Panel of MMO developers discuss the industry at Comic-Con

by William Dobson on Apr 24th 2008 9:30PM

Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons Online, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Business models, MMO industry, Warhammer Online, News items

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Over at New York Comic-Con 2008, Ten Ton Hammer assembled a group of respected MMO developers to answer questions about the future of the industry, and just to talk shop in general. The members of the panel were: Age of Conan Game Designer Jason Stone, Warhammer Online Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, Turbine Vice-President of Product Development Craig Alexander, 38 Studios Vice-President of Creative Development Scott Cuthbertson, and EVE Online Game Designer Matt Woodward -- phew, that's a lot of capitalization.

There are two videos to watch, one in which the questions come from TTH, the other being an audience Q&A. Combined, the videos take the better part of an hour to watch, but you'll find some interesting and differing viewpoints on various topics, such as business models, world-altering events, product placement, sci-fi versus fantasy MMOs, winning market share from World of Warcraft, and community features in and out of game.

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Tags: 38-studios, aoc, comic-con-08, comic-con-2008, craig-alexander, ddo, EVE, funcom, jason-stone, jeff-hickman, lotro, matt-woodward, scott-cuthbertson, turbine, War

Reader Comments (2)

I'm the betrenchcoated, bad haired kid who asked the roleplaying question. Whee!

I really thought folks like this didnt exist. I know they do in tv ads and the occasional reality show. The devs in the video are clueless in both why and how the industry is the way it is and what to do about market share. I will say that somewhere there may be a dev that knows what to do and why they need to do it, but so far none have surfaced.

These devs are living in a spunup world in which their suits have done a great job "teaching" them what we really want and what we need.

The big picture the devs here need to realize is that they are wrong on all points, they dont know what we need or want, only we the paying subs do.

The fail to take into account "what is released first, will win" because folks hate doing things twice. Parts of the mmo demographic dislike complicated ideas, some, and this is a huge one, cant part with time invested, parts of the mmo demographic will even forgive mistakes if things are shiny enough and the mmo is simple enough.

One day the devs may snap back to reality and dismiss the spinners, and the mmo researchers that are hired to tell them what "we" want or like, because until a group of actual devs spends a great amount of time with actual gamers of all types, etc, well hehe, we will get what we pay for.