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To skip around,
and you can talk about it in terms of being in Cryptic now or Flagship or
anything, but... For an MMO specifically, are there different scales of MMOs
you can make, or does there, to a certain extent -- because it's massive, by
definition it's a massive game -- does it have to be big and extensive and at
least a few hundred thousand people?
BR: No, it can be all sizes. You look at a game like Puzzle Pirates, for example, right?
That's an MMO, that's a really good game. I don't know the last time they put
their numbers out, but I'm sure they could run along great with 30, 40,000
people. There are games that are MMOs, but they're just built to different
scales with different audiences.
At Cryptic... we're tapping
into a couple of specific genres. MMOs, which have gotten much bigger -- that's
the other side of the World of Warcraft
effect, there's a lot more people playing them and are interested in them.
We're also tapping into the comics genre and superheroes and the interest in
that -- again, another area that's seen a lot of rise in popularity with the
movies that have come out.
If you look across the water, right over to Korea and China, they crank
out MMOs like crazy. There's like a new one out every week or two, it seems.
And they're of all sizes and all complexity levels. Some are really intense and
really game mechanic-y and hard to even delve into; some are super simple that
are designed for kids that are like 10-12 years old.
I think that there's a
really broad range of MMO types that you can have out there, and that depending
on how you've built it, how you've thought about it, you can have a
"small" number of players doing that and have it be a completely
sustainable business module.
NCsoft/Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes
When you look
at your decision, the point that you left at Blizzard to start your own thing
with other guys, is there a certain point for any developer in their career
where you work high enough at an organization like Blizzard, and you sort of
need to go off on your own? Is that what you'd say to anybody? You know,
"You spend 10 to 15 years, you get confident, and then you have to start
your own thing." Is that kind of how the industry works, or were there
really specific circumstances?
BR: There were for us. We actually didn't think we were going to
be leaving. Really, what happened was that there was... That was during a time
when it was very unclear as to whether Vivendi was going to keep their games
units.
You know, Jean-Marie Messier was the CEO of Vivendi in France, he was kind
of being challenged. He had bought a lot of media companies and all these
different things. And so they were trying to sell all those assets.
Was that around
the time you sold Universal?
BR: Yeah, we sold Universal and all those things. So, they weren't
sure they were going to get the games division they had, of which Blizzard was
a big part. And literally, every week, we would hear rumors on the internet.
The story I tell is that our guys came from Blizzard North this morning and are
like, "Hey, we read on MSNBC today that
Microsoft is going to buy us." And we were like, "We haven't heard
anything."
And so, we would call down over to Irvine and talk with
Mike Morhaime, and we were like, "Hey Mike, have you heard..." Mike's
all, "No, I'll call Torrance." And
then, so he calls the West Coast office, like, "We haven't heard anything,"
they call New York. And New York, like,
"No." They call France. And so, we
hear about it, and then like a day and a half later, literally the message we
get back was, "They say you can't believe what you read on the
internet." "Okay, well, should we believe this?" (laughs)
It got to the point where there was really no detailed
communication coming out, we didn't know what was happening. It was amazingly
distracting. We weren't getting good development work or anything out of our
guys. Everyone was really nervous. At that point in time, there was nothing
that could guarantee anybody being there.
No one had any golden handcuffs. No
one had any non-competes or anything. Somebody could have bought us. Like,
Turner Broadcasting could have bought us and said, "Hey, we really like
these IPs that you have, but we don't want to get into games. And so, we're going
to buy your properties and fire everbody." And there was nothing there to
protect anyone.
We were really concerned about that. And so, David Brevik, Eric
and Max Schaefer, and myself basically kept pushing for, you know, "We
really need to be involved in what you guys are talking about, if you're
meeting with potential publishers or talking about spinning the company as an
IP or something. You need to have the executives involved in that."
To try to force that issue, to get them to talk with us, the four of us put in our
resignation, with basically the trigger for us not to be resigning was to email
us or phone call us, so like talk to us.
So like, just
care.
BR: Yeah, just talk to us. A day and a half later, we heard back
from that chain. Mike called me and said, "I'm supposed to come up Monday
and get you guys cleared out." So, it wasn't like we really wanted to
leave.
Right, it
wasn't like you had this plan for this new company.
BR: Yeah, we didn't like, "Ah, let's go make..." We were
trying to do the right thing for our guys and for the company in a very
tumultuous time. That's five or six years now, five and a half years now.
You
look at where Blizzard is now, it's like, "Oh, they'd never be sold,"
but no, Blizzard has been sold so many times. That was the joke, that every E3,
there was a different owner name over the booth. You know, Davidson, then it
was Havas, then it was CUC, then it was Cendant, then it was Vivendi, and just
this chain of buyers.
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I think that Bill's observation about other games being "not even close" to WoW is somewhat dependent on what one considers "close". For example, Guild Wars reported 4 million subscribers 1.5 years ago, and that's a very good number that makes GW one of the more successful MMOs. Of course, even Bill explains that there are various styles of MMO, particularly in East Asian markets, including some with relatively small numbers of players. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better, after all, and everyone wants something different for their enjoyment.
The comments about the development of WoW were somewhat interesting, too. Perhaps MMOs would benefit from being developed more along the lines of a typical game rather than if development focuses on perceived standards for MMOs.
I dont like MMO, but you can do better or worst MMO and Hellgate MMO concept was IMHO very bad, only victim of wave MMO's success.
