As reported previously Jen MacLean was invited to speak at the Providence Geek Dinner in December. Here is a video interview with Jen from the event.
Dec 162010
38 Studio’s CEO Jennifer MacLean was invited to speak at the Monthly Providence Geeks meeting on Wednesday. Check it out!
PROVIDENCE – “I’ve always considered myself a geek, ever since I was … 7 years old with my Atari 2600 and really thick glasses; I was pretty much classic nerd,” said Jennifer MacLean, CEO of 38 Studios, to a packed crowd at AS220 during the monthly Providence Geeks meet-up on Wednesday.
During her speech to the local tech community, MacLean quickly broke the ice about the “infamous” $75 million loan guarantee deal from the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, saying that the company wanted to make sure that the move to Providence would make sense.
“And we didn’t have to look very far,” she said, noting that about 25 percent of the company’s art department are RISD graduates. “The quality of those students has been phenomenal. They go toe-to-toe with the best artists in the world. It was obvious that there was a huge local talent pool here that we could tap.”
Curt Schilling was asked to speak at an awards dinner sponsored by the Providence Business News in Rhode Island. He promised the audience that 38 Studios was on it’s way to becoming a multibillion dollar enterprise in Rhode Island. Now I know Curt has always had a big vision for 38 Studios but man that’s a very bold statement to be making. Either Curt has been drinking his own kool-aid or the company is sitting on the next big thing in MMO’s. Now the fact that 38 Studios has been so tight lipped about it’s MMORPG code named “Copernicus” compared to other companies, I am leaning towards the later. What do you think?
PROVIDENCE –– Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling promised Thursday that his video-game company, 38 Studios LLC, was on its way to becoming a multibillion-dollar enterprise in Rhode Island. “That’s world-changing money,” he said at the Providence Marriott.
Schilling, wearing suit and tie, spoke briefly at an awards dinner sponsored by the Providence Business News. It was the first time he has spoken publicly to a Rhode Island audience about his business since the state approved a $75-million loan guarantee to lure 38 Studios from Maynard, Mass., to Providence.
“I don’t have a personality that would allow me to retire,” said Schilling, explaining why he started 38 Studios.
He said he’s been to the World Series as a pitcher four times, three times on the winning team. “At the core of those four teams, it’s no different from the core of a great business, because it’s all about people,” he said.
Now, he said, he employs 230 people in Massachusetts and Maryland. “I revel in the little things it takes to run a company,” he said.
But bringing his company to Rhode Island has been accompanied by controversy.
Tracey John got the chance to interview Curt Schilling at New York Comic Con and asks some really great questions about the MMO 38 Studios has been working on since it was founded 4 years ago. If you your interested in the MMO then you need to read this!
As a legendary Major League Baseball pitcher, Curt Schilling was, for a time, the best in his field. But that time has passed, and Schilling has now traded the mound for a mouse in his new career as the founder of game developer 38 Studios. With a fighting drive to be number one, can Schilling transform 38 Studios into the best game-maker on the planet?
“(Blizzard is) the best in the world at what they do right now, but nobody stays number one forever,” Schilling said during an interview recently at New York Comic Con. “And I want to be the number one leading game publisher in the world. Whether that happens two years or 10 years from now, that’s the goal.”
Although 38 Studios’ first game will be a multi-platform single-player RPG called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the company is also working on a massively multiplayer online game currently codenamed “Copernicus.” Armed with famed fantasy novelist R.A. Salvatore, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane and developers who’ve worked on EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot and Ultima Online, Schilling thinks 38 Studios has got what it takes to be on top.
We asked Schilling more about his history in gaming, why some MMO developers are “full of crap,” and how Blizzard can’t stay number one forever.
Read on for the full interview.
UGO: Why put out an MMO?
Curt Schilling: Um, I’m stupid? (laughs) I don’t know. It’s what I love. It’s the reason I got into the industry. I think it’s the genre in the industry that I — air quotes — know best, and it’s probably the sweet spot of the talent we put into the studios. (The developers) have been on every major MMO from Ultima Online. They’ve made mistakes, and they’ve done great things so I think it’s probably our strength.
UGO: And you personally have played every major MMO since Ultima Online?
Schilling: Oh I have, yeah. I go way back. I started on Ultima Online but my first hardcore game passion was EverQuest. I lost many years of my life in Norath. EverQuest and EverQuest II were the kind of games that sold me on what I thought I wanted to do after I was done playing (baseball).
R.A. Salvatore was in Seattle WA on tour promoting his latest book, Gauntlgrym. The hour long presentation was recorded and is really great stuff. He covers his book, what he is working on and talks about his involvement with 38 Studios upcoming MMORPG code name “Copernicus” where he has created the world the game is set in. He discusses the Well of Souls and the impact of what such a device would cause in the world and that is driving a lot of the story in the MMO. Definitely worth checking out!
Suvudu: R.A. Salvatore Gauntlgrym Event from Suvudu on Vimeo.
