Interviews

Our own Robert Cox took some time at the Austin Game Developer Conference to speak to Lee Hammock, the Lead Designer of Fallen Earth, a post-apocalyptic MMORPG in development over at Icarus Studios.

"Every sector has something new," Hammock said. "The Road Warrior movies were one of our primary influences and we've tried to incorporate all the elements we can of all the post-apocalyptic movies."

During the demo, Hammock took his avatar through a few combat sequences in a zombie-filled factory, where stealth was just as important as firepower. Make too much noise, and the zombies swarm... slowly, true, but they still get the job done.

Read more after the jump.

As our AGDC coverage comes towards a close, we relate our conversation with CCP Games CEO Hilmar Petursson. He talked to us about EVE Online, the cheating scandal, it's coming graphics upgrade, the next expansion, democratic reforms in the game and the integration of CCP and White Wolf.

One of these developments will be evident in the next free expansion to EVE Online when players finally get to take their pilots out of their ships. Last year, CCP introduced the concept of "walking on stations" with much hype, but few details. It was part of a long range plan that had no timeline. Now it does. Petursson said that he hopes to launch the expansion that lets players walk on stations by the end of 2008, a goal he admits is a bit ambitious.

Before they get people on stations though, CCP will launch their much-hyped graphics upgrade by the end of November. It is almost done - Petursson showed off a bank of images on his laptop - and will revolutionize the ship graphics. EVE has always looked very good, but once they show the before and after images, it's impossible to imagine it any other way. These graphics and shader upgrades completely change the look of the game.

Read more after the jump.

John Young is a VP of Gala-Net, a North American video game company that localized Asian games for the North American market and distributes them through GPotato.com. At AGDC, he spoke to us about Upshift StrikeRacer, their latest game.

"[Gala-Net provided] localizations and culturalization," for the game. It's originally developer, the Korean company NChannel, made a game that was at its core fun, but likely not of much interest to the average North American. Young explained some of the ways they made sure it would be.

One way they made the game feel more Western was through its music. They hired composer Kevin Manthei to do the first pass at the music. A traditional composer, Manthei has made a reputation through his work on Resident Evil, Twisted Metal and City of Villains, among others. Then to create a kind of contrast and mood that felt appropriate, they brought in Dan Spitz, the lead guitarist of the heavy metal band Anthrax. The combination of their two styles, according to Young, perfectly sets the mood of the game.

For more, click below.

WarCry spoke to Perpetual Entertainment Co-Founder earlier today as news broke that the company had laid off 30 to 40 members of the Gods and Heroes team. Others were re-assigned to Star Trek Online. The company had hoped to launch Gods and Heroes this fall, but based on Beta feedback, opted to give the game more time and move its launch to early 2008.

"We've never set an official launch date for Gods and Heroes," Co-Founder Chris McKibbin told us. "Driving to the fall, that's been our goal."

For the last several weeks, Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising had been in Closed Beta testing. While it is, according to Perpetual, content complete, they felt it needed more polish before it goes to market. "Our feeling was driving hard to make a fall launch would lead to less than high quality results and we've seen that in other launches," he said. "We've made the decision to give the game more time. What we really want to do is to deliver a polished and high-quality game."

For our interview with Chris McKibbin, click below.

Austin's GDC gave us a unique and fun opportunity to interview not one or two members of the Pirates of the Burning Sea development team, but five! We spoke about their goals prior to launch, what they want to do after, dismemberment and their expectations for commercial release.

When it comes to hook fighting though, it begs the obvious question: how does one get a hook? Well, in Pirates of the Burning Sea, players must earn their dismemberments. It sounds absurd, but it really makes sense. Right now, players can undertake a quest in the game and earn themselves a peg leg - although Tynes mentioned that there is an "artificial limb" players can wear if they basically want their leg back - which obviously changes the look and feel of a character. In time, once they add hook fighting, they'll also be able to earn a lost hand and thus a hook to fight with.

Read more after the jump.

Icarus Studios EVP David Gardner took the time at AGDC to discuss his company's MMO solution: The Icarus Platform. This is a set of tools companies can license to build games and according to Gardner, they can do it without writing a line of code.

"We believe you can take an excellent product to market without actually writing any code," Gardner explained from the second floor of his AGDC booth, yes AGDC booths now have two floors.

Their tools eliminate the necessity of programmers. Instead, a comprehensive scripting language enables designers and content creators to directly implement content. For those who have or are programmers, don't worry, they're not obsolete. People can get under the hood and fiddle with whatever they want if they wish.

Read more after the jump.

Age of Conan Product Manager Jørgen Tharaldsen met with WarCry at AGDC to discuss the PvP aspects of Funcom's upcoming MMO. Due to launch in March 2008, Tharaldsen talked about siege warfare, duels, drunken brawls, arena combat and the game's mature slant.

"[If it was not mature] it wouldn't be a Conan game," Tharaldsen said.

To them, this is an advantage. He pointed out that while some assume that only kids play video games the evidence doesn't support it. The average age of an Anarchy Online player (their other product) is 27 years old and - using pre-WoW numbers - the general MMO gamer was well into their 20s. This stands to a certain level of logic since to play these games players usually need a credit card.

Read more after the jump.

Designers Scott Youngblood and Rob Garrett took some time out of their busy recruiting schedule to talk to us about Red 5 and some of the goals their company has for its debut project. Topics include their desire to innovate, a global focus and more.

"Players will be important in our world in ways that they never were before," Youngblood guaranteed.

They also hope to bridge the gap between Asian and Western MMOs in a way no one has tried since the first aborted version of Tabula Rasa. Just a few weeks ago, a Red 5 sister studio opened in Shanghai. They made it very clear this is not an art house, but a fully integrated part of their development team. Both studios are linked and have people who work on all aspects of the game. They believe this cross pollination of ideas strengthens their game.

