Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Well...

Schilling might get them on the news, but honestly who wants to play with some dude that learns about a game via the fucking NEWS. The real draw will be their ability to lay down massive amounts of what I like to call The Cool, something that both Salvatore AND McFarland have repeatedly shown they can do. Granted, I fall more on the McFarland end of the spectrum, but I wouldn"t dream of demeaning Salvatore"s work when he has such a large, unshowered fan base to back him up.

What it comes down to is first impressions, and if I load up a game that is visually stunning and loaded with The Cool, it"ll be hard to tear me away. If it wants to keep me playing, it"s going to need to be fueled by passionate and well versed gamers -- ala Schilling. Maybe I"m getting my hopes up to the tune of Vanguard porportions, maybe not. I think we"ll see in beta.

EDIT:

Green Monster should probly try to get at least one regular game out to the public before they start on this risky venture.

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I don"t think this can be said enough. Having "hype" backing your game can definitely be a GOOD thing, and having a long tradition of releasing quality games can only help you succeed in the major, risky projects like an MMO. If Rockstar released an MMO, I"d sign up for beta the second it was announced. I will definitely be front in line for the Diablo MMO which will be released IMMEDIATELY just to satisfy me. I"ll do it because both of these companies have shown me that they understand what makes games tick.

To me Mcfarlane and Salvatore do not sound like a good team,but that has nothing to do with this discussion.

Separately there fine,together IMHO not so much..they just seems like a very strange pairing to me ,anyway...


Curt at some point you will need to put something out,because currently you are a game company with no games,and you have been hyping this for quite awhile now.

Can we see a screenshot or a sketch from any of these planned games?

Draegan said:

You guys should of easily picked up from this thread how 38S plans to establish their IP.

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You make me want to read this thread, but at 209 pages, no thank you. If you have the cliff notes, I"d read those.

Column: Saying the pairing between McFarlane and Salvatore not being good makes it part of the discussion. Try and remember McFarlane has worked with writers of every genre already, on his own highly successful publications. He has a history of working with writers, especially in the fantasy field. The same can be said of Salvatore, they are both professionals.

But you aren"t interested in any of that. All you"re doing is engaging in an argument in an attempt to get a scrap of info on how far along they are. Have to say, you went a long way around to do it.

column said:

To me Mcfarlane and Salvatore do not sound like a good team,but that has nothing to do with this discussion.

Separately there fine,together IMHO not so much..they just seems like a very strange pairing to me ,anyway...


Curt at some point you will need to put something out,because currently you are a game company with no games,and you have been hyping this for quite awhile now.

Can we see a screenshot or a sketch from any of these planned games?

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Wait until San Diego Comic Con, thats when we"ll see..or at least hear some more information like a Name.

double post, nearly doubled my post count though !

column said:

To me Mcfarlane and Salvatore do not sound like a good team,but that has nothing to do with this discussion.

Separately there fine,together IMHO not so much..they just seems like a very strange pairing to me ,anyway...


Curt at some point you will need to put something out,because currently you are a game company with no games,and you have been hyping this for quite awhile now.

Can we see a screenshot or a sketch from any of these planned games?

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First off, i dont see why Todd and R.A do not sound like a good team. One is a fantasy writer that gets his shit read by millions and millions. The other is an artist that gets his stuff bought by millions and millions. Sounds like a pretty damned good start to me.

They dont have to put shit out yet if its not going to be out for a good long while. As long as they have the money to keep paying the dev"s they will put something out when its ready. I seriously doubt Curt is a stupid man in that area. He"s been playing MMO"s for years and years like the rest of us. He"s seen companies fail and fail. I am sure he"s done tons of research on why them companies/games have failed.

I enjoy both R.A. and Todd"s work immensely. So kick ass lore by Salvatore and kick ass designs and possible toys by Macfarlane? Sounds pretty good to me.

kcxiv said:

I seriously doubt Curt is a stupid man in that area. He"s been playing MMO"s for years and years like the rest of us.

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That right there is what bothers me. He has been PLAYING them for years not designing them nor running a corporation.

Running a company is much different then being a player either in a MMORPG or a sports team.

We shall see what we shall see, until then just another hype machine with no substance like all the others that have fallen by the wayside.

Ngruk said:

. . . 1)Has there ever been a game, after release, that you played at launch and quit, and then had a patch or update that made you WANT to go back and seriously play again? . . .

2)I mention this because I have always believed you really only have one shot to corral that initial huge launch audience. Or grab a significant and vocal group that expands your customer base themselves. . .

3)That, and I also feel as if we truly are entering a period of time that sees players playing a game more for the fact that it"s where their guild or friends "hang out" every bit as much as it being a good game. True? False? Sort of?

