Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

I AM NOT CROTCHETY.

Thanks.

has anyone played around with the few shots they released to see if anything hidden when they are combined? I"m betting something is in there, whether minor or not, suprised no one has even tried (i don"t really care enough or know enough about image manipulation to try

Teljair said:

He gets to interact with the brightest minds of the MMO community on a daily basis.

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I"ve ready this once before, but it"s still funny. Thanks would read again. Sarcasm at it"s finest. ++

Some of the luckiest people on the earth are the ones that truly love what they do for a living. Lots of people mime that, or mimic what they think they should act like to get people to believe it about them.

The ideal situation is that the people who work at 38S (or whatever else) get up every day excited about what they do. IMO the only way you can imbue that sense of joy and fun into a game from that quality in the people who have made it. Playing these games makes you wish could have been a part in making it. Early EQ and WoW come to mind.

And I think we all have played games where the people working on it were really glad to be collecting a paycheck but viewed making the game as some shit they had to do in order to cash in. Later EQ, EQ2, Vanguard.

I dont know which column the people at 38S fall into. Maybe Curt is an Asiatic Tyrant in the office

Row! You incomprehensible, horizontal-eyed, Western trouser-wearers! Eurgh! You all look the same to me! How I despise your lack of subtlety and your joined-up writing! You, who have never committed ritual suicide in your lives! Unceremonious rice-pudding eaters! How I abominate your milk-drinking and your lack of ancestor-worship and your failure to eat your lunch out of little boxes!

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You never know. (that would actually prolly be more Dice-K than Schilling as I think about it)

But the optimist in me says these are people who are excited about their game and like talking about with people who are also excited about it. If the situation was reversed, wouldnt you be? Maybe Blackguard is one of those guys who would sell this game like he would a can of dog food, patio furniture , or used cars.

Time will tell though. And proof will be in the game.

Lleauaric~EW said:

Some of the luckiest people on the earth are the ones that truly love what they do for a living. Lots of people mime that, or mimic what they think they should act like to get people to believe it about them.

The ideal situation is that the people who work at 38S (or whatever else) get up every day excited about what they do. IMO the only way you can imbue that sense of joy and fun into a game from that quality in the people who have made it. Playing these games makes you wish could have been a part in making it. Early EQ and WoW come to mind.

And I think we all have played games where the people working on it were really glad to be collecting a paycheck but viewed making the game as some shit they had to do in order to cash in. Later EQ, EQ2, Vanguard.

I dont know which column the people at 38S fall into. Maybe Curt is an Asiatic Tyrant in the office

You never know. (that would actually prolly be more Dice-K than Schilling as I think about it)

But the optimist in me says these are people who are excited about their game and like talking about with people who are also excited about it. If the situation was reversed, wouldnt you be? Maybe Blackguard is one of those guys who would sell this game like he would a can of dog food, patio furniture , or used cars.

Time will tell though. And proof will be in the game.

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Thanks
At the end of the day you can take from our posts here whatever it is you choose to. But the above sort of nails it. We are passionate people getting a shot (in my case ANOTHER SHOT) at doing something we LOVE to do, for a living.
That doesn"t suck. There are no ulterior motives here. I was warned early and often about participating in forums such as this, by people that didn"t know me all that well at the time.
I"ve been run over, many times, by far worse and far more personal stuff than what"s gone on in here.
I enjoy the give and take and the chatter about topics that are relevant to me, and to the company and our IP.
People were not shy about handing out advice. From do it smaller and for less to anything you can think of. Many saying that even launching a game would be a huge success "for someone like me".
I don"t see it that way, not at all. The goal is, and was, and will be, to change the way our little world thinks and looks at games when we publish something.
We"re not going to come here and hype things the way they"ve been done in the past. Oh I will get carried away when talking about the team because I know it to be true. I certainly won"t get to talk about the game to any degree, not the degree I would like anyway, because the folks working here in some cases are far smarter than me when it comes to delivering on promises made by people like me.
Shwayder, Danuser and a few others will post here and there when they feel the need or urge, and they"ll do so even when there are some here who cannot get past what they feel is an unforgivable sin committed by one of these men in their past jobs. They don"t have to and are not asked to, but do so because they are far more like you guys than most others.

