Last month at the E3 Media & Business Summit, EA president John
Riccitiello casually shattered the wall of secrecy surrounding BioWare#DY#s Knights
of the Old Republic massively multiplayer online role-paying game.
Unfortunately, his lieutenant, EA Games president Frank Gibeau, is more
disciplined when it comes to speaking the press. In the second section of a
two-part interview, the affable executive deflected any questions about the
KOTOR MMORPG with a polite "no comment" and a brief laugh.
But just because Gibeau was tight-lipped about the BioWare Austin-Lucasarts
collaboration didn#DY#t mean he didn#DY#t want to talk about MMORPGs. That#DY#s because
the executive will be overseeing two massively multiplayer launches in the next
two years: Warhammer
Online: Age of Reckoning on September 18, and The Game Which Will Not Be
Spoken Of in 2009. Both games are aiming to lure away some of the near-12
million subscribers of World of
Warcraft--a game Gibeau himself has played extensively.
Indeed, online gaming as a whole is central to EA#DY#s strategy. In two weeks,
the company will launch Spore, Sims creator Will Wright#DY#s highly ambitious
evolution-civilization-space-exploration simulation. The game takes user-created
content to a whole new level, letting players create their own race of creatures
and upload them to EA#DY#s servers, where they can wander into other players#DY#
games. Unsurprisingly, the Spore Creature Creator#DY#s dizzying array of options
has led to the spawning of thousands of X-rated monsters since its release in
June.
How will EA keep kids from inadvertently encountering rampaging penisauruses
and genitaliarachnids? What will it take to take a bite out of WOW#DY#s massive
user base? What#DY#s going on with the Medal of Honor series? Is Black coming back?
GameSpot sat down with Gibeau to get some answers... again.
GameSpot: So the launch of Warhammer Online: Age of
Reckoning is fast approaching. What groundwork are you laying to take on World
of Warcraft?
Frank Gibeau: Well let me back up and say that core to the
strategy of the company--and very specifically our label--is that we want to be
online with everything we do. I#DY#m no longer greenlighting games that are
single-player only, even console products. They have to have deep online modes
because that#DY#s where our fans are spending a lot of time and, frankly, that#DY#s
where a lot of the value in the IPs we create can really take hold.
We already have two operating MMOs. We launched a game called Ultima Online
in 1997, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and that#DY#s still in business.
It#DY#s still got hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Then there#DY#s Dark Age of Camelot,
which we picked up when we bought Mythic we also have a situation where we have
well over 100,000 subscribers. Both are highly profitable, but they#DY#re old
world.
