WildStar Executive Producer on Developing a New IP

While chatting with PCGamesN, Carbine Studios’ executive producer on WildStar Jeremy Gaffney had some interesting things to say about developing a new property, and also addressed the obvious similarities with genre juggernaut World of Warcraft:

(Because we’re a non-existing IP, we’re not telling a story you’ve heard before, we’re not taking some movie you loved when you were a kid and trying to play with that – we have to earn every user we get,) he explained. (The reason there’s some reminiscence to World of Warcraft in the art style is because, as you may know, the studio’s formed by 20 of the senior team from World of Warcraft. Right after WoW launched they were like ‘˜We did stuff, we did stuff wrong, we really want to nail the space’ so they started Carbine studios specifically to do that.)

Gaffney said that there was a certain amount of (cross breeding) on the team, thanks to over 60 ex-Blizzard staff who’ve worked on WoW at some point or another. Between them, they know how to take their experience (to the next level).

(What we want to do is that make sure there’s enough compelling features and stuff like warplots and player housing and make sure those systems are embedded deep in the game,) he said. (Those new features are in part to attract new players in but the core of it is to make the meat and the potatoes, to make sure your game is solid from level one to level cap [and] earn those users – to have them love the game. They’ll bring their friends into the game and [we’ll] do the right social systems and that’s what grows your game up.

(That’s how all the good games do it to one extent or another,) Gaffney went on. (That’s how WoW did it. Remember that WoW was a huge success at launch, they had 300,000 people in the game but that grew to over 3 million people in the Western market, 12 million people globally, because it was a good game, not because it was Warcraft. They made a solid game.)

Thanks, VG247.