A: In general, the producer is the keeper of the overall vision of the project. This means that he sets the long-term goals, prioritizes development efforts, organizes and tracks resources, strives to keep the development team focused on the important features of the game, and oversees programming, design, and art. The ‘senior’ part of my title reflects the fact that UO Live is much larger than a typical development effort, and involves several simultaneous initiatives as well as coordination with other departments, companies, and even foreign territories. UO is really half "service" and half "development." Of course, the General Manager handles most of the operational coordination, but I still need to work with him fairly closely.

Q: How and why did you get into the game industry?

A: As anti-climactic as it sounds, I got into the gaming industry because I was replying to an ad in the newspaper for a company that was just a couple of miles from my house. It started off just as a convenience. However, after the first session of working several months worth of 90-hour weeks, it quickly became apparent that you either have to love the industry, or you need to go work somewhere else. Fortunately, I’ve been a gaming fanatic for my entire life. I even wrote my first computer game on our high school’s PDP-11 just for kicks when I was in eleventh grade. Little did I know that one day I’d be doing that for a living.

Q: As a producer, what do you see as the major differences between creating an MMOG like UO versus a console or PC game?

A: Scale. Much like in physics, scale changes everything. For instance, in a standalone game, you don’t have to worry about the dynamics of players accumulating gold. They kill stuff, find gold, and use it to buy things. But with a couple of hundred thousand people playing in a persistent world, you can’t just let them keep killing monsters and collecting gold. Think about it. As more and more gold gets into the world, it becomes devalued. Essentially, virtual worlds like UO quickly experience inflation, and the developers have to cope with that or it will ruin the game balance. The same concepts apply to limitation of resources like lumber, ore, wool, etc. There is a natural, dynamic supply and demand, and like any real economy, this changes over time, and varies heavily depending on the number of people in the system.

Beyond the issue of scale in game design, there’s also the issue of scale as it applies to technology. In a nice, perfect world, players would be equally spread out across the entire world map. But what happens when two thousand people all decide to stand in a big crowd in front of the Britain bank? If you don’t plan in advance for worst-case scenarios like that, you can get severe lag and even server crashes.

Then there’s the notion of infrastructure. Standalone games don’t have to deal with large-scale databases, billing support (we are a subscription based business after all), mainframe hardware maintenance, global customer support, Internet attacks, hack software, etc. UO is an enormous operation, and it takes over a hundred people to keep it alive and viable. That’s an order of magnitude beyond anything I ever experienced back when I was working with standalone games.

Q: Where do you see MMOGs going in terms of capabilities, themes, and popularity?

A: I think it’s pretty safe to say that MMOGs are still heading upward at a very fast pace in all three categories. In point of fact, there are still very few games that have been developed specifically for the medium. Most of them were designed as either standalones or as LAN-based games. As a result, most of them really haven’t begun to take advantage of what the Internet really has to offer. As you might imagine, this has limited our attempts to capitalize on capabilities and popularity both. We’re only just now beginning to see what can really be accomplished with the online medium. For instance, Majestic is a completely different kind of game, and it is truly focusing on the "online" medium. Judging from the initial reaction it has received, I’d say we’re on the right track. And it’ll only get more exciting as time goes on.

Every day, the world gets more and more wired into the Internet. Even my mother gets online now, and that’s something I just couldn’t have imagined five years ago. But in that very short time span, we’ve seen online industries emerge around retailing, communication, games, information sharing… it’s mind boggling. The world is starting to work in parallel now, and that will herald an explosive, geometric growth in new technologies and new consumer demands. And with MMOGs at the forefront of that explosion, the future looks amazingly bright.

As for themes, that’s difficult to predict. I think one important theme we’ll see going forward is this notion of the game reaching outside of the ‘virtual world’ into your real life world. Previously, games existed only on the console or the PC, and when you shut them down, they went away until the next time you turned them back on. I think online games are going to start reaching out of that restriction. The fact that they run 24/7 whether any individual player is there or not… that’s one indication. But also, we’re starting to see the beginnings of a trend that takes advantage of cell phones, pagers, email, PDAs, etc. That’s what I mean by reaching outside the confines of the game itself. It’s a very interesting invasion of our reality, and it opens up enormous possibilities.

Q: Just about everyone has an industry "war story." What's yours?

A: Well, the initial company I worked for was what you might describe as one, unending, nine-year "war story." In the beginning, we were a small start-up. As is often the case with start-ups, we were a very small fish in a very large pond. When you find yourself in the water like that with the big predators, you either have to show some teeth quickly, or you’re going to be eaten alive. The company I was with took every available opportunity to show their teeth. Unfortunately, that attitude by the business guys made it nearly impossible for the development team to operate, because a lot of publishers, magazines, and even hardware providers really disliked us. I have to admit that I was glad to eventually move on.

Q: Anything exciting you can tell us about upcoming UO projects?

A: Wow, I could get some marketing folks awfully angry with me if I let those cats out of the bag. However, I can say this: there will be some announcements and things to see at this year’s UO World Faire. The next six months are going to see some completely new features in the game. We’ve taken a hard look at the whole ‘Ultima’ universe recently, and we’ve found some really interesting aspects that have previously been ignored in UO. I believe we can add quite a bit of fresh content and interest by exploring areas like that. Our plans for UO address the short-term (ie the next 30-60 days), medium term (the next 90-180 days), and the long-term (the next 1-3 years).

Q: So, UO is alive and well?

A: Yes, UO is alive and well. It was interesting to note that after OSI experienced some pretty tough cutbacks in March, people essentially wrote us off. But the fact is that while OSI experienced considerable losses as a whole, the UO Live team actually increased in both size and budget. There’s absolutely a long-term commitment there, and we’re all eager to not only perpetuate UO, but to expand it both from a technological standpoint and also from a game design standpoint.

Q: For anyone looking to get into the game industry as a producer, what insider tips can you give them?

A: You mean aside from having a large supply of antacids? Well, seriously, the best tip I can give is for people to try to achieve a producer spot from the inside. I’ve found that my background as a games programmer and designer really helped me as a producer. It’s very difficult to lead a team if you don’t know how they do their job.

Well, Rick, that wraps up this little Q&A. You have been most informative. Thanks again for being my debut interviewee!