Steve has a seat with Curt Schilling, Chairman and Founder of 38 Studios, to discuss the lifetime of gaming that led up to the development of Copernicus, the company’s as yet unannounced MMO.
Topics covered include the allure of online games, juggling EverQuest with a professional baseball career, and why mounted combat on flying pigs will not be among the features included at release.
Read on for the transcript.
The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about what it is you do at 38 Studios.
Curt Schilling: My name is Curt Schilling, I’m the Chairman and Founder of 38 Studios. I do as little game design as possible, and I get to playtest what I think is going to be the next generation of online gaming experience.
The MMO Gamer: I’m sure you get this question a lot, but I have to ask, because it’s been the number one thing on my mind since I first heard about the studio, way back when it was still called Green Monster Games:
How does one go from playing Major League Baseball to starting an online game company?
Curt Schilling: I started gaming in 1980. The first game I ever played was Wizardry, which is still to this day one of my favorites of all time.
I got into the online space with Ultima Online. A teammate of mine when I was with the Phillies was playing it, hardcore.
I got into it, enjoyed it, liked it… But I’m not a hardcore PvP guy, so obviously I had some very challenging memories of those days.
The MMO Gamer: [laughing] So you played UO pre-Trammel, then?
Curt Schilling: Yes, pre-Trammel. Early.
The MMO Gamer: Those were the good old days.
Curt Schilling: That’s what I hear.
But then, somebody told me about EQ… I logged in to it, played it for a half an hour, 45 minutes, and quit.
Then I sat around the entire night, as you do with any good game, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it… “That was kind of cool! I’ve never played anything like that before!”
The next day I went back and I was hooked. That was all I played for the next four or five years.
Right around that time Sony found out that I played, and they invited me in for the VIP stuff.
I was already thinking about post-baseball, and what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to do something with a business, but not like a restaurant… not a thing that other people were doing.
More importantly to me, I wanted to do something that I was passionate about, and something that I was smart about.
I was definitely passionate about gaming, but I certainly wasn’t smart about it.
So, I turned my relationship with Sony into a kind of due diligence. I started to go in and talk to the people at the ground level, boots on the ground, people making the games.
I wanted to understand the industry, what works, what doesn’t. Why they liked their company, why they didn’t like their company.
I did that across the industry, to try and determine what the playing field was like, who the competitors were.
Obviously this was a time when it was just EQ, then it was Asheron’s Call, and DAoC… and then all of a sudden you had WoW, and it exploded into the mainstream.
The MMO Gamer: What was it that drew you to MMOs, in particular?
Curt Schilling: It’s been my choice of game for a lot of reasons.
The most important one for me was, doing what I do for a living, going out socially is not as easy for me as it is for other people.
But in an MMO, it’s painless. No one knows who I am. I can hang out, and have friends, and be whoever I want to be, without being Curt Schilling.
The great thing was, it got to the point where everybody that I played with—and still do play with—they knew exactly who I am, and none of them cared. Which is really cool for me.
Probably the biggest thing for me as a parent, and as a person who has heard all the arguments for and against gaming, and violence, and all of that crap… if it wasn’t for MMOs, I would not have the relationship that I have with my kids.
I’ve traveled my whole life. They were a way for me to log on when I was in San Diego, and my boys would log on in Boston, and we’d have our headsets on like we were in the same room playing together.
We’d group up, and within the MMO game space there are a lot of things you can teach people: You’re in a group, you have responsibility, you have a role, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things… You have to socially interact with people, and there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that.
So my kids, when they were beginning to learn to read and write, could type and communicate on a keyboard, which is going to be a medium which they’re going to use their entire lives, when they were five and six.
I looked at it as a powerful tool to enable education, and positive things with my kids. As opposed to all of the negative things that were going on with video games, violence, and all of that other stuff.
The MMO Gamer: Impressive that you managed to juggle EQ with a professional sports career.
