Tagged News: ceo

Recently, WarCry had the chance to talk to Acclaim CEO Howard Marks. We received an update on his company's quest to bring the Eastern MMO business model to Western shores and got a peek at how 2Moons, 9Dragons, BOTS!! and Dance! Online have fared on the open market.

9Dragons

What "free-to-play" really means is that all Acclaim's games are free to download and can be played without the player ever laying down a dime. In 2Moons, for example, the company makes money through in-game advertising that appears in the user interface. In 9Dragons, players can play for free, but also can buy upgrades and customization items securely through Acclaim.

Marks emphasized through that the company is committed to actual free-to-play. One common consumer complaint with the model is that while some games advertise their games as such, many build in an artificial gameplay wall where a player basically is forced to buy items or coin to progress in the game. He says that none of Acclaim's games do this, nor will there ever be any artificial walls.

Read more after the leap.

Fury launched in October and hoped to capture an audience through fast-action, PvP combat in a free-to-play/subscription hybrid model MMO. It has not gone quite to plan and last week the company was forced to layoff many of its developers. We caught up with Auran CEO Tony Hilliam and Lead Designer Adam Carpenter to find out how they got to this point and how they hope to turn it around.

WarCry: Layoffs cannot be spun as good news and shake player confidence. Why should someone who sees Fury in a store feel confident that the game they purchase will still exist in a few months?

Auran: The primary reason is that the smaller core team staff allocated to Fury means the project is now operating at the break even point in terms of salaries and overheads. The Director's decision to cut back on staff ensures that even without significant increases in player populations, the game can be maintained and improved.

Read more after the jump.

Turbine has undergone a corporate shake-up, according to sources within the company and some quiet edits to their own website. The official company page now lists Jim Crowley as President and CEO, removing all mention of Jeff Anderson.

The move comes suddenly, as WarCry interviewed Anderson only last week at DigitalLife and saw no indications. There is no word on how or why he left at this time.

WarCry was not able to get official comment on the move from Turbine as the changes were discovered outside of business hours. We will continue to follow this story as it develops.

Today we bring you the story of our chat with Jeff Anderson, Turbine CEO, at AGDC 2007. He talked about Lord of the Rings Online, it's recent updates, Book 11, its first expansion and the future of Turbine as a whole.

The upcoming Book 11 is Turbine's top priority. This free expansion is the first of a wave of vastly new content - Book 10, to Anderson, finished the work that the launch began - and concentrates on player housing.

In Lord of the Rings Online, housing will be placed in instanced neighborhoods called "streets". The streets, within themes, will be roughly the same in each area of the world, but with different names. To access their house, the player talks to an NPC in the correct part of the world and "asks for directions" to, for example, Cherry Street. The NPC then gives those directions when he teleports the player to that street, on which their house resides.

Read more after the jump.

We've seen a lot of hype about 38 Studios, the MMORPG start-up headed by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, fantasy novelist R.A. Salvatore and Spawn-creator Todd McFarlane, but at AGDC we finally got to see some of the meat on the company's bones. President and CEO Brett Close spoke to us about the company, their vision for their game and addressed the concern that the company might be some kind of vanity project.

"We have an unfair advantage," he said in reference to presence of Salvatore on the team and added simply, "if you do it right, people will love it."

To that end, they've also made strides to ensure that the game blends story into gameplay in a way that MMOs have so far failed to do.

"Current MMOs have some [story], but its like shooters in 1996," he explained. "Everyone was doing Doom, then came Half-Life. They realized story makes for compelling gameplay."

He hopes that their project - the name of which we won't hear for quite some time - can fill that void. He wants to move beyond the mechanics and give people a reason to play, which is a tough challenge for any studio.

Read more after the jump.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot believes that the gaming market will grow by 50% over the next four years as a greater number of regular people get involved in gaming. He said this at the Leipzig Game Conference this week.

The market for video games is expected to expand by half over the next four years as it extends beyond hardcore gamers, the chief executive of French video game publisher Ubisoft (UBIP.PA) said on Wednesday.

"There are so many new customers to the business; this is going to grow the market tremendously. I expect the market to grow by 50 percent in the next four years," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot told Reuters at the sidelines of the Games Convention in Leipzig.

"It's a very exciting time for all the developers and publishers," Guillemot said.

Read more here.

John Smedley - SOE's CEO - is headed to Fan Faire this week to address the community at large. He'll be giving a speech where he talks to the fans, the press and even introduces a new game.

Read more after the click.

Feargus Urquhart is the Chief Executive Officer for Obsidian Entertainment and today we have an interview with him where we learn about his job, Obsidian and what his gaming background is.

WarCry: What computer games have been an inspiration in the past?

Feargus Urquhart: Like the number of books I've read, there have been a ton of computer games that I have played and enjoyed over the years. If I had to core it down to the ones that I think influenced me, I would say they would be Wizardry I, Ultima 4, Bard's Tale 1, Wasteland, Baldur's Gate 2 (even though I was involved in making it, it still influences how I think of games to this day), Fallout (similar to BG2), Masters of Orion, Colonization, Pharoah, Battlefield 1942 and EQ.

Read more after you click.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello gave an interview where he noted that the game industry, including his own mega corporation, need to be more innovative if they hope to keep a captive audience.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play," Mr. Riccitiello said in an interview.

The blunt comments by the 47-year-old Mr. Riccitiello -- a former top executive at EA who returned to the company after a stint in private equity -- are likely to cause a stir at the annual E3 games conference this week in Los Angeles. Many of his criticisms have been articulated by analysts and others, but rarely have they been made so publicly by the head of major videogame company. They are a departure for EA management, which in the past has played down its challenges.

Read more on the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this week, NCSoft announced that they would cease operation of Auto Assault on August 31st, 2007 and we then spoke to David Swofford about the announcement. Now, in an exclusive interview with NetDevil CEO Scott Brown we learn that the developer has no plans to purchase the game back from its publisher, which effectively spells an end to Auto Assault.

NetDevil has no plans to salvage their automobile MMORPG Auto Assault, according to CEO Scott Brown. Publisher NCSoft announced early this week that after an inglorious year and four months of commercial service they will close the doors on August 31st of this year.

"We talked about it and sort of left it where it is," Brown told WarCry in a phone interview late Thursday. "We just couldn't come to an agreement."

Read more after the click.