Pirates of the Burning Sea Interviews

Both WarCry and MMORPG.com have published interviews dealing with Flying Lab Software’s decision to have SOE publish their swashbuckling MMORPG, Pirates of the Burning Sea. WarCry’s interview is with Flying Lab’s Russell Williams and SOE’s David Christensen:

“We wanted to have a good partner to do things that are not our core competency,” Williams added. Specifically, he mentioned that instead of hiring people to work on localization, billing, marketing and other areas that are necessary for a successful project, he’s able to funnel those resources into QA and the game itself. SOE handles the other parts for them.

“This is their game, they’re going to be the ones at the end of the day who really benefit from this game doing very well,” SOE’s Christensen added. The majority of the financial investment and risk belongs to Flying Lab Software. That is not to say that SOE doesn’t benefit from the game’s success, but with the risk goes the potential for reward. Too often companies make their publisher rich just before being swallowed whole. The deal with SOE, Williams related, ensures Flying Lab Software can remain an independent company in good position if the game does well.

While MMORPG.com’s interview is with Flying Lab’s John Scott Tynes:

Q: Your letter to your community announcing the deal with SOE mentioned that it was to be “platform published”, making it different from SOE’s internally developed games. The last title that SOE published in this way resulted in SOE’s acquisition of that company (Sigil) as well as the game (Vanguard). What can you say to fans who fear the same fate for Flying Lab?

A: Sigil’s troubles with Vanguard have been very publicly documented by Brad McQuaid himself and they had nothing to do with SOE. People who blame SOE for what happened to Sigil are either grossly misinformed or willfully blind for the sake of hating.

This is a hard industry for an independent developer. Sigil is in no way an exception – indie studios close all the time. If you look at console games, you’ll see a long record of studios shipping a title and then firing everyone because they don’t have their next project financed. That’s the business. It sucks but it happens all the time.

Flying Lab is self-financed. We’re not running out of money. We are definitely eager to stop spending our money and start making some, but we’re launching the game because it’s ready, not because we can’t make payroll. That’s the biggest difference between where we’re at where Sigil was at when they were finishing Vanguard.

Some of us had friends at Sigil and what happened there is really sad. They definitely had a vision for what they wanted to achieve but making (and financing) an MMO is a gigantic challenge. SOE is going to keep Vanguard alive and will gradually address its major problems. It’ll have a home there for as long as fans want to keep playing it.