We have a new SP for EQII.

[Marina]

Here's the link to his interview...

http://eq2.zam.com/story.html?story=22148&storypage=1

EQII's New Producer Brings 20 Years Experience

Monday I was privileged to sit down and chat with SOE's Dave Georgeson, who was introduced last Thursday as the latest EverQuest II Senior Producer. We talked about the future of EverQuest II, the role of microtransactions in the gaming industry, and his production style. Dave's passion for gaming and game production is fun and infectious. While he readily admits he's got a lot to learn about EverQuest II, his production principles are solidly based on maximizing fun. Here's the transcript of our conversation.

ZAM: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? You're a bit of an enigma to a lot of players.

Dave Georgeson: I've been in gaming for a long time. I've been producing and directing games for about 20 years now, with one exception always on the PC side; I made one Playstation game which we won't mention because I was working for 3DO then. A large chunk of my games have been action oriented, games like Tribes II and Planetside, and I worked on a bunch of giant robot games with Activision like Heavy Gear II and some of the MechWarrior 2 stuff. But I've also done a lot of RPG stuff. As a designer I got to work on the very first computer games ever made of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise with SSI. I've done some smaller RPGs. zOMG of course was a big MMO that was Flash-based with no download, and although it was fantasy oriented it wasn't high fantasy oriented like EverQuest is. It's more Japanese animation based so there's a little bit of everything in it. And of course a lot of puns, it was a very humorous kind of game; at least I hope it was humorous, I wrote a lot of it. I've made games for pretty much every genre except sport, and almost every demographic, so I'm pretty well rounded.

ZAM: So you've got this phenomenally diverse background: what are you bringing to EverQuest II?

Dave: The good news is that the team has a lot of very well established high quality talent on it already, so they don't need me to come in and start generating lore ideas and ideas for quests and that sort of thing. What they really want me to do is, first of all, keep the team so it's happy so we keep making great stuff. You know how it is in the industry, morale is everything; if morale isn't high then you're not making a good game.

One of the things I'm really good at is synthesis. For the last several years I've been intentionally focusing on the social gaming stuff, the microtransaction models, different ways of being successful that don't rely on the same old models. The industry as a whole has had some real difficulty in the past few years making more and more hard core games, more and more advanced games, and taking huger and huger risks on stuff. One of my focuses has been on trying to figure out ways for people to actually have just a tremendous amount of fun with very little investment in games, so that they keep wanting to come back to the game. And I'm not exactly sure how that's going to fit into EverQuest II right now, but that's one of my strengths and one of my backgrounds if we can figure out ways for people to immediately have fun as they got into the game, just really enjoy the experience even though there's a lot to learn when you get into this game, well, we'd be better off for it. So that might be one of the things we focus on.

I've designed a lot of games. So everything that we do here I'll probably dabble in here and there. But in general the team is real well established, they have really great talent, and they know exactly what they are doing. So my focus is going to be largely on making us more successful.

ZAM: There has been some concern expressed that, because you came from Gaia and had a short stint on Free Realms, we're going to see more microtransactions sneaking into the Norrathian world. You were just saying you don't know yet? Is this on the table being discussed?

Dave: Well, this is a different critter than those games. When we did zOMG we didn't have a subscription. And on Free Realms the membership is completely voluntary. Whereas with EverQuest II you're already paying $15 a month. So how much more do you want to pay beyond that and how much do we even want to ask you for? On the other hand, I'm a big fan of microtransactions. As a player, I'm a fan of them. And the reason I'm a fan of them is if the content isn't good, then the developer doesn't make any money. If you look at it the right way you're not paying for pixels you're paying for entertainment. It's kind of like when you go to a movie you don't own the movie when you come out of the movie. Does that make sense?

ZAM: Yes, I like the way you put that.

[Marina]

Dave: It's just basically choosing how you spend your money, whether or not it's entertainment that's of value to you. 'Cause it's completely optional; none of this stuff is required, if you don't want to pay for it you don't have to. If you want to buy a really cool costume because you think it's neat and it's worth the cash to you, then go ahead! But it's not something you have to have. And if you want to play the game, you want to get through the first 40 levels faster and you want to buy some experience potions to do that, go ahead! It's already pretty easy to get through it but it's your game. You just have to as an individual customer decide whether or not it's worth money to you or not, and if it's not, no big thing. There's still a tremendously huge, very entertaining game out there already, this is just kind of on the side.