MMORPG.com writer Drew Wood had the opportunity to talk with Curt Schilling at last weekend’s New York Comic Con. He was hoping to find out some information on Copernicus (38 Studios un-named MMORPG currently in development) however that was off the table so he asked some questions Curt was able to answer. Check it out!
This past Saturday, I had the opportunity, amid the (dis)organized chaos of New York Comic Con, to speak with six-time Major League Baseball All-Star, three-time World Series champion, and, most importantly, Founder and Chairman of 38 Studios, Curt Schilling. With project ‘Copernicus’ still in the distant future, and former project ‘Mercury’, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning set for release Q3 2011, I was a little surprised to hear Curt be so excited about a project that he could, literally, tell me nothing about. As there was nothing to learn about ‘Copernicus’ today, I instead spoke briefly with him about the Single Player experience of Reckoning, the chosen world, and Curt ‘The Gamer’ Schilling.
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I found one more article from the Future of Online Gaming Panel at the NYCC that Curt Schilling was on.
The entire reason I’m writing about the show (there wasn’t a whole lot going on from a news perspective, and I’ve already created a wacky video of the show last year) is because I attended a pretty fascinating panel entitled “The Future of Online Gaming.” NCsoft, maker of City of Heroes, was on there, as was Curt Schilling, the former baseball pitcher (who was really quite good) turned video game developer.
And as the headline of this post suggests, Schilling was fantastic. I seriously had no idea the man was such a geek.
(As for the headline, at one point Schilling cut a promo about how hardcore EVE Online players must be. You invest dozens if not hundreds of hours trying to build up your empire, only to have some punk kids rob and destroy your life’s work.)
So what is the future of online gaming? We get excited because Blizzard announces that there’s 12 million World of Warcraft subscribers on a planet with some 6 billion people on it. Twelve million people, yeah, that’s impressive, but let’s not say something like, “Well, that’s it, there will never be a game this popular ever again.” Remember when people thought no other game would be as popular as EverQuest?
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During the New York Comic Com MMORPG.com hosted a panel on the Future of Gaming which included Curt Schilling. So far it’s been pretty slim for finding any info about the panel however G4TV had this bit in its wrap up post. Unfortunately the link in the article did not link to the proper article. I am sure more will come out in the coming days and when it does I will be sure to post it.
In past years, the ComicCon hosted panels with Gears of War and executive Mike Capps. But aside from Epic Mickey and the Marvel Games Panel, this year’s only must-attend panel was The Future of Online Gaming, for which fans lined up for an hour before. The panel showcased a refreshingly opinionated former pitcher Curt Schilling (now making Copernicus at 38 Studios). He hopes that we’ll someday have five million simultaneous online game players world-wide. Schilling also hoped 3-D gaming doesn’t hit MMOs, at least right now. That comment received the loudest applause of the program (except perhaps for the moment when he asked to be booed by Yankees fans in the house). And the idea that MMOs of the future will no longer be boxed, just streamed over your technology of choice, was an intriguing one.
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Oct 062010
As reported yesterday Steve Danuser, Creative Director for 38 Studios is at the Austin GDC to participate in a panel discussion called CREATORS OF TRANSMEDIA STORIES. Brendan Sinclair from Game Spot was there covering the panel and wrote a great report.
Danuser is working on the massively multiplayer online game codenamed Copernicus and the recently announced Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which are being built to support trans-media efforts like books, TV shows, and so on. He talked about the approach 38 Studios takes to trans-media storytelling, saying there has to be something more to it than simply putting out a comic book or Web site to exploit the properties.
“The pieces of media really need to fit into each other to tell a bigger story…By consuming each of these individual pieces, you should be able to see how they really fit together.”
Danuser said each book or movie needs to be true to its own medium and stand alone perfectly well, but also inform readings of its counterparts. Johnson agreed, adding it’s about creating a pervasive experience by understanding the different media types one’s audience is engaged with.
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Even before the game has been offically named the release date was suprisingly revealed in a news report by WPRI.com. In the report the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation stated that the scheduled release date for Project Copernicus is September 2012. It also revealed more about the funding details which adds even more confusion as it states two different agreements with the R.I. Economic Development Corporation – a payout agreement and a separate pact called a “full-time jobs covenant” – and their terms and conditions are not identical. At the end of the day it looks like 38 Studios will get 64 million and that the game is scheduled for release in September 2012.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Curt Schilling’s video-game company has to employ only 250 full-time workers in Rhode Island, not the 450 cited by state officials, to get most of the $75 million the government plans to borrow on its behalf, an analysis by Eyewitness News has found.That’s because Schilling’s 38 Studios actually has two different agreements with the R.I. Economic Development Corporation – a payout agreement and a separate pact called a “full-time jobs covenant” – and their terms and conditions are not identical.
The payout agreement requires 38 Studios to employ 250 workers in the state by December 2011. At that point, the game company is eligible to receive $64 million of the loan money, which is 90 percent of the proceeds after fees, according to an EDC fact sheet, agency officials and a draft bond document obtained by Eyewitness News.
By comparison, the jobs covenant calls for 38 Studios to increase its employment in Rhode Island to 450 workers by October 2013 – nearly two years after the company is eligible to receive most of the loan money.
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