Read more after the click.

Today we bring you the story of our chat with Jeff Anderson, Turbine CEO, at AGDC 2007. He talked about Lord of the Rings Online, it's recent updates, Book 11, its first expansion and the future of Turbine as a whole.

The upcoming Book 11 is Turbine's top priority. This free expansion is the first of a wave of vastly new content - Book 10, to Anderson, finished the work that the launch began - and concentrates on player housing.

In Lord of the Rings Online, housing will be placed in instanced neighborhoods called "streets". The streets, within themes, will be roughly the same in each area of the world, but with different names. To access their house, the player talks to an NPC in the correct part of the world and "asks for directions" to, for example, Cherry Street. The NPC then gives those directions when he teleports the player to that street, on which their house resides.

Read more after the jump.

Today we bring you are chat with Mike Goslin, the VP of Disney's VR Studios, who plan to launch Pirates of the Caribbean Online this fall. The game has been delayed, polished and is now set to launch along side the movie's DVD. We spoke to Goselin about this delay, the game itself and how Bob Iger's ascension to Disney CEO has completely changed things for VR Studios.

Changes earlier this year in the corporate structure of Disney have changed the outlook for VR Studios. Michael Eisner was replaced by Bob Iger as CEO and this has been good news for VR, Goselin told us. Iger has renewed the company's emphasis on technology - a TIME Magazine piece earlier this year explored the new CEO's technical inclinations - and the internet. This has moved VR Studios from a small-scale side-project to a large scale enterprise. They brought in Club Penguin just before AGDC, an MMO most hardcore gamers likely have never heard of, but that has more players than most the games they have. They've also begun to ramp up their development team so they can do multiple projects at the same time. The ultimate goal is to provide MMO universes for any Disney property that the company believes needs one. In some ways, it's like moving the theme parks online.

Read more after the jump.

We've seen a lot of hype about 38 Studios, the MMORPG start-up headed by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, fantasy novelist R.A. Salvatore and Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane, but at AGDC we finally got to see some of the meat on the company's bones. President and CEO Brett Close spoke to us about the company, their vision for their game and addressed the concern that the company might be some kind of vanity project.

"We have an unfair advantage," he said in reference to presence of Salvatore on the team and added simply, "if you do it right, people will love it."

To that end, they've also made strides to ensure that the game blends story into gameplay in a way that MMOs have so far failed to do.

"Current MMOs have some [story], but its like shooters in 1996," he explained. "Everyone was doing Doom, then came Half-Life. They realized story makes for compelling gameplay."

He hopes that their project - the name of which we won't hear for quite some time - can fill that void. He wants to move beyond the mechanics and give people a reason to play, which is a tough challenge for any studio.

Read more after the jump.

The Fury Challenge kicked off today and it seemed a perfect time to recount our conversation with Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO and Fury Executive Producer, from AGDC. We talked about the game, the Fury Challenge, what it needs to succeed and their new low-end client.

"Fury is a game, Fury Challenge is an event," Hilliam noted. While this one stands in for Open Beta, the future ones will happen on dedicated, level playing field servers especially designed for the event. In the future, "Immortals" (subscribers) will get into challenges for free. "Heroes" (box copy non-subscribers) can pay an entry with in-game gold and non-owners will be able to digitally download as part of a free trial or a small flat fee, just for the event.

Read more after the click.

Daron Stinnett is the Executive Producer of Star Trek Online and took some time during the Austin Game Developers Conference to chat with us on the development status of his game.

"We'll start talking about it when we're ready to show it," said Stinnett simply. That said, they cannot disappear entirely and with that in mind, he took some time to bring us up to date on the game's development.

For the first six months of 2007, the team has focused primarily on space gameplay. Then, this summer, they transitioned over to ground. The plan is to split this calendar year and as they hit the home stretch, Stinnett told us that both halves of the game are functional.

Read more after the click.

AGDC gave us the chance to talk to David Perry of Acclaim about his community designed and now developed MMO project Top Secret. Perry - who is also bringing 2Moons to North America - announced at the conference that they would hold a $1,000,000 contest for indie groups to develop the game his community designs.[blockquote]
Acclaim has opened the doors to hobbyist and independent developers worldwide and challenged them to create the Top Secret project. Teams are allowed to use whatever engine they like and try to create the best, most faithful version of the game possible. The winning studio gets up to $1,000,000 in prizes, primarily to pay the bill of whatever engine they selected, but also a $100,000 advance and a standard contract. They will also receive royalties on the project itself.

Ultimately, Acclaim views the winner as their first "studio". To date, they've been adapting foreign games, but down the line, whoever pulls out the victory will hopefully work on original Acclaim projects.[blockquote]Read more after the click.

In the second half of our conversation with Mark Jacobs - former CEO of Mythic Entertainment and now General Manager of EA Mythic - we talked about the health and future of Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and the company's integration into Electronic Arts.

For the first half of the article, which focuses on Warhammer Online, check out this link.

Despite the downturn, the game still makes a tidy profit for EA Mythic and is in no immediate danger of disappearing. Mythic has a history of maintaining games for years and years, long after they pass their prime. A good example of this is their pre-DAoC games that they maintained long beyond the point that most remembered they existed. The advantage of a mature MMO is that ultimately, it can be maintained - if not expanded - with a very small workforce. So long as DAoC remains profitable, it will march on.

That said, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is on the way and given that they themselves are developing a game that is in many ways a spiritual successor to Camelot, Jacobs fully expects a large hit to the Dark Age of Camelot numbers. He does not, however, believe that it will completely wipe the game out.

Click below for part two.