What is it you do on a daily basis?
Having recently shifted from other projects at Mythic to the Warhammer Live team as the producer in charge of CSI team (Community Systems & Interface), my routine now changes on a daily basis. Obviously, speed-reading through e-mail is a requirement, but aside from that, I work closely with a talented team of engineers, designers, and artists to bring to WAR features, improvements, and fixes to some of the most visible components of the game.
What is your background? Where did you go to college and what did you study? Has it helped you with this job?
I was born and raised in northern California. As an only child growing up in a very rural and wilderness-filled part of the state, I acquired a passion for wildlife, video games, creative writing, and all manner of sports, four things that I had readily accessible.
Initially, my dominant interests leaned strongest toward the animals with a lingering of the others. This led me to San Diego State University, where I played Division I Softball and got my B.S. in Biology with an Emphasis in Zoology. After I graduated, I began working at the San Diego Zoo and was on my way to fulfilling one of my ultimate life goals, which was to work with the great cats, cheetahs in particular.
While in college, I discovered the early incarnations of online games, and during my time at the zoo, I stumbled across Dragon's Gate, an exceptionally creative and fun text MuD developed by Interworld Productions. After spending nearly a year as a volunteer remote developer for the game, I took a leap of faith to follow my other passion and accepted an offer to join Interworld officially. A few months after I arrived in Fairfax, Virginia, the studio was renamed to Mythic Entertainment. That was 11 years ago.
Even though my educational background is quite different from anything found in the gaming industry, I have had many opportunities to apply my educational knowledge to the games we developed, particularly in those games that require us to create new worlds and ecosystems.
What other titles have you worked on in the past? In what capacity?
I have worked on virtually every Mythic title to date including Dragon's Gate, every variation of Magestorm, Splatterball, and Darkness Falls, Aliens Online, Starship Troopers: Battlespace, Godzilla Online, Silent Death, Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict, ID4 Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, and WAR.
On these titles, I've worked in a variety of capacities, sometimes in multiple capacities simultaneously. I've worked as a remote staff manager, customer service manager, public relations manager, project manager, beta coordinator, foreign liaison, systems designer, world builder, writer, content designer, content design lead, and various types of producer.
What was your "welcome to the game industry" moment when it hit you that you were really making games for a living?
My indoctrination to the industry was so gradual that I never really got initial "welcome to the game industry" feeling. What I did get, however, was not all that different.
Early on, we made small venue, online-only games. That means that they never appeared on shelves in the stores, and as such, not a lot of people knew who we were. When we first launched Dark Age of Camelot, and I saw rows of our boxes lining the shelves of Best Buy, I had a "Pinocchio" moment where I thought, "At last, we're a real game company."
What excites you about the Warhammer property? What makes it perfect for an MMO?
The entire Warhammer property has had two and a half decades of detailed, passionate attention, making it an incredibly rich universe filled with lore, humor, and conflict. Together, these things make an excellent MMO staging ground.
Now that WAR has launched, what aspect of the whole experience are you most proud of?
Actually, I'm proud of everyone across the entire Mythic Studio for the incredible amount of time and devotion they put in to creating this great game and providing the other fundamental systems and functions that support it.
What are your hopes/goals for the game?
As this game matures, I would like for it to become a cornerstone of the MMO space and to introduce a new generation of MMO-enthusiasts to the fun and thrill of RvR combat and the Warhammer universe.
What are your key influences when making the game? Anything besides Warhammer?
I have played many games, MMO and single player, PC and console, and when it comes to playability, my influence comes from a culmination of all of those experiences I had and continue to have as a player.
What is the biggest problem with current MMOs you hope to fix with WAR?
Every MMO has its own unique problems. Some have amazing UIs but then falter when it comes to game-play. Others have a brilliant PvE world but stumble a bit when they attempt to integrate PvP. Still others might have poorly design combat systems or a level of tedium in their general gameplay that the "mass market" type of player won't tolerate. So, one single problem is not what affects all of the current MMOs, and as such, we're not able to address all of the issues they faced. What we can do, however, is draw out a particular element of gameplay that is sometimes added to other MMOs as an afterthought, which is player versus player conflict.
We have taken this PvP element, put it on our center stage, and magnified it to a grand scale. Our Realm versus Realm approach allows players to fight against other players on their own terms and in a way that even those who generally don't enjoy PvP combat may find enjoyment in WAR's RvR struggle.
What are your favorite video/computer games of all time? What games are you playing right now? What game should the reader be playing if he's not?
My favorite computer game of all time is Knights of the Old Republic, and there are many others that I have enjoyed throughout the years. At the moment, I'm playing WAR, Spore, Fable II, Infinite Undiscovery, WoW, and a frequent dose of Rockband 2.
What music are you listening to right now?
My musical tastes are somewhat eclectic, though I tend to just listen to whatever the new hits are on the radio or whatever my husband, the audiophile, has playing on his iPod. Lately, I've been listening to Pink, Coldplay, Katy Perry, Imogen Heap, Kid Rock, Pussycat Dolls, Sara Bareilles, Coldie Caillat, and Marie Digby to name a few.
Is there a recent movie you've seen or book/comic you read that you'd recommend to others?
I'm probably the last person you want to ask for advice about movies. This is because I have very low critical standards and with only a handful of exceptions, I manage to enjoy pretty much everything I see. I do have to say, though, that the comic book movies that came out this year were awesome, with Dark Knight and Ironman being my favorites.
