What is it you do on a daily basis?
My primary responsibility is to ensure we have a consistent
approach to our communities across all of our brands –
Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online.
On a day to day basis I talk to the producers, designers and developers
to make sure they are aware of what the community thinks and to get
information we can give back to our players. It’s my job to be the
voice of the community inside EA Mythic.
2. What is your background? College? Degree? Has it helped with the job?
1st job out of school? 1st game industry job? How long have you been with Mythic?
Have you worked anywhere else? What other jobs have you held in the industry?
I’m from a little town in NE Washington. My high school
graduating class had 26 people. I went into the Army for
several years and went back to Washington State University
after that, where I got degrees in both Comparative American
Cultures and American Studies. At the same time I got into
web design and development. This grew into web site and
community management and eventually into an Online Producer
job at Wizards of the Coast. I’ve been with EA Mythic since
November 2007 and I love my job.
The unifying thread to all of this is that I have always
been interested in how people use the web to communicate,
socialize and share ideas. Whether it’s discussing how
different cultural groups leverage the internet, web usability
or community management, they all share a common framework.
You have to talk to each group and listen to what they have
to say. You also have to gather data and understand what it
is they are trying to achieve. Then you have to observe how
they are trying to accomplish their goals where they are
having problems and where they succeed. Finally you have
to take all that data, work with your design and development
teams and come up with solutions and then get your users to
test it and then the process starts over.
What other titles have you worked on in the past? In what capacity?
At Wizards I was Online Producer for Avalon Hill™, Axis & Allies™, Duel Masters™,
Dreamblade™ and Books, as well as having a hand in a number of other projects.
I’ve also been a leader of guilds in many MMOs, so I have an intimate knowledge
of the highs and lows of guild management.
What was your “welcome to the game industry” moment when it hit you that you
were really making games for a living?
There wasn’t a single moment so much as a series of moments, each better than
the last. The first one was when I was at GenCon working for Wizards of the
Coast and came across a gentleman and his son playing a scenario for
Axis and Allies™ Miniatures that I had written. Being in my first
UO House of Commons IRC chat as an EA Mythic employee was another memorable
moment as I got my start with MMOs in the UO beta.
What excites you about the Warhammer property? What makes it perfect for an
MMO? What cool things in the Warhammer universe do you hope to bring to life?
I love the background and history of Warhammer. It is deep and broad and that
gives players a lot of options to figure out how their character fits within the
world. Games Workshop is renown for the detail it has put into its miniatures
and its world and it’s that attention to detail I want to see reflected in the
game. Warhammer is also full of endless conflict and I think that tension makes
for a perfect setting for a MMO.
Do you collect Warhammer figures? What army do you play?
I have a small collection of Warhammer figures, but I’ve never been a huge
miniatures player. However, I do love me some Space Hulk and Blood Bowl.
I am an immense fan of the stories behind both Warhammer and Warhammer 40K
and have played pretty much every computer game based on a Games Workshop property.
What are your hopes/goals for the game?
Obviously, I’d love for the game to be a hit. I’d also like to have all the
long-term Warhammer fans to see the game and be overjoyed with how well we kept
to the canon. Finally, I want to see a large strong community, full of guilds
engaged in RvR and having a great time.
What is the biggest problem with current MMO’s you hope to fix with WAR?
Depending on the game, being a guild leader can be anywhere from reasonably decent
to an exercise in frustration. Guild officers put in a lot of hours organizing
and managing to keep their guilds alive. This is a real labor of love, but it
can account for a lot of a guild officer’s time. Guilds are the core social
mechanism for a MMO and are crucial to a strong vibrant community. Therefore,
it stands to reason that guild leaders should have a good suite of tools to
do their job and make their lives easier.
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?
These are the kinds of questions I hate because it depends on the context what my
favorite games will be. Fallout is still one of my favorite games for a RPG, as
was the Wizardry series by Sir-Tech and the Ultima series. The Final Fantasy series
is also among my favorites for good reasons. My list of favorites is too big for
any bio and the stack of discs is too big for my file cabinet.
I’m still playing a lot of Call of Duty 4 and I have a real love for first-person
shooters in general to the point where I occasionally join clans to play the game
with a more structured team. If you are into first-person shooters and you haven’t
given this a try, you are missing out.
What music are you listening to right now?
Lately I have been listening to a lot of Black Sabbath, Ozzy and Dio.
I attribute this primarily to the trailers for Iron Man and Brütal Legend.
My music interests vary quite a bit, from Django Reinhardt to Ministry and
pretty much everything in between.
Is there a recent movie you’ve seen or book/comic you read that
you’d recommend to others?
I’m big into post-apocalypse fiction and role-playing in such settings.
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is a great read and reference, particularly
if you want to know just how long a skyscraper, bridge or tract house will
survive left to nature. It will also give you a sense of how much of an impact
on the world mankind and our various technologies make.