Curt, I"ve had a question burning in my mind for a while now, and I haven"t been able to find an answer, either here or on 38S. Now it may be that my search skills suck, or it may be my reading compression blows and Ive over looked the answer some where.

My question is really, how did you get together with Todd and RA? Did you get the idea one night, and then approach those guys? Did you know them prior to starting 38S? Was it just a case of all 3 of you chilling one night saying we could do better then that while discussing the finer points of MMORPGs? I appreciate that it takes all sorts, but how does a pitcher coerce a comic book creater and a novelist into creating a startup in such a fickle field?

I seem to remember you saying somewhere that you had been filming everything going on at the studio, and I have to say that I hope you do some kind of "making of feature" at some point.
I love it when film makers will add in extras on DvD releases, and I"m not just talking about a few deleted scenes. The LOTR trilogy is about the best I can think of as an example. The amount of love and dedication that went into making those films was clearly evident in the several non feature DvDs they included, and they allowed us outsiders, us armchair directors to feel a part of that magic when they released those film extras.
I understand that it will possibly relate to how successful the game is, but I hope that we get to see some of that behind the scenes footage from yourselves.

Ngruk said:

We"re not going to come here and hype things the way they"ve been done in the past.

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Mmm. Okay. I"ll believe that when I see it. Like Genjiro said (well sorta said) I don"t care if you guys shill here -- just be upfront about it and throw in some actual info with the shill (and yes concept art does count as actual info).

Genjiro said:

All you had to do was watch how many times and in how many places on a constant basis FoH forums were linked or discussed on other mmo sites, official forums, guild forums and pretty much everywhere else. Fact is, FoH is a large established hub of MMO discussion whose posters often times here have ties to guildmates and other gamers/friends going back well into the past decade. Other people understand that, just look at some of the banners you see and have seen here daily from major mmos--Eve, WoW, hell even fucking EQ2 has had ads on here previously, you know, the game you worked for? Apparently they are doing it for no good reason, and no new posters show up here on FoH in droves do they....oh wait.... I don"t remember the numbers, but Req said somewhere before the number of views/bandwidth FoH gets and it was massive. Other developers who have posted info here for their games and shilled them in the past were definitely doing it for the love of the game and not for word of mouth to get people talking!

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Genjiro, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of the importance of these forums. If the FoH forums ceased to exist tomorrow, the MMO industry would most certainly survive. I doubt that there is any tangible evidence to show that these boards have made or broken any MMO. The glory days of these forums are long over despite the feeling of nostalgia some of us still have for those days. These boards are little more then puerile entertainment for a small minority of self-important posters that feel the need to piss on every thread like a dog pisses on every fire hydrant in his path. Substantive discussion without some fool crying "rickshaw" has become almost impossible here.

I feel sorry for the devs that still come and post here in the hopes that they will get something equivalent to "street cred" with the armchair wannabe MMO designers and self-appointed mavens on these forums. Trust me, they aren"t worth a fleeting moment of your time. Devs have far more effective means of getting out the word such as official websites, the media, their blogs and word of mouth (which was the main reason that EQ became so popular back in 1999 -- long before these forums existed.)

In the end all the counts is the quality of the MMO that you make. We"ll all find out soon enough. In this respect I agree with Genjiro; we"re tired of the talk and hype. For all of Brad McQuaid"s evangelizing on these forums, he could not disguise the ultimate reality that his MMO was a shambles. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Ngruk said:

Wow, this is some good stuff. Just so you guys know, and I am pretty sure I don"t have to worry about this, but this is Curt Schilling and I was pointed in your direction for some quality reading.
You didn"t disappoint.
Anwyay, I enjoy the give and take of forums where informed opinions are backed with facts and stats, not sure that"s completely the case here because I think facts would hose alot of you guys trying to defend your arguments
Anyway I am looking forward to a healthy exchange of ideas around here and serving up some verbal abuse.
Ut I have heard that you are the one to seek out if one is looking for a verbal sparring match with zero chance of winning over the opponent..

