I imagine you’re tired of hearing about me vs. from me, so I’m going to try to keep this to a ‘once-a-week’ kinda thing. This will especially be the case later this month as I go to conventions and write things up, etc, etc.

As an aside, though, I think there’s a lot of stuff I’ll have coming here from various events; feel the love.

I was on three separate podcast events last week:

Shut Up! We’re Talking #5 - Random ranting from a couple of bloggers. I express my man-love for Van Hemlock.

VirginWorlds Podcast #79 - ‘Top Ten Podcasts of the Future’ Part 1.
VirginWorlds Podcast #80 - ‘Top Ten Podcasts of the Future’ Part 2.

And, of course, Massive Update #11 went up last week. It’s nothing but links because I was sick most of last week, and I had to choose between sleeping and writing. Less of that this week, I hope.

And here we are at part three of the interview. This one is shorter than the other two, but I really felt like things were getting a bit long and I needed to cut the end off somewhere.

In this shorter piece we finish Mr. Barnett’s thought about GDC, look at Warhammer’s future from a big picture perspective, talk class balancing, and then break the fourth wall of the interview process.

As he requests, I’ve got a few words on what he had to say in the interview at the end of the piece, and I hope you’ll keep reading after the funny guy with the English accent stops talking. To give you added incentive to read to the end, the link to the audio of our conversation is at the very bottom of the post.

Happy reading!
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And we’re back with part two of my epic encounter with Paul Barnett of EA Mythic and the Warhammer Online project.

Yesterday we began by talking about Paul’s introduction to the games industry, and how he came to work at EA Mythic in the first place.

Today we’ll do up the part of the conversation where Mr. Barnett chats about his views on the gaming industry itself. This was my secret intention all along, to get him to weigh in on the role of people within the games industry as advocates and promoters of the industry in general. We also talk about Mr. Barnett’s favorite piece of content in WAR, and the role of those pesky designers we’re always hearing so much about.

Come back tomorrow for our conclusion, the audio of the recording (not to be missed, much better than the text here), and (at his request) my own thoughts on Mr. Barnett and his opinions.

Oh, plus: Hello to Paul’s Mum and Dad! Sorry about the swearing. He really is a nice guy. :)

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I’ve just been lucky enough to talk now with two of the driving forces behind Warhammer Online, and today MMOG Nation presents part one of a couple-part interview with EA Mythic’s Paul Barnett. Barnett is currently filling the role of Creative Director on the project, translating CEO Mark Jacobs’ ideas into game content and gameplay.

Mr. Barnett is an outspoken and enthusiastic fellow, precisely why I wanted to get him ‘in front of a microphone.’ We talk about Warhammer a little bit, but mostly this interview is a discussion with an inspired speaker about a series of subjects he feels very passionately about.

In this first interview, we discuss Paul’s connection with Mythic and Games Workshop, why WAR was moved back, the lack of reaction to that decision, and the rationale behind the inspiring phrase: “Fun, you F#ckers!”

Read on for Paul’s hilarious and lengthy responses, and come back tomorrow for Part 2 of our discussion.
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Last week, I jumped into a Skype chat with some of the fine folks at Perpetual and we … ahem … attempted to have a conversation about their upcoming squad-based Massive game Gods and Heroes. Despite my recording setup working 100% fine just the night before, we had nothing but problems the day of. Thankfully the understanding team at Perpetual and the persistence of media liason Dana Jongewaard has resulted in what I think is a fairly interesting email interview.

Again, I went ‘big picture’ with questions. Below, Art Director Mike Hines, Game Systems Designer Travis George, and Community Manager Chris Launius hold forth on various game elements like setting, combat animations, the squad system, and the value of releasing with focused gameplay. I think that some of the team answers shed light on elements of the game I’ve been a bit murky on to this point, and I know that the folks over there seem to have a good sense of humor.

We also focused a lot of attention on our interactive—we refer to them as “paired”—moves, which allow the player to actually animate in conjunction with the enemy, allowing for much more dramatic and visceral animations. Centaurs can throw you in the air and impale you with a spear or you can grapple with an enemy Samnite gladiator and take him down with a number of different wrestling moves. There is a reason it’s called Greco-Roman wrestling!

Read on, and be enlightened.

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Herein, the promised interview with EA Mythic’s Mark Jacobs.

I tried to approach this interview with a bit more of a ‘high level’ approach than most other folks probably did for interviews with Mr. Jacobs that week. I’d really enjoyed the MMO’s Past, Present, and Future talk the night before, and we spent some time touching on the subjects that event brought up. We do, of course, talk Warhammer as well, but there’s lots of ‘other’ stuff in there too. Specifically, Mr. Jacobs opines about being a small developer in the modern MMOG market, the RMT business and the SOE White Paper, and the role of viral marketing.

Read on for my transcript of our discussion, or feel free to download the whole thing and give a listen yourself.

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The first in what I hope to be a series of interview I’ll feature here on the site is now available … off site. I did an interview with CCP’s CMO Magnus Bergsson over at Slashdot, and I think it turned out really well. Here’s a sample:

Slashdot: Right, okay, so I think one of the things that people were really frustrated by with that, is I guess, the hardcore … EVE has this reputation as a very ‘tough’ game, and obviously there are a lot of people who really enjoy that. Why do you think the hardcore nature of the game appeals to so many people?

Magnus: Uhhh wow, that’s a big question. EVE can be very hardcore, and it can be also a very casual game. It really depends on how you play it. But most of these people who are commenting on the forums and so forth are the hardcore players, they’ve been with the game for many years. If you live in 0.0, it’s very hardcore. It’s a very you know, dog eat dog world, and I for one, I live there, I am one of those hardcore players. You know, it’s just the threat the, big death penalty and the amount of strategy you have to employ and the amount of thinking you have to do, and I think it’s a big big challenge, and I think these people really enjoy the challenge.