Seven Questions with Brian Green

I’ve been looking to add something new to Epic Slant these days. I want to share the thoughts from established industry personalities who can add some insight that I might miss. I’ve sent seven very open ended questions out to a few different individuals to see what I might get back. Thus far I’m very pleased. If you’re interested in participating please send me an email! For the first “Seven Questions with” article Brian Green was gracious enough to participate.

Who are you?

Brian: Most know me as Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green, owner of the blog at http://www.psychochild.org/. I’m a game developer/designer, avid gamer, writer, and fan of the written word. My “day job” is as an indie game developer.

Why do you do what you do?

Brian: I make games because I have to. If I weren’t making games, I’d have to express myself in some other outlet. It just happens that my particular talents and training make me fit to be a game developer.

In doing what you do, what brings you the greatest joy

Brian: Two things I can think of give me the most joy.

1. Figuring out a solution to a particularly tough problem. Game design is full of tough problems, so making a breakthrough can feel glorious.

2. The first time someone experiences my game and enjoys it. Before they get jaded and bitter and start criticizing everything I do.

What role do player guilds play in MMOs?

Brian: In most games, guilds are the backbone of the community. See the next question about how important community is.

I think that players will form organizations (guilds) even if you don’t provide facilities for them in the game. You can see how clans arose in FPSes, where people used a tag to indicate their group even without a formal structure available in most games.

How important is the player community to any given MMO?

Brian: In MMOs, community is the most important aspect; if you don’t have a good community, then you have nothing. A toxic community can be more harmful to a game than having absolutely no community at all.

What fundamental change do you see in the future for MMOs?

Brian: I think we’ll start seeing a wider variety of games being called MMOs. Currently there’s the opinion that only games like WoW qualify. As we see browser games and social network games get more complex, I think we’ll see a wider variety of games be considered MMOs. Overall, I think this will be a good thing as more types of games break the industry out of the stagnation we often find ourselves in.

Should you be able to alter history, what is one innovation that you would return to the past and avoid?

Brian: I don’t think I’d really try to discourage any true innovation, because many professional game developers tend to be too shy about innovation as it is. If I could visit the past, I’d probably want to go back and try to encourage people to be more innovative, in fact. Try new things, find out what works, don’t just try to clone an existing type of game and hope it leads to success.

I want to say thank you to Brian Green for providing his answers to the seven questions. I left them very vague in an attempt to coax some interesting insight out of him and I think that worked out well! I, like Brian, have to do something creative. If I don’t do a podcast, write or something along those lines, I feel rather volatile so I fully understand his need to create.

Brian’s thoughts on player guilds was of great interest to me. His point is very solid about how important they are to MMOs. I liked the note about FPS clans. Without any in game tools players still organized. That seems to be the nature of humans in a social environment and a good reason why companies should leverage it in their products. Which also leads to my agreement about his attitude towards communities. An MMO community can be a rough creature these days. There are a lot of players who will just spew whatever they feel like onto a message board. On the other hand, however, there are a lot of really great blogs, forums and sites that are positive or at least constructive.

The response to the future and innovations questions were also a bit of a surprise for me. One thing I find intriguing is the growth of MMORPGs to simply MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games). You can have an MMOFPS, an MMORTS and numerous other options. I have to agree that in the future we’ll see more of that and less RPG. For better or for worse. I also like the “no regrets” attitude to innovation. I know that if I had a chance to change things I did in the past, I would. Positive thinking is a better option, though!