Will there be more of that? Probably. But am I committed to that? No, not necessarily, because we've got a lot of other fish to fry. Of course we'd always like to see more and more users into the game, so maybe there's some analysis we need to do on the beginning of the game to decide if there's ways to get people entertained faster. Or maybe the learning curve is too serious. Once you get into this game, I think you'd agree, there's just a tremendous amount of stuff in it, things that don't exist in other MMOs. So it's not a matter of making the game unique and different, it's just a matter of getting new people that have never played a game like this before into the game and getting them to stick.

One of the side things that I found really interesting when I was working at Gaia was when we polled the users we we had like 10 million go through our open Beta in the first year. When we polled our users we found that 90% of those people had never played an MMO before and most of them had never played a computer game before! So there's this tremendous rush of new users who have never played these kind of games before, and they don't know what they're missing. So if those kinds of people can get into these games the communities could become gigantic. Which would be good for everybody.

ZAM: I could talk to you about this stuff for hours!

Dave: Yeah, I study this stuff for a living, so it's fun to talk about, and I don't know exactly how that's going to translate into EverQuest II yet because like I think I mentioned already I'm facing a gigantic learning curve here. So it's going to be a while before I start trying to make any waves. Luckily the team is real good and we've got a good plan already. But eventually, yeah, it would be really fun to shake things up so that more and more of the people out there can find out that this is a really great product.

ZAM: I don't know how much of what's been going on recently you've had a chance to review. You've been there three whole days?

Dave: (laughs) Yeah, since last Thursday.

[Marina]

ZAM: Most of what Brenlo talked about in last the Producer's Letter is coming in the next Game Update, but there's a couple things coming up that the players are wondering about. One thing mentioned there and at the Dev Chat we did recently was moving away from Freeport and Qeynos as starting cities. Have you had a chance to look at that at all yet?

Dave: I've had a casual conversation with people about it, but I don't know much of the details yet. I don't know the reasons behind it. I hesitate to talk about it because I don't know all the details. If you call me up next week I can probably talk about it.

ZAM: Be careful, I'm going to pin you to that one! I'd love to talk to you more frequently.

Dave: I don't mind!

ZAM: What kind of a producer are you? Are you a sit back, project manage, leave everybody alone dev? Do you like getting your hands dirty? Do you micro-manage?

Dave: I absolutely don't micro-manage. There was a time back in my career that I did try that out, and I found out it really is not the path to success with creative dev teams. But on the other hand on most of my previous projects I've been both the producer, the creative director, and often the lead designer for a lot of the games that I've done. Teams used to be smaller than they are now. A lot of that, back when, like with 20 people and below teams. Nowadays I have a lot of design background. I've done a lot of creative stuff, I understand mechanics, I understand most of what the programmers are telling me, and I can even talk to artists (laughs). So in general what I do is I shape wherever possible. I discuss whether or not features are the best bang for the buck. Like there's always good ideas, you can have a list of a hundred great ideas. But then you have to assess what's going to bring the most fun factor to the game and then you have to discuss it in logical terms. So one of the things I bring to the table is breaking things down. A lot of times dev teams have a tendency to gut-check things. And I'm not saying this team is specifically, but a lot of dev teams do, they're emotionally invested in a feature and it may not be the best feature for the game. It may not do a lot except feed this one specific niche of players. And what I do is I ask, "Well, that's a great feature but what can we do that's going to appeal to more people in the user base. How much fun can we have with these things, what's the potential upside on these things, why do you think it's a good feature." And so that's a lot of what I bring to the table. I've had so many of those discussions in the past I can help people break stuff down like that. And so I would expect that most of what I'll be doing is helping them focus in that sort of way.

ZAM: That sounds great.

Dave: Yeah, it's a fun gig. Working with dev teams and helping to focus creative direction is, I dunno, it's what I like to do for a living.

ZAM: What a horrible problem to have, to really enjoy what you do for a living.

Dave: (laughs) Yeah, well in this industry you either love it or burn out.

ZAM: One of the things we have going on in the game now is we've got a horrible lag issue. Several devs including Greg "Rothgar" Spence have been beating on lag like crazy, is this going to keep up? Are you going to keep them focused on that?

Dave: Yeah. I don't know the solution details, but yes, we're going to be focusing on that.

[Marina]

ZAM: Have you yet gone and thrown out any of the plans that were on the table as of last Wednesday?

Dave: No. I will go so far as to say that any of the short term plans are not going to be changed a bit. The farther it gets from today the more impact I'll have on what's actually happening. But I would expect it to be a month or two before any kind of shifts the I'm making will have any kind of difference in what we're doing on the game.

I need to learn, and they need to teach me and then at the same time some of the stuff is already almost done, so it would be stupid to stop it.

