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Close this windowExclusive Carbine Studios Q&A with Design Director Tim Cain
Posted October 27th, 2008 by Cody Bye
Questions
by Cody "Micajah" Bye, Managing Editor
Answers by Tim Cain, Design Director, Carbine Studios
NC West has been in the news over the past few months. With the formation of their new publishing office and official headquarters in Seattle, NC West now has their priorities squarely set on AAA MMOGs. One of the studios that has been working on an "epic" project is the SoCal based Carbine Studios. While they have yet to officially announce the title, Carbine's Design Director Tim Cain took a moment to answer some questions that Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye posed for the recently hired individual. For a sneak peek at his upcoming game, check out Tim's responses!
Ten Ton Hammer: To be
honest, I've been a huge fan of your previous work at Troika Games,
especially the Arcanum and Vampire titles. How are you going to use
your experience with Troika and Interplay to help you create the world
that Carbine Studios is working on? Are you keen to try your hand at a
"fantasy" MMO sort of experience, since you haven't touched that genre
since the Temple of Elemental Evil?
Tim Cain: My Carbine MMO is a brand-new MMO, and we are making both the IP and the engine from scratch. I’ve done that twice before, once with Fallout at Interplay and again with Arcanum at Troika. So I feel well prepared to do it a third time here at Carbine. And its genre won’t strictly be fantasy, since I think we’ve seen that done enough.
Ten Ton Hammer: One of the fundamental aspects of both Arcanum and Vampire was their focus on story and how a user's experience could truly change with the decisions they make in the game. Up to this point, few MMORPGs have really been able to merge interactive storytelling with massive gameplay. Is Carbine going to try and change this unfortunate industry standard? What are your thoughts on this process?
Tim: I think a lot of MMO’s miss an opportunity by emphasizing quests, raiding and PvP at the expense of any meaningful plot line. One of my goals with my game is tell a great story, with a different story for each player faction. And some of the side plots have choice points where the player can decide whether to proceed in different ways (and these choice points will be clearly marked, since there are no save games in MMO’s). We can mix things up with class, race and tradeskill-specific quests, so players really can explore the world differently.
Ten Ton Hammer: You've served in roles as both designer and producer in the past. Why did you decide to go back to the design side of things? Do you have any desire to work as a producer again?
Tim: I think my producer days are long gone. I will stick to programming and design from now on. And I am doing design work because after three years of working on the code engine, now I get to steer the direction of the game itself. Who wouldn’t want to do that?!
Ten Ton Hammer: What drew you to Carbine Studios in the first place? How did you find them and why did you decide to work at this studio rather than try to start another "Troika" type company?
Tim: In the summer of 2005, I was still in the process of shutting down Troika (which took a long time, btw. Companies are easy to start but hard to kill) when I heard from an old ex-Interplay friend, Eric DeMilt. He was the producer on a new game at a new company, and they were looking for a Programming Director. I really didn’t want to start a new company from scratch, and Carbine was already established and had a great team assembled, including a large number of ex-Blizzard folks who had worked on WoW. I came down and met everyone, and it was a great match. So I signed on.
Ten Ton Hammer: Over the
past few weeks, the new crew at NC West has made a point to discuss the
fact that all of their studios are now going to be working on AAA
projects. By drawing some conclusions, it's obvious that Carbine
Studios is going to make a AAA title. What kind of complex problems and
situations are going to arise with making a AAA game? How daunting a
task is it from a design perspective?
Tim: That’s kind of a trick question, since I always approach my games as if they are going to be a AAA title. But I can tell you that this game has been daunting in terms of its sheer size, both in size of the development team and in size of the game itself. The team is already over 60 people, making it almost twice as big as any game I have ever worked on, and we are still growing in size. We’ll have many more than that before we ship, and most of those people will be artists and designers. The sheer amount of content we need to make for this game is HUGE. We are making thousands of creatures, quests, dialogs, items, NPC’s and props, and keeping all of this work coordinated and consistent is a full-time job. My job, in fact. And that’s daunting.
Ten Ton Hammer: In the realm of AAA MMOGs, there's obviously one giant fish that takes up the majority of the pond. How can other AAA titles like your upcoming game hope to break into a market that is essentially locked down by a game like World of Warcraft? What can you do as design director to help avoid gaming oblivion?
Tim: I don’t view the MMO genre as locked down by WoW as much as it has been opened up by it. WoW has exposed millions of people to MMOs, and they are not all going to play WoW forever. As much as WoW got right, there are a large number of features that they didn’t implement, and I plan to focus on those as well as some features that weren’t as robust as they could have been.
Ten Ton Hammer: Many of your past titles have skirted the boundaries of Teen/Adult content. What kind of game are you hoping to make at Carbine Studios? Since it will be a "massive" game, will you be forced to avoid many of the more mature scenarios that you posed in your previous games?
Tim: Our MMO will be Teen-rated, but like all online games, the rating can change with online play. We certainly want to attract a wide audience, and I don't feel the need to make every one of my games with Mature scenarios. I feel like I have been there and done that, so this game is completely different than what I have done in the past.
Ten Ton Hammer: In your opinion, where is the future of the MMOG industry? Where should gamers be looking for their entertainment, and what kind of games should developers try to create?
Tim: The MMO genre is still very young, and I feel there is a lot of untapped potential in it. There has been far less innovation in this genre than there was been in single player RPGs or in shooters, both of which have been around for two or three times longer than MMOs. An MMO has thousands of players on a single server. There has got to be more cool and wonderful things to do with that size group than just raids.
