Interview with Smed

[Cantatus]

Since Smed's a hot topic around here lately, I figured some people might find this interview of interest.

From FiringSquad:

FiringSquad: Sony Online runs more massively multiplayer games than any US publisher by far. As Sony Online's head how difficult is it to keep up with all of the games under your view?

John Smedley: EverQuest just recently celebrated it’s seventh anniversary, which comes just a few months after we released the 11th expansion for the game. EverQuest II is a little over a year old, and has two full-blown expansions and two adventure packs. Star Wars Galaxies encompasses land and space combat and exploration across a half-dozen worlds. The Matrix Online is a full living, breathing city. PlanetSide is filled with thousands of players fighting over dozens of bases, towers and control points. It’s hard to know everything about every single one of our MMOs (not to mention our console titles), but I try to keep up.

FiringSquad: Everquest launched with only Origin's Ultima Online as its only serious competitor and now there are tons of MMORPGs out there. Is there always a fear that this genre is going to become saturated?

John Smedley: Saturation probably isn’t the best term. The MMO genre has come a long way since 1999, in terms of game design, quality and availability. Each new MMO game that comes out hopefully grows our audience and brings in new people to a genre that Sony Online Entertainment is clearly vested in. We’re not just dabbling in the MMO space, we’re running a half-dozen live online games with plans for more. New faces coming into our worlds are always welcome.


FiringSquad: There was some thought that Everquest might get hit with player subscription losses as players move to Everquest II. Can you give us any indication if that has turned out to be true and how long does Sony Online expect to continue to support Everquest?

John Smedley: Surprisingly, EQII didn’t put too big a bite into our EQ sub base. Part of the reason is because we began offering the Station Access subscription to our players, which allows them access to all of our games – including EQ, EQII, Star Wars Galaxies, Matrix Online, PlanetSide and EverQuest Online Adventure for the PlayStation 2 – for $24.99. Most EQ players have months (or years, in many cases) invested into the game, building up their characters and guilds, forming relationships within the game and spending a great deal of time and energy completing some of the vast amounts of content available in the game. They did not simply want to “switch,” and lose all of those connections. We still have hundreds of thousands of people playing EQ and we plan on supporting the game as long as they keep playing. We’re already planning for our next expansion for the game.

FiringSquad: Everquest has moved into action-RPGs and RTS genres. Have there been any thoughts about developing other games in the Everquest universe, perhaps a pure action game or a single player only RPG?

John Smedley: There has been talk over the years of producing a Squaresoft- or Bioware-style RPG based on the EQ franchise, but we’ve never progressed much beyond talking about. It’s not something that we’d ever rule out. Personally, I’d love to play an RPG based on the huge amount of lore that we’ve built up over the years.

FiringSquad: Sony Online has released games for the PS2 and PSP and it stands to reason that the PS3 will have a Sony Online developed game as well. How do you see Sony Online continuing to develop its strategy for console titles?

John Smedley: We just recently announced that we are creating a PlayStation 3 launch title, “Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom.” We’ll be taking our hit Untold Legends franchise and bringing it to the new next-gen system, combining hack-and-slash action with the amazing visuals and technical feats that would only be possible on the PS3. We’re also working with the PlayStation group to help them with backend implementation for the PS3 network, so you can expect to see titles from us that will take advantage of the online capabilities of the hardware (including Dark Kingdom).

FiringSquad: A few months ago you revealed that Sony Online would develop a new MMORPG without a monthly fee that would use instead trading and selling items in the game world. Can you give us any more hints about what this game will be like?

John Smedley: We’re still working on this project here in San Diego, and we’re not quite ready to go into more detail at this point in time. The overall plan is that we will be offering a free to play MMO that will also contain upsells for players, such as private zones or sales of virtual items. The goal for the game is that it needs to be simple to get into, both from a technical standpoint (fast, easy download that can be distributed virally) and a design standpoint (anyone should be able to play it). I’d love to tell you more, but it’s just too early right now.

FiringSquad: Most massively multiplayer games do not reveal their subscription numbers but Blizzard recently revealed that World of Warcraft has over 6 million subscribers worldwide. What do these numbers mean for the MMORPG genre in general and how does World of Warcraft's success affect how you develop games at Sony Online?

John Smedley: As I mentioned before, the more new people who are brought into the MMO space, the better for SOE. Blizzard has an incredible reputation and they were able to maximize on their successes to bring in many new players to the world of MMOs. The biggest hurdle we find with new players is the monthly service charge that comes with operating an online game. Now that all of these new folks have come into an MMO for the first time and see how it works, we’re be right there to offer them a number of other online worlds and adventures when they’re ready to try something different.

FiringSquad: It's been several months since Station Exchange started. Has this new program been a profitable one for Sony Online and do you believe this will eventually affect the third party MMORPG trading companies and IGE?

