Carbine Studios Interview

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Written by BuckGB on May 9th, 2009

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ZAM: Over the course of your career you've worked on such games as Stonekeep, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Fallout II to name a few. What kind of challenges have you come across leading a team developing a big budget MMO?

Eric: The biggest difference and challenge has been the sheer scope and magnitude of a project like this. At launch this game will have more hours of gameplay in the box than all of the games I've worked on combined. Take that huge scope and add the variations of gameplay; solo, grouped, tradeskillers, casual players, hardcore raiders, guilds, PvP, etc. all in a massively multiplayer environment, the challenges are incredible. It's a lot of fun though.

At the same time, many of the design and development challenges are surprisingly similar. Just like older RPGs, we still need to create a compelling world and fill it with interesting content. We still need to create compelling player characters that people can identify with and that people want to be. This is especially true in an MMO where players form such a long lasting bond with their characters.

Even then, some of development methods are similar. While a lot of content is created using standard tools and following similar templates, there is a an incredible amount of hand-made content in games like ours that just can't be done with standardized tools. Some of the most unique moments in these games come from designers getting their hands dirty, and doing amazing things with the scripts they write. Surprisingly, although MMOs have many unique considerations, this isn't all that different from how content development went on Stonekeep, BGDA, or Fallout 2.

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