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1) Nope. Mainly for the reason you said in point 2).

2) See 1 above.

3) I don"t think to as large a degree. Sure people meet people online tons of times. But in the end the majority still remain anonymous to each other. People may follow initially to try something new, but if they don"t like they won"t stay. Eventually you will meet other "replacements." This is not to say people don"t meet other people in real life THROUGH these games, but I suspect anonymity is the norm.

gnomad said:

We shall see what we shall see, until then just another hype machine with no substance like all the others that have fallen by the wayside.

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Unlike the McQuaid hype machine though, he"s trying to hire talent in the appropriate fields, and not just base it off nepotism.

Secondly, he"s asking for a hell of a lot of input, not just thinking he knows what we as players want because that"s whathewants.

Suspend judgment until we see what"s behind the curtain.

column said:

. . You need an IP to even compete,and all the popular IP"s are gone now and failed..,or will fail in the future (Aoc,War) . . .

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Why are you giving the man business advice when you are absolutely clueless about even running or creating a major multi-million dollar one?

While I agree about trying to build up an IP before a MMO launch through console/pc games (which I argued earlier in this thread), it is not impossible to create a successful MMO if they choose not to. It is simply just "riskier." You are quick to point at VG but then forget the success of EQ.

WOW is not the end. It is a game "on the road." And seriously, how many here playing WOW, want something new? I know I do.

Curt has 3 main assets to his company. A quality author in R.A., a quality artist in Todd, and himself, a man who actually stood in arenas and knew how to perform and succeed (God, as a Cardinal fan I hated him for that ;p).

He has the story and art sealed, the tough part will be the game mechanics.

column said:

Curt at some point you will need to put something out,because currently you are a game company with no games,and you have been hyping this for quite awhile now.

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Except he really hasn"t been hyping the game all that much. He"s optimistic, certainly, but he hasn"t been coming here out of the blue going "Our game is going to be so awesome God will refurbish Heaven around it!" As someone else said, the majority of his time on these boards is spent seeking input and letting us know his stance and standards.

Cadrid said:

Except he really hasn"t been hyping the game all that much. He"s optimistic, certainly, but he hasn"t been coming here out of the blue going "Our game is going to be so awesome God will refurbish Heaven around it!" As someone else said, the majority of his time on these boards is spent seeking input and letting us know his stance and standards.

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38 Studios motto is "World Domination Through Gaming." That"s just about as preposterous as your quote.

as the saying goes, you don"t get a second chance to make a first impression. i truly believe there is nothing more important than the launch of a game. i know the second i loaded up EQ and started playing i was hooked. the next 5 or so years of my life were tied up in that game. i"d love to play another game that could pull me in like EQ did. i don"t really think it"s that hard. just make sure the game is ready before it"s released, even if it means pissing some people off for a few extra months.

Gugabuba said:

38 Studios motto is "World Domination Through Gaming." That"s just about as preposterous as your quote.

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And anyone believing that motto to be literal is retarded.

He"s expressed lofty goals, and worked toward them. How devious!


We"re not at VG2 yet, so take a pill already.

Ngruk said:

Has there ever been a game, after release, that you played at launch and quit, and then had a patch or update that made you WANT to go back and seriously play again?

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If you mean a game that had a very poor launch and then claimed a magical patch fixed it all, "come back and see!".. then no. A poor launch usually turns me off of a game for good.

If you mean a game I enjoyed and just burned out on or had rl take over or anything like that then I would say WoW. I"ve quit for periods then come back for big updates (like the honor changes or raid content updates) and of course the expansion brought me back too.

I "quit" and returned to the original Everquest several times in the 4 years I played, but not particularly because of any changes or content updates they made. It was more due to my own real life situations. Other than that, once I quit a game, it"s extremely hard for me to go back. I"ve attempted it with pretty much every game I"ve tried, but none have held my longer than a month at most on my second go around. I do know people that have done this though, so I"m assume it"s just down to the personality of the individual. Of course, the safest route is to not make people leave to begin with.

I do totally agree about the feeling of just wanting to play with friends and guildies these days though. Again, it probably depends on the person, but I know most of my guild feels the same way. There"s about 10 of us still in regular contact with each other even though very few of us are actually playing anything together at the moment. Pretty much all of us agree that we"d play any game, beyond personal preference, as long as the rest of the guild did. To me, it"s probably the most important factor in an MMO these days, whether or not my friends are playing. If they aren"t, and the game is amazing, I still may play. However, any game that has a majority of my friends playing can pretty much guarantee my money.