John Smedley: Station Exchange has been very successful for us as a company, on a number of levels. The service itself is making money – in January, we passed a million dollars in player-to-player sales through the service – and it has also been a great experiment, paving the way for further service offerings like this in the future. As we add more services like this for our games, there won’t be a reason for our players to go to a third-party website, as it will be integrated into the game they’re playing.

FiringSquad: Sony Online is currently developing a MMO based on DC Comic's superhero universe. We know the game is very early in development but can you give us an idea on how the game willl be different in terms of gameplay from Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes?

John Smedley: Well, we’ll have Batman. And Superman. And Wonder Woman. And Green Lantern. And The Flash. And… See where I’m going with this? We’re developing the title for both next-gen console and PC. Other than that, we’re not really talking about the game at this point; it’s still too early.

[Kuro]

I'd buy the single player EQ RPG if it got all the lore unmuddled/contradicting-itself.

[Soygen]

This Smed guy is obviously a shill.

[kasey]

If we can train/ogur block/pk/ninja the npcs why not!Like the guild your character plays in is to weak to get a certain ingredient itself so you have to sneak into another as a long quest,befriend them,raid with them and then ninja and run away :-P

[Dokomo]

I guess SOE has a lot of great games that they can't talk about yet other than to say they're great?

[Cantatus]

Originally Posted by Kuro

I'd buy the single player EQ RPG if it got all the lore unmuddled/contradicting-itself.

I'd buy it if the world was set up remotely similar to EQ1. I'd love something like that, honestly. I enjoyed Champions, but the world was looked and felt nothing like Norrath in EQ1. It was hard to tell I was even playing an EverQuest title.

Originally Posted by Dokomo

I guess SOE has a lot of great games that they can't talk about yet other than to say they're great?

And they have Batman!

[Ossoi]

was calling this an "interview" someones attempt at sarcasm?

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by Ossoi

was calling this an "interview" someones attempt at sarcasm?

Interview: A conversation, such as one conducted by a reporter, in which facts or statements are elicited from another.

The questions may have been total softballs but it was still an interview.

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

Originally Posted by Daerath

Interview: A conversation, such as one conducted by a reporter, in which facts or statements are elicited from another.

The questions may have been total softballs but it was still an interview.

This was more of a bit of marketing fluff. Which is ok there is a place for that kind of thing. It wasn't anything in-depth but that's ok it was a short piece not geared at the mmorpg crowd that visits this board.

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by Jaytee Bushwacker

This was more of a bit of marketing fluff. Which is ok there is a place for that kind of thing. It wasn't anything in-depth but that's ok it was a short piece not geared at the mmorpg crowd that visits this board.

I totally agree. That sort of article targets the casual player market and is really there to just say, "We're cool, we've got stuff coming out soon, look at how long we've been here, we're the best."

Very in-depth articles with tough questions aren't likely at this point because there's no need. The game market isn't such that a company needs to do that unless they're a very small up-and-coming company that is trying to carve a name for itself. Then you'll get a large amount of detail because they want to attract the hardcore audience knowing full well that the casual players will follow.

The only comment I found interesting was regarding an EQ-style RPG. Fuck that. Make a version of EQ that is single player. Let me control 72 characters ala Baldur's Gate. Then I can play whenever I want, pause, script actions like healing and such, and all sony has to do to make it work is develop a new UI and make a few changes so your character is stored locally along with the monster and item info. They wouldn't have to retune anything. All of the existing content would remain unchanged as would content of future expansions.

[The Hiram Key]

Those were all easy questions.

I would have loved to see:

"So Smed, word on the street is your CS is garbage. Care to comment ?"

or

"So now that you have rid yourself of King of all Sandboxes, will we actually see an improvement?".

Anyone can blow sunshine up someones ass and call it an interview. I bet a quarter those questions were submitted either in advance, and or the answers were proofed by legal.

[forge]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

Those were all easy questions.

I would have loved to see:

"So Smed, word on the street is your CS is garbage. Care to comment ?"

or

"So now that you have rid yourself of King of all Sandboxes, will we actually see an improvement?".

Anyone can blow sunshine up someones ass and call it an interview. I bet a quarter those questions were submitted either in advance, and or the answers were proofed by legal.

Well since Smed stops by time and again now, maybe we'll get a answer to number 1. Number 2 has already been answered by Smed here, though I think it might have been more of a SOE Smed answer than a Smed answer. Personally I don't know how good or bad EQ's cs is currently. I do however know what a clusterfuck SWG was.

[Neric]

What is so surprising about this interview? I don't expect him to confess in public that he failed or that things aren't going well.

Besides that, things are going well for SoE. They could go much better or course, but that's a different story.

[Olio]

WHAT OTHER EXCITING NEW SONY PRODUCTS WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL US ABOUT?

[Tripamang]

Surprised this wasn't here already.. game journalists should take this advice. Pull your mouth off the schlongs of your heros and ask them a real fucking question. You may or may not be aware of this, but you can actually ask people real questions.