GDC Interview: BigWorld Tech CEO John De Margheriti

The MMO Gamer: Any hints about it? Could you tell us what the genre is going to be?

John De Margheriti: No, I can’t. The internal code-name for it is “SSO.” But, I can’t really tell you the genre. That’s a closely guarded secret.

The MMO Gamer: BigWorld is now among several middleware solutions for MMOs that have come out in recent years, HeroEngine and MultiVerse being two of the others. And now, Raph Koster is trying to give an MMO development engine away for free, with Metaplace.

With all this new competition on the market, what do you have that sets you apart from the other solutions out there?

John De Margheriti: Well, it’s an interesting thing. There was a time when our competition died. Zona gone, Butterfly collapsed, we were the only guys on the block. It was scary. Competition is a healthy thing.

We decided to approach Simutronics, our friends, and said to them, “Why don’t you compete against us? You need to finish Hero’s Journey, why don’t you actually get in the market?” So they did.

We actually encourage competition, we don’t discourage it. True competition isn’t the other engines. True competition is that development studio that has never made an MMO, getting the smart idea that they’re going to build the technology themselves. Most of those guys never see the light of day. Their budget for making the game is spent building tech instead of focusing on building a game.

Middleware competition is a good thing. It’s a good thing because more studios will think about building a game, not technology. So, if we have less competition, that’s going to be a crisis in the industry.

The MMO Gamer: That’s an interesting point you bring up; that some developers spend most of their time just getting their tech off the ground, instead of building their game.

I wanted to ask you, from that perspective, do you find it more fulfilling, let’s say, being a tool provider, and helping other people make their games, as opposed to actually making your own?

John De Margheriti: Is doing middleware as exciting as making an MMO? First of all, middleware is a different type of business that attracts different types of people. The excitement level there is also different.

When you’re working with John Romero, and you’re seeing his game, and you’re helping his team, and when you’re working with the Vivendi guys making an incredibly interesting MMO, when you’re working with 38 Studios, all these different individuals, your excitement doesn’t come from the creative work that you’ve done—even though you’ve done the creative work, which is making the technology—it comes by seeing other people appreciating what you’ve done.

Having them say, “Thank God I don’t have to do that again! I did it in Company X, I did it two or three times, and I don’t want to do it any more. And you’ve come along, and you guys are doing a good job, and we’re glad partners.” That is the excitement.

Of course, the thing you mustn’t do is tell all the other parties what everybody else is doing—you have to keep that confidential. But, the excitement level is really fantastic.

When you make your own MMO it’s a different level of excitement. You’re excited about building a product, and seeing it come to life, and the fear of God in you that “Hopefully we’ll succeed,” all that stuff.

Middleware isn’t about that. It’s about letting other people succeed, helping them succeed. And if you can get excited about that it then it works. If you don’t get excited about that, you should be doing game development.

So, they’re different types of people.

The MMO Gamer: What does the future hold for BigWorld Tech? Are you planning to expand beyond middleware at any point?

John De Margheriti: Basically, BigWorld has grown at a fairly alarming rate. Right now, we have positions for 45 programmers, and are constantly growing. We are hopefully setting up a distribution business, which will in time employ hundreds of people in Vietnam, in Thailand, in the Southeast Asia region, to operate and run MMOs.

So, what will we look like? I think you’ve got to look at BigWorld as an emerging operator of online games, with kick-ass technology that can help you get your game started, and we can also help you get into certain markets that are very difficult to get into.

As a company, basically, we’re growing. We’ve got offices now in Moscow, Austin, Irvine, Shanghai, Beijing, Sydney, and Canberra. Soon, it’ll be Ho Chi Minh—old Saigon—Hanoi, and Bangkok.

The MMO Gamer: Was there anything we didn’t discuss during this interview you’d like to tell our readers before we go?

John De Margheriti: It’s been an interesting journey. We are a market leader, that doesn’t mean that our technology is necessarily the right technology for your product. We don’t make that boast. Other people may make that boast, but we have technology that’s suitable for certain types of products.

We’re focusing very heavily now on Web 2.0, we’re noticing a lot more swing towards that sort of stuff, so we’re doing a lot of that sort of thing. But, the key thing is that you’re going to see some really interesting MMOs come out across a wide spectrum.

We’ve got Tian Xia 2 that’s about to ship in March, and that’s actually a big product. But, the Western world won’t see that, because it’s a Chinese game from NetEase.

From a business point of view, we’re a growing company, we’re constantly hiring, we’re constantly looking for talent. We have been hamstrung by our ability to hire fast enough.

The MMO Gamer: Thank you very much for joining us, and we look forward to speaking with you more in the future.

John De Margheriti: Appreciate it. Thank you much, Steve.

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