I knew guys who couldn’t even handle working at the grocery store and playing EQ at the same time.
Curt Schilling: Well, my wife would argue that I didn’t juggle it well.
It’s funny because there were times—and people find this hard to believe—but you have times when you’re sitting at the keyboard playing, and you’re thinking about work, right?
People can’t believe that I would be at work thinking about playing games.
There would be times when I was sitting in the dugout, where I’d be looking at the clock thinking, “If the ninth inning is over by 11, I’ll be able to get back and raid by 12:30!”
But I’m a gamer, that’s how we think.
And then I’d meet people across the country that I’d played with, because I’d travel all the time, I’d give them tickets to games, say hello, put names to faces…
My celebrity really became a non-issue, which was a big, huge issue for me. In the game space, me playing baseball doesn’t buy me any credibility—and it shouldn’t.
Gamers don’t give a shit that I won three World Series. They care if we make a great game or not.
The more they understand my credibility as a gamer, and my beliefs as a visionary for the company, hopefully the more they’ll understand what we’re doing.
The MMO Gamer: Morbid curiosity, what did you play in EQ, and what are you playing now?
Curt Schilling: My main in EQ was a Shaman. And then I ended up four-boxing an Inquisitor, Berserker, Cleric… and I can’t remember the fourth.
My main is always a hybrid. In WoW it was a Hunter I leveled to 70 first, and then a Shaman that was eventually the guy who became my main.
The MMO Gamer: So if you let the main tank die, your guildies still yell at you over Vent, Curt Schilling or no Curt Schilling?
Curt Schilling: That’s exactly right. When you don’t button mash correctly in a 40 person raid, it doesn’t matter how many World Series rings you wear.
The MMO Gamer: I’m sure just about every player out there has had that fantasy at one time or another… “One of these days, I’m going to win a hundred million dollars in the lottery, and then I’m going to start up my own game studio, and do things the right way!”
Is that you? Living the dream of jaded gamers everywhere?
Curt Schilling: This is where you and I and everyone who reads this are probably exactly alike:
I played the games the same way you played, finding broken features, looking at encounters going, “Why didn’t they do this? This sucks. Why isn’t this better?”
I did all those same things, in all the different times and places you did them. And then I had the “I want to start a game company” vision, which we all have.
I’m part of the one half of one percent that actually acted on it. And less than one tenth of a percent that had the capital to actually do it.
It’s an insanely capital-intensive venture to begin with. If you want to do it right, it’s more expensive than you could ever imagine.
The big thing is, I still to this day am doing it the way I want to do it, and doing it what I believe is the right way, but that has nothing to do with the game.
I’m leading the vision, and helping create the culture, and then building an environment for the most insanely talented people in the world to do what they do best, and I don’t get in the way and muck it up.
It’s unfortunate that the less involved in game design I became, the better our game got.
I do believe I know games, well enough to know the difference between good games and bad games. And I do believe I have some decent game design ideas… but when you understand how it works, it’s an art.
Every discipline is an art. And when you understand that these people are the best in the world at what they do, it makes it easier for you to not get involved.
I’m the Chairman and Founder of the company, when I send out an email people read it differently. But I’ve never taken it like that, I’ve always just assumed it was sending out an email like all the other designers.
Then I found out that people were listening to my emails and acting on them, and I’d get pissed… “I want mounted combat on flying pigs!”
And then we’d have a design meeting a week later where they’d show me the specs for it. And I’m like, “No, I was kidding!”
The MMO Gamer: [laughing]
Curt Schilling: I realized early on, that I can help make this company put out the best game ever by being less involved in making the actual game, and being more involved in putting these people in an environment to succeed.
The MMO Gamer: Interesting. I’d have thought someone with that kind of capital invested would be looking over everyone’s shoulder saying, “Shouldn’t have done that! Shouldn’t have done that, either!”
Curt Schilling: That is the absolute quickest way to blow your money.
