Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Questions by Cody “Micajah” Bye
Answers by Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer and Creative Director for Everquest 2

When you’re playing your favorite MMOG, do you ever wonder what sort of creative mind it takes to create a vibrant, living, and breathing world? Or perhaps you’ve heard a particular name that caught your attention, and you want to know more about this “rock star” developer. As always, Ten Ton Hammer is here to get those questions answered, and today we’re profiling Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer and Creative Director for Everquest 2. A man of many talents and an extensive resume, Scott talked to Ten Ton Hammer about his start in the industry, the games that really influenced his career, and how best to break into the industry.

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Ten Ton Hammer: For starters, can you give the Ten Ton Hammer readers a brief synopsis of who you are and what your role is with Everquest 2?

Hartsman is the Senior Producer and Creative Director for EQ2.

Scott Hartsman: I'm a guy with a really cool job! I'm the Senior Producer and Creative Director for Everquest 2, which means wearing two hats a lot of the time. I'm not the guy who's making dungeons and I'm not the guy who's writing stories, but I am the guy who's in charge of getting everything done by the time we need to get it done.

I also make sure that the things we do across all the disciplines involved in development - art, engineering, design, audio - have a consistent vision. I make sure they're driving towards our goal at the same time and insure that we're turning in the sort of quality product that we're hoping for.

Being in charge of both the production and the development side definitely causes me to get a lot more credit than I should. We have an excellent set of other producers and leads on this team who are all ridiculously on top of everything that they need to do, and they're backed up by the most incredible set of developers who are interested in putting out a quality product and go to extremes to actually get there.

Kunark, in particular, has been extremely impressive lately with the sheer amount of polish and last minute touch up work that's been going into everything, because everyone wants this to be the best launch ever.

Ten Ton Hammer: What genre of games do you play regularly? Do you mainly stick with MMOGs or do your interests spread into other games as well (tabletop, card games, etc.)?

Scott: That's actually a really good question because if you would've asked me that question a few years ago, I would've told you that the games I played were either MMOs or single player RPGs. The first games I ever got interested in when I was a kid were either the games where players were playing online via a modem - like the text-based games - or RPGs that you were playing bty yourself.

I was never a big action or console person. Shooters I do play, but lately it seems to be a fairly even split between my time in EQ2 as a player and other little random casual games like Peggle and Portal.

I've also been playing Puzzle Quest for the Xbox 360. I'm one of those guys that will go and buy a $500 console and play $8 download games. I certainly don't play as much as I want to anymore, that's for sure.

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you have an all-time favorite game(s)? If so, why do you enjoy it so much?

Scott: Oh man. *long pause*

Ten Ton Hammer: You can pick a couple, if you want.

Scott: Even picking a couple is killing me, y'know? There are several games where I've fallen head-over-heels for and followed them for multiple years. The original Everquest is my first, greatest graphical game love that I played for far to long. I had a fantastic guild and had great experience after great experience there.

In the single player world, I'm a huge Civilization fan. That's one of those games that I love and when someone asks me if I could pick a game to have on a desert island, it'd be that game because there are so many different ways to play and win.  

Failing that, I have a job that lets me play the greatest game in the universe and that is called making MMOs. It's better than any MMO that you'll ever play, and I highly recommend it.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are we ever going to see a Norrathian-themed Civ-type game?

Scott: That'd definitely be interesting. When they took the Civ formula and applied it to Alpha Centauri, the gameplay was just amazing, awesome, and fantastic. And it didn't have to be the same old Civ that we were all used to! The entirely different themes still made it a terrific game.

So sure, if someone wants to make a Civ-Norrath, I'm there for it.

Ten Ton Hammer:  What are your hobbies? What do you find relaxing/entertaining about it?

Scott: I'm in a job that fosters a workaholic nature, and so I don't have a whole lot of extra time to spend on hobbies. That means there are activities that I used to do that I don't anymore. However, I've turned into the sort of person that loves to have a BBQ over at the house, a bunch of people over, way too much to eat and drink, and just generally hang out all night long. There are people outside chatting, people inside playing console games - Guitar Hero is always a party favorite - but I'm bizarrely, for the amount of time that I'm on the computer at work, a major people person.

To me, I've lived in several different places across the country, and it's never about where I am; it's more about who I'm there with. It's about the people and what they're all like. That's really one of the reasons I've been at SOE as long as I have; the people around here are some of the coolest, greatest people I've ever had the priveledge to meet.

When I'm not working and not playing games, my activities are based around who I'm doing them with. I can be doing anything, and anything would be fun if it's with the right people.

Ten Ton Hammer: You recently started a gaming blog focused around your thoughts as an MMOG developer. Why did you decide to do this and has it been refreshing to have an audience to talk to?

One of Hartsman's first loves was Everquest.

Scott: That was a result of a couple of things. FIrst, I was bored one Sunday and a friend of mine who works at a different dev shop was asking for something I'd written up concerning interacting with online communities. It occurred to me that over my lifetime I'd occasionally written stuff down and then absolutely misplaced them to where I don't know where they went. It just got shoved all over the place. There were some things that I just did not want to lose, that it'd be nice to give them a home somewhere. It really was initially a desire to find a place to store information.

That combined with a slow Sunday afternoon, a love of playing with web pages, and a friend that owned a hosting company caused my blog to appear in a matter of fifteen minutes.

If other people want to read the stuff that goes up on there and comment about my thoughts, that's fine, but it was mainly created as a place to store all my information.

Ten Ton Hammer: How did you get started in the industry? What led you to become a developer?

Scott: I was thirteen, had an Apple II, and a 300 baud modem. Back in the day, you used to get online by getting onto the local BBS because all the old computer stores used to keep track of each other's bulletin boards, and a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of a game called Scepter.

The game was playable by 16 people at a time over a 300 baud modem, and you were online in this awesome fantasy world where the entire goal was to kill stuff, explore things, gain levels, and meet other people. It was, to me, the single coolest thing I'd ever seen in my entire whopping thirteen year old life.

I played that game for a couple years until I was about fifteen, and I made friends with the people who had made the game. It was right around that time that they decided to take the game national and I got the chance to work for them from home. That's how that game got made; there were two guys in Virginia and five people in Milwaukee. The five of us that were in Milwaukee were the content designers, customer service people, tech support, in-game event controllers, and billing support.