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Curt"s first post here after the threadhad already been rolling along. You guys need to get over the shill thing because it"s beyond obvious what the tone of the thread was and how excited Curt was even then.

Maybe, just maybe I made a mistake. Maybe there were a few things I should have stated right up front.

I do enjoy chatting about topics I have interest in, WoW, 38 Studios, baseball, all that hobby and work stuff. I am chatty so I do talk more than most.
I do enjoy talking with people who have opposing viewpoints but as much passion about their view as I am about mine.

However.
1) I am pretty sure none of you are going to recommend a feature on these boards that we"ll read and say "Damn, we should have thought of that, ok let"s figure out how to get it in game."

2) 99.9% of the stuff talked about in here either:

a) does not fit into what we are making,
b) is a "great idea" on paper that couldn"t suck more in implementation,
c) is something we are already doing
d) is something we considered but it didn"t work/fit into what we are making

Once you narrow the focus on your product the "feature creep" almost sorts itself out. Once you have your key core design tenets and people there to insure those are adhered to (Hey Jason, Steve and Travis!) it becomes near impossible to "wedge" something in, or even want to try.

For the most part the few people in this forum or thread that work in the industry (and it becomes easier and easier to figure out who they are as this thread continues to move) keep this conversation rationale when it threatens to be anything but.

The rest of you are either devoted hard core MMO players who can"t wait for the next great thing, or devoted hard core MMO players who are so jaded by the real or perceived slights against you in the past you"ll post "I don"t care what you say or do you"re just like everyone else until you make something we can see/touch/feel/hear/play", before that you are dead to us.
Then there is the small subset of "stop ass kissing..yadda yadda".

The conversation appears to be dying down anyway as some way more interesting things are moving closer to D-Day, with Wrath and WO starting to garner the lions share of our attention. Rightly so I say as a WoW player and WH fan. Can"t wait to see how this turns out.

I"ve been following the progression of your company since you announced it, and you seem (in my humble opinion) to be traveling in the right direction. In particular, the talent that you have attracted is clearly impressive.

It is also pretty easy to determine by the way that you phrase your posts that you trust and appreciate the people that you brought on, which, to me, might just be the best indicator of success.

Anyway, best of luck on your game. I"m looking forward to hearing more about it. Keep us posted.

Ngruk,
I hope you and 38 Studios can somehow recapture the Risk vs Reward that first existed in the UO/EQ era. These games shouldn"t be this easy and zerging shouldn"t be the answer on overcoming most hurdles. Hopefully EQ2 wasn"t your starting point.

+1 for a game that has real consequences...mmo"s these days are just too easy and unfullfilling. I realize most companies decide against more difficult and engrossing gameplay these days in pursuit of the almighty dollar but damn if those games of the past weren"t just plainly more fun to play.

I hope someone makes a niche game somewhere that can satisfy the people who like getting their nuts kicked in during MMO gameplay so you guys can stop complaining about easy games these days.

Draegan said:

I hope someone makes a niche game somewhere that can satisfy the people who like getting their nuts kicked in during MMO gameplay so you guys can stop complaining about easy games these days.

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They make tons of those, in korea. Should probably slap some gay westernized high fantasy graphics on it instead of anime style, and it"d sell. "You lose even more xp on death than you did in vanilla EQ, and we have raid bosses that need 4days rotations to kill them".

Speaking of Warhammer. Good god public quests are the shit!

any MMO released after 2008 is required to steal public quests and tome of knowledge.

Wuzit said:

Ngruk,
I hope you and 38 Studios can somehow recapture the Risk vs Reward that first existed in the UO/EQ era. These games shouldn"t be this easy and zerging shouldn"t be the answer on overcoming most hurdles. Hopefully EQ2 wasn"t your starting point.

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Most of the problems non-hardcore players had with EQ2 when it came out was that is was TOO hard. (Where there other issues, of course. But the risk for reward in the early days of EQ2 was there moreso then in just about every game out there now. By a long shot.)

Ngruk said:

1) I am pretty sure none of you are going to recommend a feature on these boards that we"ll read and say "Damn, we should have thought of that, ok let"s figure out how to get it in game."

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Ahem. The In-Game Pretty Girl Bulletin Board.

Ninja Halflings.