As to the people writing Curt and 38 Studios off, you"re late to the party. Pretty much all of that has been said and argued in the last 50 pages, I"d recommend reading them. Yes, Curt and 38 Studios are biting off a lot, maybe even more than they can chew. But to think that Curt is going into this thinking he"ll just make an amazing game by sitting on his ass and using name recognition is doing him and his company a pretty big disservice. If the game does fail, or just isn"t that popular, I sincerely doubt it will fail in the way that Vanguard did with total mismanagement. By now I think Curt has shown that whatever he is, it isn"t Brad McQuaid.

Lonin said:

By now I think Curt has shown that whatever he is, it isn"t Brad McQuaid.

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Excuse me, but what has he "shown" from a MMORPG point of view?

As a European, I have gathered he is an incredible sport legend who is also valued for his integrity. Fantastic, sports need more of those people - but other than in an abstract way, those qualities don"t transfer over to leading a gaming company making a supremly complex game. I am sure everyone has bs"d an essay or two about how "talk about how this situation required you to use leadership to sort out a complex issue" but they are all abstract qualities.

I will wait until I hear the friends and family beta leaks, I will wait until I get in open beta, and I will follow what he makes with an open mind and intererest, but "faith" in someone who has no experience in a genre just because he says intelligent things is misplaced.

The only thing you should trust is the proven trackrecord and so far I have nothing to go on.

Ngruk said:

Has there ever been a game, after release, that you played at launch and quit, and then had a patch or update that made you WANT to go back and seriously play again?

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Anarchy Online. Fantastic game, which has improved and improved and added innovation after innovation, since its abysmal launch. Same people who are doing Age of Conan. In all my posts about organization and management of development, these guys are a step ahead of the rest and have learned a lot. But no, none of that has garnered the subscription numbers the game deserves and would get if more people tried it again.

Ngruk said:

I mention this because I have always believed you really only have one shot to corral that initial huge launch audience. Or grab a significant and vocal group that expands your customer base themselves.

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This is the core of your post. The short history of MMOs seems to teach us that you can never come back form a poor launch. However, it is a short history.


I think there is more to it than that and I think there is more to learn in the future. Various MMOs haven"t just failed because of short comings at launch - they"ve failed because their foundation and core game is not fun. I"d suggest three parts to this :

i) the first 30 minutes experience.

ii) the graphical style - this won"t be a popular opinion on these forums, but "realistic" graphics is not going to create a billion dollar IP. Either go cartoony a la WoW or let Todd go nuts and go all the way with him.

iii) hooks - it should be a mantra for game creators. Forget a mission statement, fill your game with fun hooks. The loot system, character creation and development, the quest system, your solo play options, your group play options, your raid system. Its got to be immediately accessible, its all got to be fun and its got to make people want to keep doing it.

ITS NOT ENOUGH TO DO WHACKAMOLE WITH XP.

Ngruk said:

That, and I also feel as if we truly are entering a period of time that sees players playing a game more for the fact that it"s where their guild or friends "hang out" every bit as much as it being a good game. True? False? Sort of?

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Disagree - sort of. Its human nature to make assumptions based on our beliefs and experiences and those of the people around us. Don"t underestimate how many people want to play solo; further, don"t underestimate how many people run one or more accounts. Make a control decision on whether you are going to support people multi-boxing in your game and plan for it. For a start, thats as simple as enabling or disabling /follow, /assist and target forwarding and designing repeatable small party instances.

I would be surprised if a bare minimum of 30% of WoW accounts are not people running multiple subscriptions. And thats in a game which is not designed with multi-boxing in mind.

Ngruk said:

Has there ever been a game, after release, that you played at launch and quit, and then had a patch or update that made you WANT to go back and seriously play again?

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I"ve come back to MMO, but the only one that made me come back due to patch was DAoC. I had quit, and I came back for the first expansion.

Unfortunately, I quit again (and never came back) after 3 months.

I did come back to EQ, and Asheron"s Call, but that was chiefly due to social factors; people playing again. For EQ, my last come-back was when they launched euro servers, so one could argue that it was a feature that made me come back - but honestly, it was chiefly because my friends were starting again on a localised server, rather than the server itself.

I do intend to come back to WoW for the expansion - because they missed the ball with their high-end game redesign in Burning Crusade, and it stopped being fun far too early. I do have hopes for the next expansion, so we"ll see.

It"s not rocket science and I am not trying to overthink but as I look around the MMO space I can"t think of a game that didn"t do well at launch, and then grew at some point later to become a popular MMO.

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True. You botch your launch, you"re doomed to obscurity everafter.

That, and I also feel as if we truly are entering a period of time that sees players playing a game more for the fact that it"s where their guild or friends "hang out" every bit as much as it being a good game. True? False? Sort of?

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See above. I"m "slightly" older than the average player (closer to 50 than 40), and the game I play owe more to the people in my guild than the game itself.