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JackedIn.Com Radio Interview - 12.27.99
Present at the interview
are John "Killer" MacQueen and Jim
Mesteller from Playnet. Interviewing them are Ron "NewzGuy"
Jackson and Ali "AliWooD"
Bokaiyan. There's more to the interview but I've snipped out the non-WW2OL
parts, for your convenience.
NewzGuy: Let's take this
first question one by one, we'll start with you John. Having been part
of the first graphic-based platform to run on the net as we now know it,
you've kinda been there done that. What holds your interest in the gaming
business these days?
Killer: Well, the same thing
it did then. Cutting edge concepts, taking things where they've never
been before, just always take them to the next level; it's a lot of fun.
NewzGuy: You know, from
the stories of days gone by, I know that you all had fun working the first
time around, how about now at Playnet: Is it just as much fun there?
Jim: Oh, yeah, of course
it is. We've got a nice group of guys, everybody works together really
well, it's a great work environment. Uhm... never been better.
NewzGuy: Jim, we know that
World War Two Online is a major effort right now at Playnet, but what
other things can we expect out of your shop?
Jim: Well actually, that's
suggestive in our name guys, that's Playnet Inc. We're building a business
and not just World War 2 Online. If that wasn't enough, we've taken on
a heck of a lot more challenge than that. We have a full-featured gaming
service, Ron, called Playnet.com
that we're building as well. We've chosen, much out of necessity, to develop
a lot of our own technologies and tools in-house, so we'll be building
content ourselves and we'll be building a system that will allow us to
"publish" content and that's just not exclusive to games.
Newzguy: John, you or Jim,
or both of you on this one, besides the game titles produced by your software
division, Cornered Rat, the rumor is you'll be hosting other companies'
games as well. How's that going to work?
Jim: We're certainly going
to approach it from a building of a business, building of a market kind
of view. We're going to attack developers with tools. We need content;
you know, they say it's all about product. We're going to have a virtual
store that's really a retail business, I know it sounds like a *muffled*,
but when you have products on the shelves and they collect dust, I learned
from my early days that you gotta take em off the shelves and replace
them or something. It all starts with a product lineup, and we, John and
I, and the rest of the gang, believe in product differentiation, and we
will price and present things accordingly. So yeah, in the realm of, or
within the offerings we have available, or make available from Playnet.com, we will be
hosting affinity based game clubs, game playing tournaments, you name
it, and that will include matchmaking lobby-style, launch CD-ROM based
and other platforms not necessarily PC.
AliWooD: Interesting. You
guys are letting gamers play on land, air, and in the water, all in the
same area, and that's because of the new game engine, the Unity engine?
Can you tell us a little more about it, and how it's going to impact gamers?
Killer: Well, it's a very
unique game engine. We're taking it from an aspect that it will let us
leverage what we're putting together here for many types of projects.
It's very versatile. It will allow us to, in a short amount of time, *muffled*
cross several different genres of games, in several different places.
You can let the mind wander there.
AliWooD: What can you tell
us about G2, or Global Games Network?
Jim: She's really nothing
Ali, but let's make something up, how's that?
AliWooD: Alright.
Jim: The reason I let off
that way, it's really, as I said, it really... Global Games Network, it's
a little bit more hype, it's a little bit more perception before reality
right now, but it really is much more than that. We're organising the
company to prepare ourselves to build a network, a la 1940s when commercial
TV was launched, 1970s when cable TV systems, including things like HBO,
were launched. Someone used the word "visionary" before, John
and I think we have a bunch of visions, the rest of us here share them.
We try to position ourselves for the maximum amount of opportunities so
therefore we're building an infrastructure that will allow for a true
network of online gaming and entertainment content.
AliWooD: Now are you guys
developing your own libraries, technologies and routines, or are you also
using some other ones as well that's going to be modelled and implemented
in your game?
Killer: For the most part
we are, but, I mean, we don't want to reinvent the wheel; when there's
anything top-of-the-line that we can use, that's fine, but when there's
not, which is a good bit of the time, we have to develop it to our needs.
NewzGuy: John, Jim, either,
both, besides the guys that are in on the conversation, Playnet has a
very experienced team behind it, it's got great depth to it. That's got
to give you a comfort zone now that you're moving forward with World War
Two Online, right?
