Red 5 Studios Interview

Red 5 Studios' Mark Kern and Michael Weingartner recently took some time to answer Gamasutra's questions about their upcoming MMORPG. A little something to get you started:
You have to be looking at not just the competition in terms of what's out or what's on the market already, but also in terms of upcoming titles. Some major titles that I'm looking at are Trion World, who has an unnamed fantasy MMO. There's Star Wars, from BioWare, and 38 Studios has a title. Do you have any thoughts on your position against upcoming titles, as well as current market titles?

MW: To the extent that there's information available, we're always trying to make ourselves aware of the landscape. And again, I think Mark managed to do a very great thing early on; he chose a niche that's still, we believe, wide open for us.

MK: I'll also add that, while we do scout out the other titles in development, we're not too concerned about it. We kind of think about it as running like a sleigh race or a marathon, where it's really important to keep your eyes on the finish line of what's going to make your game really fun to play, and not be looking over your shoulder too much. That could really be distracting from reaching the end there.

MW: Yeah, we've taken great steps to identify the game aspects that make this a game people will want to play and that will keep people playing it over an extended length of time. And those are very central to how we designed the game.