of Itemization. Unreal uses "packages" and "archetypes" to manage its assets, however it does not support massive amounts of Items in any manageable method. Therefore the team is going to have to built a database that can manage, change, update and interface with Unreal's package system. The system will have to work backwards as well, updatea a package it updates the database.
Last but not least, making any object in Unreal and putting through their pipeline takes a long time...I don't see how they're going to build "Worlds" when just to get 8 hours of Console FPS gameplay can take 2 years. I can only imagine how long its going to take to make mmo "Worlds."
I for one, getting a stomache turning sensation everytime I hear that a new company is creating an MMO that is going to kill WOW, they really have to be kidding themselves. Blizzard is probably going to come out with StarCraft and its all over again.
Investors save your money and produce smaller scale games.
That's my 2 cents