Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

faille

Molten Core Raider
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It"s all very well aiming to win the world series, and I would expect nothing less from professionals, but unfortunately the MMO industry isn"t quite as forgiving as Major League Baseball! 8) If you full short, you don"t often get a chance to pick yourself up, learn from mistakes and have another go next season.

Also would anyone expect a new team, or one that finished bottom last season, to have a realistic shot at the world series (no offence, but I put your company in that category since it has no track record as a whole, even if individuals have)? Or would you expect them to need a few seasons of building up to have a good shot?

Saying all that though, the beauty of the computer industry is that at any given time anyone, from a new company to a couple of kids in a basement, can come up with some revolutionary idea that just hooks people in. I do wish you guys all the best at being those guys! 8)
 

Twobit_sl

shitlord
6
0
Well, technically you could compare his company to a new baseball team. Take the Florida Marlins for example.. they played their first game in 1993 and in 1997 they won the world series. Winning the title after just 4 short years of existence in the cutthroat world of professional sports is quite the achievement. How were they able to do this? An expansion draft. They got to choose from every team and current player who they wanted. It"s very similar to hiring talented and accomplished people such as R.A. and Todd along with all the nameless guys Curt claims are experienced masters of their field.

Yes, I"d say that"s a much better analogy than comparing them to a perennial loser with an established history.

Of course they could turn out to be the Washington Nationals.. and no one wants that.
 

Kodylan_foh

shitlord
0
0
Twobit Whore said:
Well, technically you could compare his company to a new baseball team. Take the Florida Marlins for example.. they played their first game in 1993 and in 1997 they won the world series. Winning the title after just 4 short years of existence in the cutthroat world of professional sports is quite the achievement. How were they able to do this? An expansion draft. They got to choose from every team and current player who they wanted. It"s very similar to hiring talented and accomplished people such as R.A. and Todd along with all the nameless guys Curt claims are experienced masters of their field.

Yes, I"d say that"s a much better analogy than comparing them to a perennial loser with an established history.

Of course they could turn out to be the Washington Nationals.. and no one wants that.
The Marlins won the World Series more through Free Agency than through the expansion draft. That said, they and the Arizona Diamondbacks both did something very hard to do in professional sports, especially for a young, growing team.

It"s honestly great to see Curt carrying over that winning attitude with this new venture. You definitely want someone who truly aspires to be the best in their field running a company.
 

Krag

Peasant
475
47
Ngruk said:
If you don"t screw up, don"t lose, how do you know what it feels like to kick the crap out of people and win?
Heavy death penalties, corpse runs, broken and lost gear, grinding, pain and mental exhaustion incoming, y"all!

j/k
 

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
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I wonder where Blackguard got it from.

mirabello1.jpg


mirabello1.jpg
 

Tropics_foh

shitlord
0
0
Heya Curt, what are your thoughts on remortation in a MMORPG? Does such a system have a chance of being considered in your upcomming MMORPG (it would have to be worked in early in design). It seems to be a system that could create a far more sustainable gaming world for many years that the expansions only increasing the level range and adding only mid-high level content as we are seeing with WoW and as we saw with EQ"s expansions after Kunark (Luclin was predominately mid-high level).

A game that can add such a fresh start for the players, adding almost that new game feeling by giving the players the ability to remort on their main character with new low level content in a new expansion they could then quest through and work through, with a real sense of progression due to the fact that the remort might cap 5 or 10 levels higher then their base class did and the remort likely having some new spells and skills through all the levels. It has potential to be a revolutionary game mechanic in this gener of games and would combat the game getting stale due to focus shifting entirely to end game content on the most recent expansion, as WoW is doing now and EQ did long ago.
 

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,532
12,037
Curt"s avatar looks like the bastard child of a Beholder and the green planet thingy from the covers of the Hitchhiker"s Guide to the Galaxy books ;p

In terms of making a franchise, it obviously is a solid idea...although it can take time to build. And it isn"t always a guarantee. Riddick did this with the Dark Fury anime that tied in as a transition between Pitch Black with Chronicles of Riddick, as did Escape from Butcher Bay (although it was released commercially post-Chronicles or right around the same time, if I"m not mistaken). While Butcher Bay was a solid game and the lore for the Riddick Universe was intriguing, it didn"t translate into mass commercial success. Chronicles was a decent flick, but it didn"t make the bank the suits were likely hoping for. SiN also tried to do this with the anime (which, AFAIK, is/was doing well in Japan) + the promo stuff with Bianca Beauchamp, but the new SiN games just never really took off. I never got the sales figures, but it seemed to be all for naught in the end game-wise since the dev team kinda fell apart/disbanded.

