Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Frax said:

You could have just said Star Wars Galaxies!

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One mans trash is another mans treasure. There was a lot more to the SWG saga than anyone could ever know and I do know that the team busting hump to support it now is tasked with a monumental but achievable task.

This board has more than enough bashers, I don"t need to join the ranks, nor does it do me any good knowing that at some point I"ll be the target of those same people.

Besides, beating people while their down is so blase, and yesterday. It takes no talent and serves no purpose for me. I"m alot more motivated to talk about things that inspire me or others, that"s where I get my energy from.

That"s not to say I haven"t, Lord knows I"ve had my share of slams and stupid comments put out there, that the second I read I wince and think "What the hell did I say that for?".

The SOE Austin team is overseeing the SWG universe and I will say this, the man running that studio is arguably one of the most intelligent and respected human beings you"ll ever meet, inside this industry or any other.

Soo...have you tried the scifi learning curve from hell yet Ngruk?? It has sucked me in quite well so far.

The learning curve on EVE is what resulted in my not lasting the first month to become a paying customer. The first 30 minutes to an hour of a game really has to engage you and give you enough to not feel completely overwhelmed and lost. I have plenty of friends who play EVE constantly (if by play i include log on every other week as their talents finish being learned so they can queue up the next) and they enjoy it greatly. Not every game is made for every player however.

I love sci-fi. Some of my favorite movies and tv shows are distinctly scifi, however my passion lies in fantasy. (that being said, some sci-fi crosses the boundry and becomes more fantasy than sci-fi, such as Jack L Chalker"s well world books)


One last comment to extend on Ngruk"s comment reguarding SWG, he"s dead on. Having talked at Fan Faires with some people who worked very closely with and on the SWG team, there were a lot of factors completely out of any of the team"s controll. They however took the task given to them and did the best they could, even knowing that they would take all the blame and downfall. That right there should earn respect, however amongst the vast majority of people without even half the story it has just earned ridicule.

Once I knew Raph Koster was on SWG i knew it would fail, he has great ideas on paper but has never been able to make them work in any game. He almost single handedly killed UO which was king of the MMOG gaming world at the time with his stupid ass ideas. I still have nightmares of the blue untouchable PKers he created.

*cough* shared exp debt

Gaereth said:

Soo...have you tried the scifi learning curve from hell yet Ngruk?? It has sucked me in quite well so far.

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I am training my Learning Skill to level 5 as I type this Figure I am so busy right now I can train the important stuff
What I have had trouble doing is the missions. I cannot find any pirates at the locations for the missions, been travelling all over and learning all the nuances, and it does look fun, even though space ain"t my thing.

I show up at a mission location, and nothing. I warp within the zone even, to the location, and nothing. So not only can I not complete the mission for the bonus, I can"t even complete the mission itself due to not being able to kill pirates.

I did one, the one I have now is finding some pirate "center" and wiping it out, can"t find it. Supposed to be in Duripant.

BTW anyone catch our Press Release today?

Yes, I caught it

For the missions I guess you have to target the gate represented by the ">>" and activate it.

Usually missions only give you bookmarks to those gates. Then you follow the gates one after the other till you arrive where the mission actually is.

Ngruk said:

One mans trash is another mans treasure. There was a lot more to the SWG saga than anyone could ever know and I do know that the team busting hump to support it now is tasked with a monumental but achievable task.

This board has more than enough bashers, I don"t need to join the ranks, nor does it do me any good knowing that at some point I"ll be the target of those same people.

Besides, beating people while their down is so blase, and yesterday. It takes no talent and serves no purpose for me. I"m alot more motivated to talk about things that inspire me or others, that"s where I get my energy from.

That"s not to say I haven"t, Lord knows I"ve had my share of slams and stupid comments put out there, that the second I read I wince and think "What the hell did I say that for?".

The SOE Austin team is overseeing the SWG universe and I will say this, the man running that studio is arguably one of the most intelligent and respected human beings you"ll ever meet, inside this industry or any other.

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I agree, its not good business (or even very nice as a person) to just bash your competitors mercilessly. However I couldn"t resist since they are neither to me, and there is no world wide brand bigger than Star Wars, except for maybe coke or mcdonalds... However, the release and failure of the game on launch really speaks for itself, if its better now I have no idea, I don"t go back very often to old games that I did not enjoy. I do hope they can redeem the game at some point, like the majority of kids growing up in the late 70s/early 80s I grew up with star wars.

All those former SoE employees but still no Gallenite.

Regardless, that"s some pretty impressive talent. It"s really great to see that things are continuing to move forward as such a fast pace, instead of fizzling out after the first round of hires. You"re also batting 1.000 with the proper use of the word "soon". As a pitcher and a game developer, I think that breaks just about every law of physics.

I/Someone else may have asked already, but is the initial design phase (general brainstorming on the world, story, and characters) ongoing during the influx of employees, or is it necessary to wait for everyone to join the team prior to starting that portion of the design process?

Or, y"know, just plead the fif.

Cadrid said:

All those former SoE employees but still no Gallenite.

