Game:

Neverwinter (2013)

Duration: 11:50

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7

From primal beginnings to fully fledged Neverwinter MMO with user generated content.

Cryptic Studios CEO Jack Emmert talked to us about the next MMORPG coming out of the studio - Neverwinter - how it came to be, the state of the MMO scene and much more.

The game has had a very long and winding road in development as Cryptic has seen owners change over the course of the years.

"We started out before we were ever bought by Atari. We had an idea for a game that was based around user generated content, we call it Primal Age. It was a primal fantasy kind of barbaric MMO with user generated content in it. Well, Atari came along and they wanted to buy us, so they purchased us back in 2008. And it made perfect sense, since they had the D&D license, we'll take Neverwinter. Take that user generated content game and turn it into a Neverwinter product. So we started working on it, and it was decided for a whole variety of reasons to do kind of a co-op game. So it would be a game you'd play with like 4 other players, but it wouldn't be an MMO. And then, we were bought by Perfect World, an MMO company, we were bought from Atari. And they were like "look, Neverwinter makes best sense as an MMO", and we agreed we're an MMO company. And the rest is history."

On the work currently going into Neverwinter:

"Right now it's just get every bug crushed, polish the game as much as humanly possible. And we're already planning our first expansion, or very first update I should say, we want to make sure we've got updates coming three times a year and we want to make sure when people see launch day they can see [what is] coming soon."

Speaking about the future of the MMO space:

"I don't think you're going to see some of the big publishers doing MMOs so much anymore. I don't think you're going to see as many of the small startups doing MMOs. 5-6 years ago people could get investment money for an MMO, right, they'd point to World of Warcraft and say "we're going to be just like them", but there has been a lot of high-profile failures. So I think what you're going to see is a lot of specialisation, the teams that have done it and done it well are going keep doing it. MMOs are never going to disappear, it's just I think there's going to be a slightly fewer number of developers doing it."


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