I guess the point is that making a franchise can be a good thing, but it isn"t a guaranteed success for the primary product you are hoping to push. Alot of that rests on the primary product itself + how much the public embraces your new world. I do think it is a good concept that you are trying to get some backstory out there, so to speak, so that it becomes a means of drawing people to the MMO.
 

Zarcath

Silver Squire
96
54
Ngruk said:
I"m a gamer, a pretty hardcore (FROM A TIME STANDPOINT YOU RAIDING GEEKS!) gamer, I think I understand a lot of things that make games work and don"t work.
You play and published a magazine for table-top WW2 wargame, i think that qualifies as hardcore no matter what circle you"re in :p

I think a better question is

Garand vs Thompson - which is cooler?
 

faille

Molten Core Raider
1,836
428
Cybsled said:
Curt"s avatar looks like the bastard child of a Beholder and the green planet thingy from the covers of the Hitchhiker"s Guide to the Galaxy books ;p

In terms of making a franchise, it obviously is a solid idea...although it can take time to build. And it isn"t always a guarantee. Riddick did this with the Dark Fury anime that tied in as a transition between Pitch Black with Chronicles of Riddick, as did Escape from Butcher Bay (although it was released commercially post-Chronicles or right around the same time, if I"m not mistaken). While Butcher Bay was a solid game and the lore for the Riddick Universe was intriguing, it didn"t translate into mass commercial success. Chronicles was a decent flick, but it didn"t make the bank the suits were likely hoping for. SiN also tried to do this with the anime (which, AFAIK, is/was doing well in Japan) + the promo stuff with Bianca Beauchamp, but the new SiN games just never really took off. I never got the sales figures, but it seemed to be all for naught in the end game-wise since the dev team kinda fell apart/disbanded.

I guess the point is that making a franchise can be a good thing, but it isn"t a guaranteed success for the primary product you are hoping to push. Alot of that rests on the primary product itself + how much the public embraces your new world. I do think it is a good concept that you are trying to get some backstory out there, so to speak, so that it becomes a means of drawing people to the MMO.
There"s also the need to make quality products. Matrix attempted to make the transition to a franchise with the Enter the Matrix game, along with the sequels, and presumably the mmo. Unfortunately they were all of such poor quality that they effectively killed off the franchise.
 

QforQ_foh

shitlord
0
0
Faille said:
There"s also the need to make quality products. Matrix attempted to make the transition to a franchise with the Enter the Matrix game, along with the sequels, and presumably the mmo. Unfortunately they were all of such poor quality that they effectively killed off the franchise.
The Matrix would"ve been such a sweet world to have a game in...but they did kind of ruin it with a slew of luke warm games and a shitty MMO. Warner Bros. should pick the dev studios better for their huge IP licenses like The Matrix.
 

Zhakran_foh

shitlord
0
0
Yes, not to mention Matrix 2 and 3 were bad and completely forgetable. The Matrix was such a cool movie, it was a huge success, and very popular with lots of different people. I must have watched it 3 or 4 times when it was in theater, and I never do that with movies.

But everything else that has the name attached to it sucks. And don"t even try and defend the movies, they weren"t complete trash, they were watchable, once, BARELY, but that"s really it.
 

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
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I never walked out at the end of a big movie until Matrix 3 and said to myself, "I just got cheated out of some money."
 

Twobit_sl

shitlord
6
0
Meh, I liked Matrix 3. 2 was okay.. but it was one of those middle movies with no clear beginning and end that some trilogies have.

The latest Matrix game was good though, The Path of Neo. It was one of the few that was actually like the damn first movie.
 

Agraza

Registered Hutt
6,890
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Star Wars is a blockbuster movie and book franchise that has been all over the spectrum of success and failure in gaming. Star Trek has a similar story. IP Holders just don"t take the time to manage the quality of videogames in their verse. Less than 10% of movie -> videogame crossovers are even "average" amongst their non-hollywood peers. Several comic -> movies/games have a similar story, but I"d say we"ve received a larger share of good comic book games.

I think they just see it as a throwaway source of spinoffs like action figures, saturday morning cartoons and limited run comics instead of an investment in the property itself. These Hollywood folks view the films as the sole propogation of the property.

Unfortunately the trend hasn"t done that well the other way around either. The first FF movie, Spirits Within, sucked, and everything Uwe Boll touches has sunk as well.


Matrix 2 was a considerable let-down. That was the oppurtunity to introduce a serious plot twist, and instead it was a minor bump in the road - a shift of emphasis. Furthermore wire fights with polearms and swords are /yawn. Automatic weapons and h2h kung fu are the shit.