Jon Van Caneghem Q&A

GameSpot has conducted an interview with Jon Van Caneghem, asking the creator of the popular Might & Magic games about his recent decision to join NCsoft to work on an MMORPG. Here’s how it starts off:

Q: You’ve been off a lot of people’s radar for a while. What the heck are you doing standing shoulder to shoulder with what was arguably your biggest competitor. What are you doing at NCsoft?

A: The whole reason I came there was really to start from scratch. I didn’t want to have to do anything based on something that already existed–as with some of the baggage I had with all the Heroes games, where I had to always make a sequel.

Q: When did the games start to qualify as “baggage”?

A: I think toward the end with 3DO it started to feel that way. Like most publishers, they were very scared of doing something new. They always wanted to stick with building a sequel that they knew had a built-in sales number they could achieve… The execs look at the numbers and they go, (Hey, but we got such a fan base. Can you make another one?” Nine Might and Magics and four Heroes later, it gets to the point where I go, (Come on guys, let’s do something new!)