by: Tony "RadarX" Jones
Based on the popular TV series, Stargate SG-1, the universe of Stargate Worlds is being developed in hopes of providing players what could be considered the ultimate Geekfest. With a rich and detailed story to back it up, the game has enough potential to be one of the greatest Science Fiction games ever. Being self published by Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment through a subsidiary called Firesky, few details are available. At the helm of this new publishing subsidiary is no stranger to the videogame industry, Joe Ybarra, one of the original producers of Electronic Arts who also did work for Infocom and Sierra Online Entertainment. Now working as the Senior Vice President of Operations we caught up with Joe at the 2008 ION Conference where he talked to us about Firesky, Stargate Worlds, and much more.
When asking about for his comment about the recent Firesky announcement, Joe is quick to remind me they've been working on that for some time. "We started the publishing effort in July of last year," he states, "so the announcement was one of the steps of the process. A year ago we decided we'd try to self publish the Stargate World project and our future projects we started the equivalent of pre-production." Joe continues to describe how he began as a small team working on creating a publishing group and how the management team has finally come into place.
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Sandbags in a City?
As he goes through discussing the different arms of the company, he mentions briefly they also are doing web development. "One of our big projects right now, is that we're rebuilding the Stargate Worlds community site. It's a background project that has been ongoing since last year." The new site is supposed to roll out around September helping establish a friendly environment for customer registration, billing, and knowledge-base all of which are pivotal to a good game support system. Mixed this in with all their publishing responsibilities, it appears Firesky wears many hats but Joe seems confident they can manage everything with the team they are putting together.
As the conversation progressed he discusses their unannounced projects, "Our next project comes out two to three quarters after Stargate Worlds. We started Product #2 about 16 months ago." He estimates they'll be in production for roughly 28 months by the time the game launches. Stating it's a completely different type of game, he is careful not to spill any secrets, and promises they'll start talking more about in July which is just in time for conferences such as E3. He even briefly mentions a Project #3 so it appears Cheyenne Mountain has been pretty busy.
The beta process comes up and he agrees that methods and expectations have changed over the years moving from a pure testing environment to almost a preview. "The first task is getting a customer base," he says, "which is why you saw the announcement we made and started registration for the beta. That's attracted a significant number of people but in addition to that, the MGM folks ran a contest for us." The goal of the contest and the announcements were to build a mailing list of customers to select beta participants from. He explains they'll be working with MGM, Fox, the SciFi channel, and other entities to continue to grow that mailing list.
An interesting statement he makes is his goal is to make their Open Beta completely open which is a little outside the norm. "At the Open Beta, I want to open the service. The Open Beta is launch basically, it's just the the product won't be available to retail for customers to go buy." He does want to meet expectations and is cognoscente that this is their first product, and they are serving a world wide market, so they are moving very conservatively to make sure things are done right.
As I ask about the globalization of Stargate, Joe is quick to point out how popular the show is around the world. "From all the evidence we've acquired, it's going to be about 50/50 North American and Europe. And the reason behind that is because of the popularity of the TV series in Europe. It's very strong both in Germany and France." He mentions that as soon as the content is complete they will begin the localization process to tweak the language and culture and wants a simultaneous launch in English, French and German.
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Geared Up!
What types of benefits and challenges is working with a hit TV series that has over 10 seasons of shows not to mention at least one successful spin off and two straight to DVD movies? "I think it's more about the benefits than it is the challenge. When you look at the fact we're unique in that we're television, and what is unique about Stargate SG-1 is they had 10 seasons along with SG Atlantis which had five so far. There is plenty of content to work with." He goes on to explain how the gate let's them go anywhere they want to and the Egyptian historical backdrop allows a significant number of options.
Another huge advantage he feels Stargate has is it's not Star Trek, which does sound unusual at first. He clarifies "The users can plug themselves right into the gameplay and they don't feel 'Well I'm not Captain Piccard' or some star of the show. That is a terrific property to work with." He also reveals MGM and the creators of the show are not only ok with creating original content but has even encouraged them to do so. There is apparently much more that can be done with the game, which cannot be accomplished with television.
What did they end up doing? An interesting opportunity was to explore some of the open story lines the TV show never fleshed out such as the Jaffa rebellion or the rise of certain factions. Fans of Atlantis shouldn't fear that that portion of the Stargate universe will be ignored however. "If you look at a lot of the visuals we've already put out, we've created a fairly significant amount of Ancient technology. A lot of that was not only done as an homage to Atlantis, but because the Ancients built the Stargate network.
While there was much more said about business strategies, marketing plans, and customer relations we've provided the highlights. If there was one thing we walked away from the interview with, it was Joe Ybarra had a plan so keep your eyes on Firesky and Cheyenne Mountain for Stargate Worlds. Also be sure to keep checking Ten Ton Hammer as we follow the development of this interesting product.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Stargate Worlds Game Page.
