Horizons at E3, Bowman talks about future of game

It's been 2 ½ years since Horizons: Empire of Istaria first shipped, 1 ½ years since developer Artifact Entertainment filed for Chapter 11 reorganization and 16 months since Tulga Games reached an agreement to purchase Artifact's assets.

Despite Horizons' near-death experience, when former Artifact president and current Tulga Games CEO David Bowman was spotted at E3, he was smiling. And for good reason.

"We're finally ready to launch," Bowman said.

That's right, he said "ready to to launch." An odd statement from the head of a company with a two-year-old game, but one that makes sense after a closer look at its history.

When Bowman, a former executive and producer at Turbine Entertainment, where he worked on both Asheron's Call and its ill-fated sequel, took the helm at Artifact, Horizons was part of Atari's attempt to revitalize itself in the games market and pressure was applied to get the game on the market, despite the fact that, according to the development team, it was still about two years from being completed.

"The design of the game from the ground up is one that we knew we'd be spending years continually developing," said Bowman during an eerily prophetic interview in May of 2004. "I would want everyone to understand that Horizons will never be done. We acknowledge it, we're comfortable with that, we want players to understand that we will continually add new experiences and new content, new features, keep current with new technology, new client technology. Horizons is a franchise product. It's a lifelong product for the company."

Unfinished, buggy and nearly empty of content beyond a cool crafting system, Horizons, the first massively multiplayer online roleplaying game to allow players to take the role of a dragon, fiery breath, flight and all, didn't just stumble out of the gate - it fell flat, starting the chain of events that led to Tulga acquiring the assets of Artifact (including Bowman and his development team), and Horizons outliving its original development company.

"It was not ready," said lead content designer Jason "Amon Gwareth" Murdick. "We needed more time but the publishers didn't want to give any more."

Part of the problem may have been because of Horizons' unfortunate launch date in December of 2003, which unfortunately coincided with the release of several other MMORPGs - Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, Final Fantasy XI, Lineage II and City of Heroes all came out less than six months on either side of Horizon's release date.

Since that time, the Horizons team has continued working, taking the game from its unfinished state to the more polished version its players experience today.

"Since Tulga took over, we've been working to fulfill all the promises we made," Murdick said. "We've been working hard to fix all the bugs."

And all that work is finally starting to pay off. According to numbers provided by Tulga, the conversion rate among players who tried the game and purchased a subscription has risen from a mere 1 percent in January to 54 percent in April. In addition, cancellations have been falling 1 percent a month, while retention rates among subscribers has risen 11 percent in the past four months.

"We're at the point where we're comfortable telling people about [the game and what we've gone through]," Murdick said. "We have a pretty good game. It still has its flaws, but now you're not going to get in there and hate it."

And, as always, you can play a dragon.