Matt Firor: Players Don’t Like New Game Features

We sit down with Matt Firor, the industry veteran now heading up ZeniMax Online Studios, who shared with us his insights on the industry as well as some details about the new studio. The interview was conducted in August, during GC 2008.

The MMO Gamer: Could you begin by introducing yourself and telling us about your role at ZeniMax Online?

Matt Firor: Sure. I’m Matt Firor. I’m the president of Zenimax Online; we’re the online-development studio of ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax Media also owns Bethesda Softworks, so we’re kind of sister companies.

My role is the head of the studio; they hired me to make MMOs. That involves hiring people, designing a game first, and then hopefully games later.

The MMO Gamer: It’s been over a year since ZeniMax Online was announced. Can you give us an update on the progress you’ve made in assembling the team, setting up the company?

Matt Firor: In the last year, we’ve staffed upward of about – I think just about 40 people now, maybe a little more. We have a game design that we’re working on right now that has been cemented in the last year, so we know what project we’re doing now.

We licensed some middleware; we licensed the Hero Engine and middleware from Simutronics so that gave us a good start on content and art pipelines. So, we’re moving right along. Our biggest problem right now is finding people to work; we can’t hire fast enough; as everyone knows, you need huge teams to make these things.

The MMO Gamer: What sort of team are you looking at, eventually?

Matt Firor: Not really sure totally yet. We’re probably going to have around 100 developers, and then there’s lots of other people besides that that every studio needs. And then, of course, after launch, we’ll need customer support and things like that. So it’s going to be a big place.

The MMO Gamer: Is everything going to be based in Maryland?

Matt Firor: ZeniMax Media and Bethesda Softworks are in Rockville, Maryland, which is near Washington, D.C. We’re in Hunt Valley, Maryland; so it’s near Baltimore; so it’s a somewhat different area. All of the development will be done there, and probably at least some of the customer service.

The MMO Gamer: You’ve been in the industry for quite a long time. Ten or twenty years ago, where did you think things would be today?

Matt Firor: Twenty years ago in 1988 was my first game. Iit was multi-user; but it wasn’t online, because there was no online then. Ten years ago, we were more worried about graphics and making things look good enough for people to play.

We were also worried a lot about modem speeds, because broadband wasn’t that big as it is in the States back then. But, looking forward, we probably would’ve thought it would be where it is right now; we all knew it was going to be big.

But we were in the industry; the problem was all the other people that didn’t know about the industry. I easily could’ve thought that there would’ve been a game with millions of subscribers in 10 years from 1998; I could’ve seen that. I wish it was my game, though. [laughs]

The MMO Gamer: What do you think the next ten years will bring?

Matt Firor: I don’t think there’s going to be as much innovation in the next 10 years as there was in the last 10 years, because there were so many technological hurdles that had to be overcome. So now, I think, people will focus more on gameplay and actually making online games be games and not just technological exercises, which it needed to be.

But, now, it’s going to become much more focused on “What does the user want?”, not “What can we give the user?” So it’s a lot more development, like single-player games have been in the past, where a lot more thought is given to exactly who your market is, whom you’re going to appeal to, what’s the revenue model–

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