38 Studios' Curt Schilling interviewed by Boston Globe

from the Older post but interesting dept.



38 Studios' famous founder and recently departed CEO Brett Close talk to the Boston Globe about the labor and challenges involved in raising capital for a massive online IP and gaming studio.

"Creating a massively multiplayer game can take several years and is akin to designing an alternate universe. It involves lots of artwork, animation, and software programming. While a feature film might have two or three hours of music written for it, for instance, a team of composers at 38 Studios is writing 80 hours of music to accompany every possible game scenario. Additionally, the environments and characters are sketched first, then built in the computer as 3-D digital objects. Then, there must be testing. WoW was in development for five years."

Link to The Boston Globe

Comments are where the meaty bits are

from the Sparking an interesting campfire debate dept.

Over at Kill Ten Rats, there is an enthusiastic and surprisingly educated rant on the choices facing developers and licensing game engines following Nicodemus' Two Cents discussion, including :

Chas : "Regarding 38 Studios… I don’t find it unusual that they’d wait so long.

First, you need to hire the people experienced with the tech to MAKE such a decision. Next, you need to develop your core design and make a NEEDS ANALYSIS so you get the tech that will support your concept (and don’t overinvest in tech that’s absolutely not needed, too).

That core design isn’t a simple term paper. You don’t necessarily need the whole design document fully fleshed out, but you need a HUGE chunk of it in place. Once you do, you need to identify the risk areas- parts of your design that really are new/novel/untested in ANY engine. You need to pick your candidate platforms and do a rough prototype “proof of concept” to be sure that the tech is possible.

While that is going on, you want others developing anything that’s not platform-specific. Once you agree on a platform, you want to hit the ground running- every day lost makes your tech 1 day older. You want the concept art done. You want reference models done. You want art assets that can be ported to any of the candidate systems done. You want as much story written as possible. You want development tools in place, and you want every developer working on the project as familiar with the environment and workplace as humanly possible.

…Because from here on out, it’s about producing as much quality material as quickly as possible so that the platform you’ve chosen isn’t dated by the time you enter the market."

This is actually genuinely meaty, tactical and strategic startup road-to growth analysis. I am almost tempted to step on over there and contribute. Stir the pot and really make some noise. Too much real work to do though, so probably not.