Green Monster Games Interview

Warcry has conducted an interview with Green Monster Games’ Steve Danuser and Ryan Shwayder about the concept and people behind their upcoming MMORPG.

Q: At the Dark Age of Camelot Roundtable, R.A. Salvatore’s keynotes revolved around the concept of virtual worlds as a medium for players to make their own stories and adventures. Will this concept be key to your game and why do you feel it’s more important for players to make their own stories than to participate in professionally designed ones?

Steve Danuser: When many of us think back on our fondest experiences in the early days of Ultima Online or EverQuest, the things that stand out are not usually the game lore or storylines, but the people we met, fought alongside, and battled against. The time your whole guild wiped to some silly mistake before banding together to achieve victory is the kind of experience that sticks with you.

Make no mistake about it: the story being developed by R.A. Salvatore is going to blow your socks off. But he also knows that our job as game designers crafting a world is to provide an immersive, fantastic setting within which players forge their own memories and destinies. Having one doesn’t mean you can’t have the other as well.

Ryan Shwayder: I would say we’re going for an approach that works for both audiences that love to read great stories and audiences that like to create their own. We already have an engrossing backstory with more detail than I’ve ever seen in any game, but that just sets the stage for players to make their own destiny. In truth, the answer is “yes,” but we’ll also have an immersive world with a rich history and future of its own.