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

TTH: Ok, it's Bob. *smiles* Now that we've got that cleared up, let's move onto your new project. While most of us guess that you'll be working on the story and creative concepts behind the new intellectual property, what exactly are you presiding over? I'm guessing that you kick ideas back and forth between Curt and Todd, but what sort of freedom are you being given to explore your new world?

Bob: To begin, we have to distinguish between the "types" of ideas.

Basically, Curt explained to me his vision of an MMORG. He had certain things he wanted in the storyline. Taking those ideas, I built a backstory that makes sense for the world. I also showed him a game story arc that I thought would work.

Backstory and game chapter arc, or whatever you want to call it, will be important to our game. My hope is that it will help bond the players together in common causes and help give the world a little extra depth and a feeling of reality – and certainly it will help the many designers and artists find a level of continuity and purpose that should permeate the game.

Curt Schilling is a major league pitcher for the Boston Red Sox when he isn't moon-lighting as the founder and chairman of 38 Studios

Now that those tasks are in the bucket, I'm working with the designers to define the various peoples who will populate our world – the relationships between cities and races, the economic and political structures. It's very much the same process I go through when building a book world, like Menzoberranzan in the Forgotten Realms or the world of Corona in my DemonWars novels.

I'm trying to create a common "feeling" among the artists and designers, but from that point, they have to fly with their own wings. For instance I had a vision for one city, but Brian Jones, our Art Lead, had a different perspective. He showed me some prototypes that he and the team had come up with and I wasn't sold, to be honest. But I was intrigued enough to help find a happy medium between the art team and the design team on what we wanted out of this city. A couple of weeks later, our Art Director, Chaz Sutherland, called me into his office to show me the result of that give and take. It took me several minutes to breathe. What art and design brought to that initial vision of mine . . . well, I can only describe it as the same feeling I got when I saw what Larry Elmore had done for the cover of The Crystal Shard, one of those moments when you know that the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts.

I tell that story because I don't want anyone to ever think of this as just me, Curt, and Todd. 38 Studios is so much more than that, and while I'm the literary creator of this IP, and Curt had the initial vision, and Todd brings such a special touch to the overall look of the world, there is so much more talent than that already assembled in Maynard. Go right down the list of designers and artists and coders sitting there and you've got A+++ talent, and if any of the three of us tried to limit their input into the world, the world would surely suffer.

The creator of Spawn, Todd McFarlane as functions as 38 Studios' Creative Art Director

TTH: Speaking of Todd, how is he working into the grand scheme of things? Do you work together to come up with new monsters/races/etc.? Is it cool to have an artist waiting for you to come up with an idea and so he can sketch it out on paper? (Personally, I'd love to be able to see my ideas come to life so quickly.)

Bob: Most of my work has been front-ended on the project, laying the groundwork from which our world will spring. Todd works directly with the art team every week. He sees his place as helping these incredibly talented people use their art to force the best out of the guys sitting on the other side of the room in design.

I can honestly say, and Scott Cuthbertson, Steve Danuser and the others in design will back me up on this, that several concepts from art that seemingly came out of the blue have made us look at certain aspects of our world in an entirely different light. Without giving anything away, two of the races we're using in particular went through dramatic transformations on the design end because the art concepts were just that damned good.