Regardless, that"s some pretty impressive talent. It"s really great to see that things are continuing to move forward as such a fast pace, instead of fizzling out after the first round of hires. You"re also batting 1.000 with the proper use of the word "soon". As a pitcher and a game developer, I think that breaks just about every law of physics.

I/Someone else may have asked already, but is the initial design phase (general brainstorming on the world, story, and characters) ongoing during the influx of employees, or is it necessary to wait for everyone to join the team prior to starting that portion of the design process?.

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The "brainstorming" phase of this has been years in development. It"s not over by any stretch but there is a lot of that "how cool would it be if" stuff that"s been done.
We"ve basically assembled pretty much the entire core team in all disciplines, as well as leadership, and they"ll be making their way here over the coming months. The press release today was the first step of the leadership being put in place, and I don"t think it was a small one either. Scott is a brilliant man, and a big time leader, who"s as creative as any person I"ve ever met.

You don"t get where he was at Disney without being a somebody, and the franchises he was tasked with oversight on are not something to be taken lightly.

Pretty exciting day all in all here at GMG, won"t lie about that one.

Add to Scott, the immensely talented group of artists and animators that are now in house and it"s a pretty exciting time here right now.

Ngruk said:

I am training my Learning Skill to level 5 as I type this Figure I am so busy right now I can train the important stuff
What I have had trouble doing is the missions. I cannot find any pirates at the locations for the missions, been travelling all over and learning all the nuances, and it does look fun, even though space ain"t my thing.

I show up at a mission location, and nothing. I warp within the zone even, to the location, and nothing. So not only can I not complete the mission for the bonus, I can"t even complete the mission itself due to not being able to kill pirates.

I did one, the one I have now is finding some pirate "center" and wiping it out, can"t find it. Supposed to be in Duripant.

BTW anyone catch our Press Release today?

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Depending on how you are timewise, you"d be better of doing the advance skills since the expansion lets you train them when the basic ones are at 4 instead of 5. Makes things a little faster over all.

Faille said:

Depending on how you are timewise, you"d be better of doing the advance skills since the expansion lets you train them when the basic ones are at 4 instead of 5. Makes things a little faster over all.

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That and join the FoH channel ingame if you haven"t. It seems to have helped a lot of the newbs .

Bizanich said:

That and join the FoH channel ingame if you haven"t. It seems to have helped a lot of the newbs .

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I"ll have to check it out. Don"t seem to have the free time to play games once I got into the business of trying to make them, funny how that works.

Ngruk said:

I"ll have to check it out. Don"t seem to have the free time to play games once I got into the business of trying to make them, funny how that works.

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Once the ball is rolling you"ll get some of that time back.

Ngruk said:

I"ll have to check it out. Don"t seem to have the free time to play games once I got into the business of trying to make them, funny how that works.

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Just make sure you have time to play your own game as it"s being made so that you actually know what direction it"s going in.

Nothing more embarassing than saying "We will/won"t have this" then the opposite happens.

Hi Curt,

if you visit Germany and pitch an inning or two for my team, I"ll test your game for free

Be curious to hear customers take on middleware right now. Is it something you even remotely consider when you are thinking about a game purchase or is it totally irrelevant to you?

I would imagine there will be a minority of players that actually know what middleware is and does, and a large majority that says "what the hell is middleware?"

Generally irrelevant as long as the game runs well and is fun to play. If you are talking about stuff like SpeedTree, then I don"t see why you wouldn"t use it. It works as well as anything else and saves you time and money.

Well if a game uses a certain engine it becomes easy to know if the game will run on my computer. It also hints at the type of gameplay I can expect. For example, it a game uses the Source engine I expect it to run really smoothly, and have a physics component to its gameplay.

Things like speedtree I don"t really care about. You can use it to make trees, or you can custom model the trees. I don"t care as long as it works and the trees look good.

Though we really haven"t seen middleware specifically designed for MMOs yet (or at least I don"t know about any). The HeroEngine will change that, but until some games get released that uses it we can"t really discuss it. It does seem that it will speed up MMO development time with its tools and give developers more time to focus on the mechanics and content.

That is about all I know/care about for middleware. And I really only care if I played another game that uses that same engine.

Twobit Whore said:

Generally irrelevant as long as the game runs well and is fun to play. If you are talking about stuff like SpeedTree, then I don"t see why you wouldn"t use it. It works as well as anything else and saves you time and money.

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This is one of those comments that is somewhat humorous to me. If you have something that can churn out your trees at 1/10th the production cost and 1/100th the time, it"s a no brainer right?

That"s making the assumption that it"s completely compatible with every technical aspect of your design.

I thought the same thing, Speedtree? Hell ya.

Not that easy now that I have learned a bit about it.

Well the answer is simple then. If the middleware saves you time and/or money and gives you a tool that is as good as anything you can do yourself, then use it. If you can do it yourself cheaper/faster/better, then do that instead.

I don"t think most gamers care who makes what as long as the game is fun and has adequate performance. Well, maybe you shouldn"t use Chinese children in sweatshops to make your game, but barring that, use whatever works.