ZAM: I noticed in the last Halas Reborn preview that most of what was most recently discussed is still slated for GU56.

Dave: Yup . That won't change. It's dumb to go into a project like this and just start moving stuff to move stuff. Granted there are people who will do that but I'm not one of 'em. We will make shifts, like, I don't know exactly what got told publicly, as far as long range plans go, but long range plans, I wouldn't hold your breath. Some of that will stay and some of it won't. I know we'll probably shift some stuff around. Short term? Yeah, it's all gold.

ZAM: I think the longest term plans we've heard is of course the next expansion. And they committed to at least one raid per Game Update for the next fiscal year.

Dave: Well long term plans, like I said, what I'm going to be doing is asking people a lot of questions about why. That's probably the most annoying question I ask on a regular basis to a dev team. “Okay, that's great, you want to do a raid every quarter. Why? Tell me the reasons. What does that do, who does that feed, how many people is it?” You know, that kind of questions. And if those are all good answers? Absolutely we'll keep doing that.

ZAM: So, do you play EverQuest II?

Dave: This is where I'm going to get spanked a little bit I think. When I was doing Planetside of course they were developing EverQuest II so I played it a bunch pre-launch then I played it a little bit after launch. When I left SOE I got really busy with my own projects so I ended up fallin' off of that. You know you only have time for usually one or maybe if you're really dedicated two MMOs at a time, and I kept sampling the different flavors. So I didn't get back to EverQuest until I came back to SOE.

However, yes, I did spend my entire weekend playing a Troll Shadowknight up.

ZAM: What server are you on?

Dave: I wanted to be around people so I was on AB. Part of why I play the game when I'm on it is so that I can see how the people interact with each other and exactly what the social dynamics are, that sort of thing. So I went to the most populated server to try that out. I played a troll Shadowknight mostly 'cause that's what I played in EverQuest, which I played a lot. It was fun, I had a good time. Crushbone's a blast.

[Marina]

ZAM: The last two producers made public commitments to increased communications with the players. They've been using the forums, dev chats, and the various other tools that SOE Community provides. Are you going to renew this commitment?

Dave: I have been extremely active in the forums from my previous games. I will probably be at least somewhat active in this one. We do already have Community Managers and stuff, so probably a lot of times I'll work through them. I'll be honest, sometimes it doesn't work out so well for me. I'll be going in there and trying to explain stuff and lets just say that not everybody's rational on the forums. Sometimes I feel like I'm not really being productive for the project when I go in there. But I will definitely go in there from time to time, I do like to participate in back-and-forth with the players. And I will stay in those conversations as long as they stay productive. But if they turn into flame bait then I'll just quietly go to a different thread.

I love talking to the players because even when somebody is completely “flame on,” and they look like they're completely insane and they don't know what they're talking about, the fact of the matter is they're extremely emotional about something and something really really upset them. And if you pick apart at the posts carefully enough you can almost always find the underlying reason and that reason is always legitimate. So it's just a matter of having a really thick skin getting into the forums and trying to figure out exactly what's going on.

But there's also the other trick that forums are only a certain percentage of our user base. So you take all the feedback you can from the forums but you also try to find out other information through data mining and polls and user labs all kinds of different things you can do. And then you have to take all of that stuff together and create your real decisions from it.

I'm also a big fan of teasing the hell out of the players (laughs), we'll see whether or not they like that. I dribble information out until we're really really 100% sure that it's going to come out, and then I'll start telling people about it.

ZAM: I have to ask because I'd be doing our readers a disservice if I didn't: What's the theme of the next EQII expansion, and can you give us an ETA?

Dave: I know what it is, I've read the design docs; no, I can't talk about it right now. I saw the scope of what they're trying to do, I think they're being extremely ambitious, which is great because passion is what games are all about. But I want to make sure that a large chunk of it is actually doable before I start talking about it publicly. Because there's nothing that anybody hates more than saying something's going to come out and then saying it's not later on. I will say this: if we do what's being planned people are going to go nuts, they're really going to like it (laughs). I won't tease you too much, but I will say that wow, yeah, it's going to be extraordinarily loved.

ZAM: We look forward to hearing more about it. Thanks very much for your time!

[Marina]

I like the energy reflected in the interview. Is it all hype? Who knows. Regarding the microtransactions portion of his experience, I'm a bit nervous. He does say that EQII is a critter of a different ilk, in that there is a monthly subscription fee so we're paying up front for things. I don't think he'll bring anything to that area that deals with game mechanics/balance.

We'll see what he does and how he does it.