If I was a great game designer, maybe that would be the thing for me to do. I’m not. If I was a great artist, and I had a vision like Todd McFarlane, it would be the thing for me to do. If I was an engineer, and I knew how to build a platform, it would be the thing for me to do.
I don’t do any of those things. And I would be stupid to pass off like I could. My goal is to not be the dumbest guy in the room in all respects, to know what they’re doing, what the money is going to and what they spend their time on doing, but more importantly to empower these people.
We’re not making my game, we’re making our game.
And our game is being made by the people who drove EQ 1, 2, WoW, DAoC… all of them, since Ultima Online. Our UI designer was the lead UI designer for World of Warcraft. Our lead platform engineer on the game side built the platform for Blizzard.
Who am I to tell them how to do things?
You get all of these brilliant people in the same room, and if I don’t have an ego, none of them are allowed to have one. Todd doesn’t, R.A. Salvatore doesn’t. They come in and they’re part of a team.
If Todd, and R.A, and I are all part of this team, there’s no single member of it who can stand up and say, “Do it my way.”
The MMO Gamer: You brought up a couple of interesting points in those answers I’d like to follow up on.
First, you just said a very dangerous word in this industry: Art.
I have a lot of conversations with people in your position, and designers, producers, etc., about whether or not games can ever rise to the level of “real art,” or if they should even be trying to in the first place.
What are your thoughts on that, with regards to Copernicus?
Curt Schilling: I think it’s a byproduct of achieving something, and it’ll happen organically. If you set out to create a game that’s a piece of art, I think there are very few people on the planet who could actually make that happen.
Part of that is the definition of “art.” What is art to a game designer is code to a graphic artist. What is art to a graphic artist is just concept drawings to a designer.
So, it’s a dangerous definition.
But for us, we have R.A. and Todd as visionaries. I would argue that R.A. is a modern day Tolkien from the fantasy writer perspective.
You’re going to live in a world that was envisioned by R.A. Salvatore, and brought to life by Todd McFarlane’s artistic vision. I’m a fantasy geek, and that fires me up. How do you not get excited about that?
So, it will probably be art to some people, yes.
The MMO Gamer: The second thing you mentioned… Since we can’t talk about Copernicus itself, you said you know the difference between good games and bad games.
So, could you give examples of your opinion of a great game, and a failure?
Curt Schilling: As a gamer? A great game, Plants vs. Zombies.
For an MMO, World of Warcraft at launch. Fantastic game, great execution.
A game that I didn’t like, a bad game… let me think… Tabula Rasa?
The MMO Gamer: Richard Garriott is going to put a hit out on you.
Curt Schilling: Listen, the game’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. It was in development for seven years. I don’t have to say it for it to be true.
Age of Conan, also, was a bad game.
Both of those, I bought both of them, I played them, I wanted them to be great. I want every game out there to do well. I love great games.
But I’m a consumer, I spent my money, and I don’t feel I got my money’s worth. And when I don’t, I’m a jaded consumer.
We’re not getting an increase in hours per day, there are still only 24. My gaming time is limited, and I don’t want to spend money and play games that suck.
[At this point, Curt’s PR people asked us to wrap things up.]
The MMO Gamer: I have to round out the interview with this last question out of tradition… even though we’ve basically just spent our entire conversation already answering it:
Why do you make games? Why do you wake up every morning, go to work, and do what it is you do?
Curt Schilling: I don’t go to work every morning. That’s probably the answer to the question. I still have yet to have a real job in my entire life, because I love what I do.
I am the Chairman and Founder of a game company because I have a passion to produce something that A), can change people’s lives, B), can change the world.
The MMO Gamer: Thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it, and we hope we can do it again some time.
Curt Schilling: Very nice to meet you.
38 Studios is currently working on an unannounced MMO project, codenamed Copernicus. Stay tuned to The MMO Gamer for further coverage in the days and weeks to come.
Great interview, thanks.
Can't wait for Copernicus