Paul Barnett bloggt weiter

[Gryphus]

Paul´s Blog umfasst wieder einen neuen Eintrag. Dieser beschreibt seinen Werdegang bei Mythic und seine Zusammenarbeit mit Mark Jacobs.

Some people don´t really know that much about me. I mean they may have seen the videos, or the interviews. But on the whole my back ground is somewhat unknown. So to give you a small insight I offer the speed read Barnett Approved background. I came from the stereotypical poor northern family, we had nothing. I´ve been playing computer games for 30 years (aggghhhh, I must be so old) I wrote MUD´s back when that was new and exciting...

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One of my MUD´s did ever so well (Legends of Terris), actually after a year with the yanks I now realise that I should never say ´ever so well´ that´s typical English understatement, what I should do it copy my yank brothers and sisters, so lets try that again. Along with Doug Goldner I wrote and designed the largest commercial MUD in Europe that dominated the market and revolutionised parts of online gaming. How big was it? It was the largest thing AOL Europe had, we beat everything, we beat chat! In fact the only thing that beat us was search engine usage, imagine a game bigger than AOL UK´s email usage! There you see, that´s the yank way. So like I said, I wrote a little MUD and it made a bit of money. And that´s when I bumped into Mark Jacobs. I went off into creative business consultancy for ten years. During that period I started doing creative consultancy with Games Workshop. In fact I still do! About three years ago I was asked by Games Workshop to look at the original Warhammer Online. That lead to me and Mark Jacobs chatting and Mark doing that thing that only he can do. Next up he has the Warhammer licence with Games Workshops blessing and asked me to help out.

During my ten year sabbatical I had written books, plays, card games, board games, bought and sold an elephant, been to film studios, watched a mad man make a James Bond set, almost got shot, stabbed, blown up and other none sense.

When I got back to looking at Graphical MMO´s I was a little shocked to find out that things had not moved on that much. Most of the tough, horrible lessons I had learnt while writing my MUD turned out to be lessons that modern graphical MMO´s had yet to figure out. It´s like the renaissance all over again.

Mark and I come from different flavours of design thinking. In fact it´s because I am a different flavour that he and I get on so well. I have the deepest respect for his talent and drive and it´s his game we are making. And I am fully committed, but one day I would love the chance to have a crack at a game on my terms. And with that in mind I was cleaning out my spare desktop back in the UK and found an old document I wrote about my design thinking. Here is a snippet.

It´s not about clicking things endlessly

It´s not supposed to fuel the economy

It´s supposed to be fun

It´s supposed to be simple

It´s supposed to have discovery

It´s supposed to have internal logic

It runs to about seventy pages and it still held up today, always good to have your ideas tested on the anvil of time.

So far I am doing my bit to deliver on three main goals.

One: I want to realise as much of marks design vision as I can. It´s a tough ask the man aims high and we are only mortal.

Two: I want GW to be happy with the choice we have to make to deliver a great MMO with their licence.

Three: To try and add in a few sparkles from my view on design, here and there. Bits and bobs around the edges, fluff and pixie dust and boundless enthusiasm.

So hang around and read these blog pages. I think I will use them to muse on design and other bits of whimsy.

Thanks for stopping by.

Paul

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