Working As Intended Podcast #22 – With Special Guest Gordon Farrell, Lead Writer on Dawn of Fantasy
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Welcome to the 22nd episode of the Working As Intended podcast!
In this week’s show we’re joined by Gordon Farrell of Reverie World Studios to discuss Dawn of Fantasy, the company’s inaugural MMORTS.
Gordon is Lead Writer on the project, and as story quality (or lack thereof) in the genre is a favorite topic of discussion here at The MMO Gamer, you can bet that we had a lively conversation.
For those wondering about his credentials to pontificate on such topics, when he’s not working on Dawn of Fantasy, Gordon teaches screen and playwriting at NYU, as well as courses in Narrative Theory for Electronic Games, which he literally wrote the book on.
Having said that, it was Technical Difficulties Week here at Working As Intended, and as a result the audio quality of this podcast is not quite up to par with some of our other productions.
But, if you can bear with the occasional hiccup (and our usual epic-length interviewing style) you will be rewarded.
Topics
- Special Guest: Gordon Farrell. Topics of discussion include building a story-centric RTS, “serious writing” in the gaming industry, and of course, the age-old debate whether or not games can ever rise to the level of art.
- Age of Conan Introduces Update 6 – Return of Thoth-Amon
- Allods Online Enters Open Beta
- EVE Online Announces Tyrannis, Expansion Allowing Planet Interaction
Hosts
- Jeffrey Philipp
- Steven Crews
- Siam Choudhury
As always we appreciate your feedback! You can also send us your questions or topics you would like us to discuss by dropping a comment here or sending an email to podcast@mmogamer.com.
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Working As Intended Podcast #22 – With Special Guest Gordon Farrell, Lead Writer on Dawn of Fantasy http://bit.ly/bNUJ83 #mmo #mmorpg
Some very interesting subjects brought up in the DoF interview. You did seem to go off topic quite a bit though but some of it was interesting and its good to know that free to play MMOGs are become much less tiresome and killer to all players. Thanks for the podcast.
I would just like to hear more positive things on these podcasts. For people who work with games all day long you all come off as awefully jaded and disappointed with everything in the gaming universe. Don't get me wrong, some of the rants are funny, but after awhile it becomes a bunch of complaining and whining about the state of gaming today….
Thank you for the feedback, Brian.
For my part, if anything I used to be too positive. Back in the day I ran a fansite, of all things. But, as you said, I've gotten very jaded over the years, which to my mind was through no great fault of my own.
When it comes right down to it, I'm a gamer who enjoys talking about games, and I'd like to think that I give credit where credit is due. Maybe the fact that I haven't been giving out much credit lately is just a reflection of my opinion of the current state of the industry.
The gaming industry as a whole, and the MMO genre in particular, has been growing increasingly stale with each passing year. When budgets for games are skyrocketing past 50 million dollars, no one dares to take a risk on reinventing the wheel and losing that kind of money if they get it wrong.
As a result, long-term fans such as myself have essentially been playing DikuMUD over, and over, and over again, with a new coat of paint on it and some minor tweaks to the formula every few years.
But I respect your opinion that we should include more positive segments in the show, and if you have any suggestions on more cheerful items you'd like us to discuss, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@mmogamer.com.
It was an interesting topic but the sound quality was all over the place and for me detracted from the informative podcast.
Sorry about that. Gordon was having some trouble with his mic, and I basically had to run every filter in the book on the audio to get it to come out as clear as it is.