An interview with Matt Wilson. This is SOE Seattle. The new development studio that is working on something we don’t know yet. At 90% this is the game with no subscription fee that Smedley hinted in his speech.

I wish we had some more informations about what happens behind the scenes. Only a few minor details trickle out of these rare interviews. I wish I could get to know the industry some more under this aspect.

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Matt Wilson:
Technically, my first game that shipped was a macro in Word 6.0 called Mindbender. I spent most of my efforts as an engineer working on DirectX with Alex St. John. I got a great education on the technical aspects of gaming, but soon realized it was the content that I loved. I moved to the Internet Gaming Zone and became a producer on the first MMO games Microsoft was involved with (Fighter Ace, Ultracorps, Allegiance, Asheron’s Call…).

After that, I worked on a few single-player games both on PC and Xbox, and got the opportunity to work with Chris Taylor on Dungeon Siege. It was great to work on that project and watch Gas Powered Games grow from a startup to the company they are today – I learned a lot. After Dungeon Siege, I moved on to become the executive producer of Mythica. I worked two years on that project and met a ton of talented people I will never forget.

After Mythica, I left Microsoft and co-founded FireAnt, Inc. with John Smith, Alex Pfaffe, Craig Link and Ed Fries. We focused on bringing our vision of mainstream gaming to the online market. Within a year, we were purchased by Sony Online Entertainment and started up SOE’s Seattle studio.

Matt Wilson:
Keep folks focused on the truly important gameplay elements in the engine, not on paper.

So said the programmer.

I’d say: leave the paper to the designers ;)

About their plans:

In the near future? We hope to unveil an action adventure game that will shake up folks preconceptions about what MMOs can be.

My focus is to bring mainstream gaming to the MMO space.

That means hitting the quality level of the best PC or console game you’ve played with story and community hooks that demonstrate the real power of shared online persistence.

It’s OK to bring something to the market with a different business model, with a non-fantasy setting, with mechanics beyond knocking numbers out of a monster’s head. Groups are trying to do this, but when a game is called an MMO it has a certain reputation that comes with it. It’s time for MMOs to ditch that reputation and just start becoming better games.

If there’s one thing you could change about MMO gaming, it would be?

Cost of development. You have to make a huge bet to build an MMO. That makes it harder to take chances and makes it harder to break away from the established norm.

And a last note:

World of Warcraft is great as well… it showed that MMOs are not just for nerds. Or maybe it showed there are a lot of us out there. ;-)

It reminds me an article from Dave Rickey.