Game Pieces

Game Pieces Multiplayer_tags

IGN Interview FFXI Producer
2009-10-15 00:00:00
March 23, 2004 - On the eve of the launch of the HDD and Final Fantasy XI, a crowd gathered at the doors of the PlayStation store at the Metreon in San Francisco. Gamers were eager to be the first ones in the whole country to play FFXI on the PS2. While they spent a few hours for a glimpse of the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG for short), we got a chance to talk to Yasu Kurosawa, producer, and Keiki Usui, online service manager, and pick their brains on the game that is sure to devour hundreds, if not thousands, of hours for Final Fantasy fans. IGNPS2: How does it feel to have everything done with the release of FFXI? Yasu Kurosawa: It's very exciting to see a lot of players on there. A lot of players who haven't played MMORPGs before, too. IGNPS2: Have there been any translation issues between the American and the Japanese players online? Yasu Kurosawa: We didn't think it was going to be used that much, but almost every player has been using it. Before they go into battle they pre-macro sentences. A lot of people also use that for searching for help or party members. IGNPS2: So people haven't been having any problems with it? Yasu Kurosawa: I'm sure there are problems in the communicating, but in terms of playing the game and looking for party members and doing the battles and quests it's working out pretty well. IGNPS2: Right now, FFXI goes up to level 75 and I've already been running into people who are at level 75. What are you going to be providing for those who have reached that level? Yasu Kurosawa: Increasing the level is not the only way to entertain high-level people. [We're ] introducing new quests and monsters that require more than one high-level character to finish. We're also bringing in [Peer vs. Peer]. It's not like we will turn this game into a PvP fest, but it will be there. IGNPS2: We'll be hearing a lot more details soon? Is there an...

Puzzle Pirates Shows Indie Developers Can Succeed in the MMO Market
2009-09-10 00:00:00
With the video games industry becoming increasingly consolidated among a few large publishers, it's become harder and harder for small, independent developers to remain profitable without the help of one of these major publishing houses. In fact, it's virtually impossible to get your homegrown title distributed on a home console, no matter how well it stacks up to the titles the big boys are making.On the PC side, the situation for indie devs isn't quite so dire, thanks to electronic distribution of these smaller titles being a much more viable option. Companies such as PopCap and WildTangent have found great success selling their smaller titles for under $20. The burgeoning MMO market has also become quite a boon for small dev houses. San Francisco-based Three Rings Design is perhaps the best example of this, with their quirky MMO Puzzle Pirates becoming a large success for the company, despite their small amount of development and marketing capital. With only three full-time employees working on the game during most of its development, Three Rings managed to successfully develop and launch Puzzle Pirates in December 2003. The game now has over 9,000 paying subscribers.Although the title falls into the MMO genre, you wouldn't know it at first glance. There are no levels to gain, no stat-boosting armor (or stats at all, for that matter), and no complex quests. Even combat has its own twist. As the name implies, Puzzle Pirates is all about the puzzles. Manning the bilge means matching up shapes in groups of 3 as fast as possible. Sword fighting becomes a head-to-head puzzle match up in the vein of multiplayer Tetris. Other puzzling tasks include sailing, and carpentry. As a crew, cooperation becomes necessary to survival. We spoke with Three Rings CEO Daniel James about the story behind Puzzle Pirates, the future for indie developers, and where the MMO market is headed.GameDAILY BIZ: How large is the Three Rings team? What previous experience does it have? Daniel James: The crew numbers eight full-time mates and eight part-time contractors, mostly in customer support. My background is very much in MUDs; my CTO Michael and most of our engineers came from a web services and classic games background. Only a couple of us have worked in traditional games companies, and I sometimes think that this is an advantage. BIZ: How did Three Rings fund itself for the couple of years before PP launched? DJ: Founders, friends and family. We were lucky to have enough money to see the game through to a reasonable point of risk-reduction such that we could persuade some friends to invest. Thanks to them, we finished her!Note also that we kept costs very low during development, ramping up from 3 full-timers to 6 ...