Tagged News: the escapist

Our sister magazine, The Escapist, had an opportunity to sit with Jumpgate Evolution's Lead Producer Hermann Peterscheck, and talked about NetDevil's plans to take the franchise into the next level:

TE: So how did you guys decide on a sequel to Jumpgate as opposed to a new expansion or property?

HP: The reality is that most game companies that are started, or at least the independent ones, are just started on vision and dog work. It's a few people get together and they say, "hey, wouldn't it be great if there were a game that did this, this, this and this?" And that's really how Jumpgate was started. At that time the big game that was played was Air Warriors, but we were also big fans of Wing Commander and later on Tie Fighter, so Scott's idea was always, "Imagine that scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where all the ships jump in and there's the big fight around the Death Star, like I wanna play that!"

This was before "MMO" was even a word, so it's interesting the process when you go to pitch it to publishers and there's no mainstream MMO like World of WarCraft or EverQuest or any of that. And you say you're gonna make this game and there will be all these people playing, and they ask if you mean 32 people in a map and you say no! A thousand people!

So after Auto Assault we all sat down and wondered, well, what can we do? And, a lot of ideas got bounced around, but the reality is that a lot of the quality games come out of iteration. You'll notice that a lot of the really successful studios tend to make similar kinds of games over and over. So we talked about this love of space games and the people out there who still like playing them, so we wondered what we could do if we really spent some time and resources with that game.

Originally it was supposed to be an update, but as we worked on it more and more, especially with the visual quality coming out of the art department early on, we decided we should make a completely new game. It evolved from there, and has grown into what it now is.

Read the full interview at The Escapist.

The Wall Street Journal and Winning Workplaces team up to annually recognize the top workplaces in the United States. This year, Themis Group ranked as one of the top 35 finalists out of over more than 850 nominations. Themis Group, runs WarCry, The Escapist and other gaming related companies.

Click below to read the details of the selections.

The latest issue of our redesigned Escapist has a couple articles of interest to MMO fans out there. The issue is themed around examination of games journalism and includes an article from former EA Mythic Director of Community Relations Sanya Weathers that talks about her route through the trenches and into the industry. It also has some words from 38 Studios Community Manager Ryan Shwayder on the ethics of gaming websites, specifically MMOs.

The entire issue is worth a read, check it out here.

The Escapist has published a book review I did on "Alter Ego". The coffee table book juxtaposes the stories of real life people with their virtual avatars. It's a fascinating look at those people who play MMOs.

At the beginning of the project, Cooper insisted that he had no goal or message in the exploration of virtual identities. He simply wanted to "record something." "A stereotype is oversimplified," Cooper noted, "[I] just wanted to get some real human complexity."

One example is the portrait of the gold famer. On one page, there is a man from China who judging from his photograph, does not go outside too often. He is a power-leveler and is photographed standing on a desk in a bleached room full of computers with dark circles under his eyes, smoking a cigarette. People might condemn these practices, but the engaging first person bio from Spaight shows that this is his life. He plays 70 hours a week and described himself as a "personal fitness trainer for your avatar". It's all in the framing.

Read more on The Escapist.

Our sister site The Escapist released Issue #103 this morning and this week the focus is totally on MMOs. The issue's five articles each take on a different topic that likely interests WarCry readers. Here are the details.

In "To Catch a Farmer," Darius Kazemi makes his debut in The Escapist as an MMOG goldfarmer sleuth. Allen Varney brings to light the struggles of Asian MMOGs in the North American market in "The Korean Invasion." In "WoW's Magic Number," Dana Massey looks at World of WarCraft's effect, or lack thereof, on the overall MMOG market. Shawn Williams looks back on the truly gigantic world on Asheron's Call in "Putting the 'Massive' in 'Massively Multiplayer Online'." And in "Massive in the Morning," Michael Zenke interviews podcasters with an inside look at the MMOG revolution.

Check out The Escapist's MMO issue here.

Today's issue of The Escapist focuses on mythology and games. Garriott is credited as one of the fathers of storytelling in the gaming medium thanks to his work on the Ultima series. Now at NCSoft, he's the driving force behind Tabula Rasa, which hopes to reshape the way people tell stories in online worlds. Check out what he has to say on the idea of story in games in this article.

Garriott had a lot more to say than what is in the interview. Over the next couple days, we're going to bring you the rest of this interview, exclusively here on WarCry. Keep your eyes peeled!

TE: You've described, in speaking about the evolution of Tabula Rasa, what you call "ethical parables." How do these expand the play possibilities over typical MMOGs? Are they essentially missions that give people a chance to examine both sides of a problem?

RG: Exactly. When I started Tabula Rasa, in addition to things like the language, we also set off to build a virtue system very much like Ultima's, but not Ultima's. We really broke it down to its individual circumstance and its individual needs. So some of the tests and factions you might engage have fairly deep and sophisticated levels of interactions, if appropriate, and others are even a very small thread of an issue to showcase.

When I look back across the whole later Ultima series, starting with Ultima IV, each game had, [at] the core of its story, some contemporary issue that I

would mutate into a medieval setting and put in the game in a way where honestly I am not sure how many people would recognize it as being inspired by the contemporary social issue that was plaguing the world where I lived at the time. But I knew, and I felt it made for a rich and poignant storyline.

Read the full article at the link below.

In the latest issue of The Escapist, Allen Varney looks at the notorious "NGE" (new game experience) that SOE/LucasArts introduced into Star Wars Galaxies what now seems like eons ago. His essay, in an issue themed around gaming industry screw ups, examines how things went so terribly wrong.

Read more over in The Escapist.

Our sister magazine The Escapist has interviewed the lawyer in a story we brought you yesterday. A Florida man sued gold selling/farming company IGE on behalf of all World of Warcraft players, claiming their actions devalued his virtual items.

Alexander Macris, our CEO, is a Harvard-trained lawyer and interviewed the man's lawyer Richard Newsome about the case.

TE: So what is the actual lawsuit - in layman's terms?

RN: The actual lawsuit is Hernandez v. IGE. We filed it in Miami, where IGE has offices. In layman's terms, the core of the complaint is a consumer class action for unfair trade practices. Guys like Tony [Hernandez, the plaintiff] have paid their $15 for some entertainment, and IGE is polluting that entertainment. It's kind of like, if someone pays for a ticket to go see a movie, and if someone else comes in behind them and kicks their seat, you can get them to stop doing that. We're just trying to get IGE to stop kicking the seats. This is not unlike other consumer complaints where someone has paid for a service, and someone else is interfering with it. It's really very simple.

Read more on The Escapist.

We are pleased to announce that today we are relaunching our Guild Wars WarCry site! The new site will feature the new, more streamlined design and interface, as well as an updated Skills Database. And in the spirit of all the fun, our sister pub, The Escapist recently did an interview with ArenaNet's level 20 Marketing and PR Assassin, Jenny Bendel.

Stop by and check out the new Guild Wars WarCry, and the interview over on The Escapist.