Archive for category Press
Variety gives me a gazil – okay, four more thoughts on Gazillion
Posted by Rockjaw in Links of Others, MMO-related, Press on March 19th, 2009
While most of the gaming press pretty much shrugged and moved on regarding Gazillion (or in the case of some blogs, sneered – but hey, that’s what blogs usually do) Ben Fritz at Variety* did that crazy ‘journalism’ thing and got the right people on the phone to comment.
In the process, he discovered a whole bunch of new facts which are very interesting, and led me to some more thoughts. You absolutely should read the article, but I’ll pull out some corkers here:
1. Gazillion has eight ‘projects’ in the works.
Four we know about (LEGO Universe, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Marvel Universe, Slipgate Ironworks’ MMO) but that leaves four more they’re keeping under wraps. That’s pretty huge. Again to give you context, while at NCsoft there were usually half-a-dozen or more MMO projects in various stages of development in Korea, it was rare any of them were made public.
Right now, again by comparison, NCsoft has four MMOs in development that you know about (Guild Wars 2, Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Carbine Studios’ MMO, Blade & Soul) but I guarantee you more are under wraps.
Still, of those projects you’re aware of, some have been in development since 2005, and hey, you’ve known about others since 2006. With Gazillion’s announcement and lots of speculation that they’re releasing Marvel Super Hero Squad in 2010, they’re already ahead of the game. I have a sneaking suspicion other publishers may try to follow this ‘late breaking’ approach in future.
Garriott… innn… SPAAAACCE!!
We have blast-off. The first ever games designer… in spaaace… etc.
No, the date wasn’t ringed on my calendar. I vaguely remember being told he was going up in mid-October, but I never paid much attention to the exact date even at NCsoft, so thanks BBC. I hope he has a safe and successful flight, and that he feels it’s worth the THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS (approximately) that he paid for the privilege.
That’s a heck of a lot of money to follow in Dad’s footsteps. If he wanted to save money, he could have gone Virgin Galactic, who’ll be charging a lot less – but then Richard’s going to be up for ten days, not ten minutes.
In case you’re wondering, that eye-popping budget was never bandied around much at NCsoft when I was there – but not for the reason you might be thinking. See, it’s all Richard’s money. (Nope. I didn’t think Ultima was that big either.) Not a penny came from NCsoft. Which is good. Because otherwise right now you’d probably be wondering just what else that cash could have been spent on.
Instead of just thinking: “So how is this supposed to help Tabula Rasa, exactly?”
Winnerrrrrrr!
Posted by Rockjaw in Links of Others, MMO-related, Press on September 1st, 2008
I’m reliably informed that Onlinewelten – one of the biggest German fansites out there – awarded NCsoft and specifically Aion: The Tower of Eternity ‘Best Stand of GC‘, which legitimately allows me to run this pic:
Woo! We rule! Etc etc. Here’s what they had to say about us: Read the rest of this entry »
Early PAX impressions of Aion: good
Posted by Rockjaw in Links of Others, Press on August 30th, 2008
While it’s not a full-fledged preview, Shawn Schuster over at Massively gave special mention to Aion’s presence at PAX, which is holding its own against ‘MMOs With Three-Letter-Acronyms That Begin With W’:
With the NCsoft booth occupying some precious real estate in the middle of the exhibition floor, the Aion side of that booth faced the entrance, which worked well in their favor. Even the buzz around the booth and from passersby seemed very positive during the first ever public hands-on of this fantasy/flight MMO.
(Although of course, technically, PAX is hosting the first ever US-based public hands-on – as we debuted Aion at Games Convention.)
Let’s hope players like what they see (and play), eh?
Some Aion and GC-related links
Posted by Rockjaw in Community, Events, Links of Others, MMO-related, Press on August 29th, 2008
A few links ‘n’ things I thought you might be interested in….
Couple of Aion previews
Pre-Leipzig we gave an exclusive Aion preview to PCGZine, who visited the office and got loads of ‘stuff’ from us that they’ve put together into a six-page preview. In case you didn’t know, they’re a PDF-based online magazine, so you don’t even have to go to the shops to read it.
Anyway, you can grab the PDF file right here and have a peruse. It’s supposed to be ‘interactive’ with rollover videos and stuff, which might work in Acrobat, but I’ll tell you right now doesn’t work on a Mac.
If you’d prefer a preview that isn’t in PDF format, you might enjoy this look at Aion from The Escapist, who aren’t generally known for their hyperbole. They like what they saw at the recent press preview in San Francisco, which is all good news.
The things fans do…
We spent a lot of our time during GC on our feet, but we never made the commitment to distance that a few of our more dedicated Aion fansites did. A number of them banded together to basically walk the length and breadth of Leipzig (as in, the town) and get pictures of every Aion billboard we had there.
Apart from being proof that yeah, we spent a bit of money on the game’s promotion, it also proves undeniably that our fans are mad, crazy people who we love to bits. See the photographic proof of this true ‘Quest for GC’ in this Flickr set.
While we’re talking about “things our fans do for us”, here are two photos with things that make me happy:
Yep, that’ll be Martin with a shark tank, as presented to him by a fan during the show. (Our Marketing Manager, Mirko, is on the right.) That’ll be a direct reference to my dialogue, then….
Last but not least – AionSource‘s t-shirt of GC, featuring fan art based on The Shark, as modelled by Martin, constructed by Chris, and conceived by me in Episode 6.
Fan-made merch. Love it.
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