Horizons: Empire of Istaria Interview

RPG Vault was able to track down fantasy author Peter S. Beagle, Connor Cochran from Conlan Press, and Tulga Games’ David Bowman for a two-page interview about the author’s role on Horizons: Empire of Istaria. Here’s a bit of what was talked about:

Q: To play devil’s advocate, don’t many players largely ignore the writing in online games, and how realistic is it to think having Peter aboard will affect Horizons’ commercial viability?

David Bowman: I agree that players currently largely ignore the written text in online games, but isn’t that possibly due to the extremely poor quality of writing currently available? We, as an industry, have focused for so long on getting the next set of visual eye candy into the games, pushing the next graphical standard forward, that we didn’t take the time to polish the story. After all, if the game was going to be played for one year and then become outdated, it is not cost effective to concentrate on the story. However, persistent worlds are persistent, they are here year after year, and new players enter them while elder players are retained. The eye candy gets old, but a good story is multi-generational.

Horizons is a new medium of expression for Peter, who has shown that he can provide quality writing for several other media. We will discover together how to best use his skills to improve what we’ve created, and then let him explore this new world looking for opportunities to extend the story forward. This will include dialogue, quests and other forms that we have not yet invented.

Peter’s impact on our business is yet to be seen, but I believe that consistently improving the quality of the Horizons experience is the best way to achieve our goals. Peter will help us improve the quality.