Jim: It's something that
John and I talk about a lot, but it's absolutely, to asnwer your question,
you're right Ron. It gets more about individual talent; you know, as the
old saying goes, the sum of the parts is equal to whatever it is, I can't
even repeat it. We have a good team, and that's the right word. Passion
is something we all share for what we're doing. We all have managed to
find a way to share the same vision here, it's a lot of fun.
NewzGuy: What about your
API and your SDK technologies? I know we looked at that way back when
at ICI; it never seemed to come about. What can you offer other game developers?
Killer: Well, what we're
looking to do there is to make it easy for a game developer, a CD-ROM
game developer, or an online game developer, to get reliable networking
over the internet, to get an easily hostable game by offering the whole
platform so they can take their game idea in the program they're used
to using and add the whole networking side easily and have it work reliably.
We're cross-platform too guys; we mean PC, Mac, and we hope eventually
some way for implementing support for UNIX (Sixxo: he meant Linux) as
well.
NewzGuy: The barriers of
whatever platform are on are going away very quickly, aren't they.
Killer: Sure they are. More
importantly, as they go away, we believe that we eventually, if we're
going to be successful in this business, have to be able to approach this
business... *muffled* of how a person gets online, and once they get there,
your only objective is to make them a customer. So you can't worry about
what platform they're on. If you do, you're going to lose market share.
NewzGuy: I've got a two-part
question for you guys, I'll start just with the first part. How is World
War Two Online coming along?
(Sixxo: More details soon. *wink*)
Killer: Actually it's coming
along just fine. We're right on scheduled, right where we thought we'd
be when we started the project, earlier this year back in May. Everybody's
very excited about it, and we're starting to see the light at the end
of the tunnel a little bit here.
NewzGuy: I'm not going to
press you for dates or anything along that line, but you're happy with
the progress of all the various components. It's a hugely complex effort
you guys have going there and you've got the whole time, I know, going
night and day on it, and it's coming along about at the same time, in
other words?
Killer: Right, right. We're
following, like I said, a long extended development schedule here. Our
approach in it is to basically make a vehicle simulator that can handle
anything, which makes it a lot simpler approach than trying to make several
different kinds of simulations; we're making one simulation that can handle
any of the types of vehicles that you want to fit in, or weapons, or damage
systems, what have you.
NewzGuy: You're going to
have multiple servers tied in with this, right? That's going to be a hugely
complex, and I know John, you're a genius in this stuff, when you're gettig
all these various arenas together, it's really going to bring a huge amount
of people together. Do you have any kind of estimate of how many will
be in any one arena, or together, any of those kind of numbers?
Killer: Well, we don't really
like to call them arenas at this time. We like to call them theaters,
and they're all interconnected to basically represent the world. We should
have the capacity for 1000 per theater, and at this point we're planning
10 theaters for the world, so that's your maximum right there.
NewzGuy: And what's the
time period that you're going to start with? Is there a narrow period
of the war that you're going to begin with?
Killer: Yeah, we're going
to begin in 1940. May 10th the exact; Battle of France. And go on with
the Battle of France and development schedule as we continue to add new
theaters, and introduce all the different vehicles as the time for them
approaches. We'll continue to walk through the entire war, spreading from
there on to the Pacific, until we've gotten into the globe.
NewzGuy: As we get closer
to beta time, I know that there are, right now, I can hear them, there
are people screaming questions at me to ask you, but we're going to defer
those until a little later on. We're going to be following you guys very
very closely. We're going to be trying to have you on the air as much
as your time allows. I want to not leave World War Two Online necessarily,
our audience, please don't think we're jumping away, we will be following
this very closely, but Cornered Rat and Playnet have some other projects
too; can you mention those right now?
(Sixxo: Jim goes on about how WW2OL
is not their only project, and how they're in the early game development
stages for a massively-multiplayer, first-person 3D online RPG, possibly
using the same Unity engine.)
That's about it for the World War Two Online portion of the interview.
I guess nobody was around to stop this massive leaking of information,
and it can only be to our benefit. *grin*
Thanks to the JackedIn.com
guys, once again, for broadcasting their healthy flow of goodness, and
thanks to the Playnet guys for giving me something to transcript.
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