My rating of singleplayer part is 6/10, nothing special and very repetive, more than Diablo father, nothing new, wasting big money.
I dont agree, this is big mistake, because we saving souls. Because some games contains piece of art (yes we must work on this, we are on start) and art can save our souls, without art we are as machines. We emotions and ideas to feed our souls, else we the empty, wortless.
MMO design is just based on stats a lot more than other games. I don't find that a bad thing, but some people prefer twitch and skill based gameplay more. MMOs are not void of twitch and skill though; it is usually introduced when working with a team though, not solo.
"I hated wow's combat model since I hate most MMO's combat models."
So you pretty much hate most RPGs....not MMOs. WoWs combat model isn't that different from the older games like never winter nights. They all use relatively the same combat style, because it plays well as an RPG, you know, lots of skills, stat growth, and resource management. In truth most of these mechanics are pretty true to the old paper based RPGs just in an electronic format. So your beef can't be really with the combat, you just don't enjoy most RPGs, that's cool dude, they ain't for everyone.
As for holding games back, I think not, MMOs fit a valid niche in the market, they operate off the entire, people like to play games together concept, it's why consoles and PCs have had this thing called "multiplayer" for a long time, a MMO is just the next logical step in this progression. It opens up whole new realms of possibility when it comes to game design.
"Guild Wars reported 4 million subscribers 1.5 years ago"
Guild Wars is a big success, but this isn't accurate. Guild Wars has sold ~6 million boxes, but that doesn't in any way translate to that many subscribers. It includes each individual expansion box sold, and they don't actually have a subscription model.
A better comparison is Runescape, probably the second largest paying-subscriber base, around 1.5 million.
I think the problem is too much attention is put into hyping a game instead of spending that time and money on development. If it's done well people will come anyway, why though so much effort hyping?
It's a risky business and I do agree with alot of the risk factor, yet I also believe that this can be avoided if the big wigs would get out of the way of the potential in the game being made, that being an MMO or stand alone game. Most of the waste in resources focuses on the head huncho's instead of them being a huge team of well functioning unit.
It's simply too many cooks in the kitchen, with the BS spinners being like Gordon Ramsey. Full of shit and a complete idiot. Is it worth employing these people. For me no.
I was saddened by the conclusion of the article with that big red logo, Atari has pissed off too many people to even be considered a company worth mentioning. I will NEVER EVER buy anything with their logo again. Sometimes you have to let an old dog die to move forward, their strategy in the industry is killing it!
So as far as the future hold's for Bill, good luck and wake up to moving in the wrong direction. They will never be as they were.
As the saying goes, "I see what you did there."
At least in the case of NCSoft, Lineage 2 has had 17 million accounts CREATED. That is NOT their sub base. You can look up their quarterly reports on www.ncsoft.net.
I believe the same is true for maple story.
You gotta be careful of that marketing spin.
And about the importance of art. I think that you are describing the concept of doing art for art's sake, but he is describing doing art for business's sake. That is a really different viewpoint of art and it's role in the world and it's imporance to man. Art in an MMO is just a means to an end and he is sayng that that end is just money and he doesn't ever want to lose site of that. Otherwise you start making decisions based on art instead of business.
I do think that does diminish art in the process. Which is why I think that ultimately for some people WOW has no soul. Think about Lineage and the adherence to the grind. The look of the art is secondary to leveling and grinding. WOW does that too, but it is just packaged better to attract the Western concept of vanity. I am not saying a person shouldn't like WOW, but it is shallow. Not as shallow as Lineage, but it cerainly not a deep experience.
Overall, It was a good read. Thanks Bill and Ben for taking the time to put this QandA together for us.
"So you pretty much hate most RPGs....not MMOs. WoWs combat model isn't that different from the older games like never winter nights. They all use relatively the same combat style, because it plays well as an RPG, "
I'm sorry but you have no idea what you are talking about, the game you point out have HORRIBLE combat models, neverwinter nights is not in teh same league as real RPG's. Also you're neglecting neverwinter nights had a severe problem: Too few characters to control, you can have automatic battle handling only when you have many characters to control, when the entire focus is one a signle character, more realtime interactivity (what people call "twitch") is necessary.
Truth be told, the only reason non-twitch systems were introduced was to dumb it down for people that simply don't play games enough to be bothered to learn to game properly, the problem most MMO's have, is that they are targetted at the lowest common denominator, therefore gameplay suffers and doesn't advance beyond automatically managed combat and what have you.
God of war's combat system runs rings around most RPG's, and 'action rpgs' are real RPG's, most early RPG's were action RPG's if you grew up during the NES and pre NES years. Most people that game don't have very long histories so their comments don't mean much.
Unlike a lot of other gamers, I went in with zero expectations... and ended up loving every minute. I particularly liked the fact that you offered huge amounts of play time, instead of insanely varied graphics. Most games today are just TOO SHORT; you can't get properly immersed in the environment or the play mechanics. For me, Hellgate hit the sweet spot: just enough action, role-playing and storytelling. Great atmosphere; just-right level of complexity. In fact, a near-perfect game. I'm still re-re-playing it, and expect to keep doing so for many years.
Hellgate belongs up there in the hall of lost classics with games like System Shock 2, that missed their audience perhaps exactly because they broke so much new ground. Don't ever believe that the lack of commercial success implies you were on the wrong track creatively! Me, I'll be waiting for the world to wise up enough so you can do Hellgate II.