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

TTH: MMOs in general have a scope that's particularly large. When creating a novel, at least in my experience, you often explore aspects of your world through the eyes of your main character rather than putting everything down on paper all at once. In the MMO realm, the vision is just the opposite, with every aspect of the world needing to be created all at once. Is this a difficulty that you're experiencing?

Bob: You've hit the challenge right on the nose. I've said this from the beginning: In a novel I give you a group of characters and let you walk along on the adventure, but in a game like this, I'm trying to give the players the groundwork for them to write their own stories. People don't play MMORGs to be herded in one direction or another; they play to live their own stories about their own characters. A good dungeon master is nimble. He or she can allow his game campaign to flow where the players want it to go. A horrible dungeon master gets that deer-in-headlights look whenever players do something he didn't expect. MMORGs are all about players doing what you don't expect. Some will run through 50 levels in a few days, while others won't be near that point in six months. Some want to collect forty people together and go raid a dragon's lair, while others would rather just putter along, mostly solo, and explore the world at their leisurely pace.

MMOs are much larger in scope than a novel, like The Thousand Orcs.

I'm trying to write a great backstory for our game, one that gives all the people designing and drawing it an understanding of how the place should feel. I'm hoping that backstory will create a living and breathing world for the players to explore, however they choose to explore it. I'm trying to write a story arc for the game itself that will allow players to work in harmony on the bigger issues of the world, whether that becomes the focus of their gaming or whether it's no more than a short diversion from the things they'd rather do.

It is a huge challenge, and I don't know that I've ever had this much fun.

TTH: How is creating the story for this MMO different than what you did previously for Stormfront Studios with Demon Stone?

Bob previously worked on the story for the single-player game, Demon Stone.

Bob: Mostly the scope of it. Demon Stone was an important step for me, because the folks at Atari and Stormfront allowed me behind the scenes. Working on that game taught me the complexities of creating a video game IP. That said, my role was minor – it had to be. I simply wasn't familiar enough with the tools to try any micromanaging, especially not with the seasoned and talented team at Stormfront. So with Demon Stone, I gave them some character background information and a plot that would allow them to make the game feel non-linear (as opposed to "Go to the first level and get the first piece of the seven-piece artifact. Go to the second level and get piece two, etc.).

Multiply what I did for Demon Stone by about a hundred and you're still not close to the level of detail and sheer amount of material needed for this game. In addition, with Demon Stone, the story and non-player characters were small enough for one brain, and the player characters were also fairly straightforward. That is not the case with an MMORG, obviously, and the player characters are strictly the dominion of the players. They're not going to follow any script; I'd be disappointed in them if they did!

Click here for the conclusion of the R.A. Salvatore interview!

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