Ten Ton Hammer: Is there anything else you'd like to tell Ten Ton Hammer readers and Carbine Studio fans?
Tim: I can't really say much about the game right now, but I am really excited about the work I am doing here. I hope everyone checks back for future updates!
Answers by Tim Cain, Design Director, Carbine Studios
NC West has been in the news over the past few months. With the formation of their new publishing office and official headquarters in Seattle, NC West now has their priorities squarely set on AAA MMOGs. One of the studios that has been working on an "epic" project is the SoCal based Carbine Studios. While they have yet to officially announce the title, Carbine's Design Director Tim Cain took a moment to answer some questions that Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye posed for the recently hired individual. For a sneak peek at his upcoming game, check out Tim's responses!
|
Tim Cain, Design Director for Carbine Studios |
Tim Cain: My Carbine MMO is a brand-new MMO, and we are making both the IP and the engine from scratch. I’ve done that twice before, once with Fallout at Interplay and again with Arcanum at Troika. So I feel well prepared to do it a third time here at Carbine. And its genre won’t strictly be fantasy, since I think we’ve seen that done enough.
Ten Ton Hammer: One of the fundamental aspects of both Arcanum and Vampire was their focus on story and how a user's experience could truly change with the decisions they make in the game. Up to this point, few MMORPGs have really been able to merge interactive storytelling with massive gameplay. Is Carbine going to try and change this unfortunate industry standard? What are your thoughts on this process?
Tim: I think a lot of MMO’s miss an opportunity by emphasizing quests, raiding and PvP at the expense of any meaningful plot line. One of my goals with my game is tell a great story, with a different story for each player faction. And some of the side plots have choice points where the player can decide whether to proceed in different ways (and these choice points will be clearly marked, since there are no save games in MMO’s). We can mix things up with class, race and tradeskill-specific quests, so players really can explore the world differently.
Ten Ton Hammer: You've served in roles as both designer and producer in the past. Why did you decide to go back to the design side of things? Do you have any desire to work as a producer again?
Tim: I think my producer days are long gone. I will stick to programming and design from now on. And I am doing design work because after three years of working on the code engine, now I get to steer the direction of the game itself. Who wouldn’t want to do that?!
Ten Ton Hammer: What drew you to Carbine Studios in the first place? How did you find them and why did you decide to work at this studio rather than try to start another "Troika" type company?
Tim: In the summer of 2005, I was still in the process of shutting down Troika (which took a long time, btw. Companies are easy to start but hard to kill) when I heard from an old ex-Interplay friend, Eric DeMilt. He was the producer on a new game at a new company, and they were looking for a Programming Director. I really didn’t want to start a new company from scratch, and Carbine was already established and had a great team assembled, including a large number of ex-Blizzard folks who had worked on WoW. I came down and met everyone, and it was a great match. So I signed on.
|
Carbine is making a game similar to other AAA MMOGs like World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and Lineage II. |
Tim: That’s kind of a trick question, since I always approach my games as if they are going to be a AAA title. But I can tell you that this game has been daunting in terms of its sheer size, both in size of the development team and in size of the game itself. The team is already over 60 people, making it almost twice as big as any game I have ever worked on, and we are still growing in size. We’ll have many more than that before we ship, and most of those people will be artists and designers. The sheer amount of content we need to make for this game is HUGE. We are making thousands of creatures, quests, dialogs, items, NPC’s and props, and keeping all of this work coordinated and consistent is a full-time job. My job, in fact. And that’s daunting.
Ten Ton Hammer: In the realm of AAA MMOGs, there's obviously one giant fish that takes up the majority of the pond. How can other AAA titles like your upcoming game hope to break into a market that is essentially locked down by a game like World of Warcraft? What can you do as design director to help avoid gaming oblivion?
Tim: I don’t view the MMO genre as locked down by WoW as much as it has been opened up by it. WoW has exposed millions of people to MMOs, and they are not all going to play WoW forever. As much as WoW got right, there are a large number of features that they didn’t implement, and I plan to focus on those as well as some features that weren’t as robust as they could have been.
Ten Ton Hammer: Many of your past titles have skirted the boundaries of Teen/Adult content. What kind of game are you hoping to make at Carbine Studios? Since it will be a "massive" game, will you be forced to avoid many of the more mature scenarios that you posed in your previous games?
Tim: Our MMO will be Teen-rated, but like all online games, the rating can change with online play. We certainly want to attract a wide audience, and I don't feel the need to make every one of my games with Mature scenarios. I feel like I have been there and done that, so this game is completely different than what I have done in the past.
Ten Ton Hammer: In your opinion, where is the future of the MMOG industry? Where should gamers be looking for their entertainment, and what kind of games should developers try to create?
Tim: The MMO genre is still very young, and I feel there is a lot of untapped potential in it. There has been far less innovation in this genre than there was been in single player RPGs or in shooters, both of which have been around for two or three times longer than MMOs. An MMO has thousands of players on a single server. There has got to be more cool and wonderful things to do with that size group than just raids.
Ten Ton Hammer: Is there anything else you'd like to tell Ten Ton Hammer readers and Carbine Studio fans?
Tim: I can't really say much about the game right now, but I am really excited about the work I am doing here. I hope everyone checks back for future updates!