These are revolutionary times in game development. Alpha testers already know the gameplay is operational. Now we’re adding the art and AI, while going 3D.
The size of the generative maps for the 50-on-50 battles are sizable. And no one has ever played this kind of multiplayer gameplay before. It’s based on a multiplayer battleground environment I designed for Age of Conan, which could have revolutionized the MMO, but the new producer at FunCom instead decided that the best way to keep the game’s one million subscribers who had run out of new content engaged and subscribing was to fix the bugs in the content that all of them had already played.
Meanwhile, their battlegrounds were empty. And I mean quite literally empty. In six months of working with them, I never once saw anyone else in one.
It doesn’t look like much. But at this stage, it never does.
Meanwhile, the financially propped-up game companies are collapsing. Beginning, apparently, with Bioware. And yes, I do mean propped-up and I would know. The company I worked for funded Neverwinter Nights.
