Red 5 Studios: Interview with Mark Kern

Warcry had a chance to sit down with Mart Kern, President and CEO of Red 5 Studios.

WarCry: You guys have a lot of experience on the team, but while you highlight former Blizzard developers, when going through the profiles, it becomes apparent that your team really came from all over the industry. Talk about what some of the less direct experience - in terms of MMOs - brings to your team.

Mark Kern: We actually tend to avoid MMO experience. World of Warcraft did not have a fleet of experienced MMO developers, in fact, almost all of us were brand new to the genre. And I think that helped. MMOs had been steeped in a tradition of do's and don'ts that didn't sit well with what we wanted to do. It's hard to imagine now, but grinding, long leveling times and steep death penalties were considered essential to MMO design. If you want to innovate, you need fresh thought, and that's what we accomplish by recruiting people from other, related industries.

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