“Los Angeles, CA (August 23, 2010) — Atari, one of the world’s most recognized videogame publishers and Cryptic Studios, the acclaimed developers behind City of heroes, City of Villains, Champions Online and Star Trek Online, announced today the development of Neverwinter for PC. Neverwinter is a new online roleplaying game based on Wizards of the Coast’s global property Dungeons & Dragons and the beloved city of Neverwinter.”
Welcome to the rest area – as in give it a rest.
The announcement above is less than 24 hours old and already those who consider themselves the resident Nostradamus’ of the mmo and sole judges of all that is, was, or should be in the world of game development have begun to crawl out of the woodwork, out from under rocks, or slinking out of the sewers. It is easy to sit back from the standpoint of someone who doesn’t have a brass farthing invested in Cryptic and say “Cryptic simply does not have the ability to make good games”, or regale us all with the knowledge that Jack Emmert has discovered the “joys of scope” (thank God he has finally discovered what the rest of us have known all along!). Most amazing of all is that Cryptic, the company that apparently “doesn’t have the ability to make good games” has been nominated for a 2010 Game Developer’s Choice Online Award forthe Best Online Game Design Award for their game Champions Online. It appears that at least someone at Cryptic must know how to make games.
Chutzpa, Hubris, Pretentious
It’s easy to develop a pretentious attitude. The danger of succeeding at anything is that it can rapidly become hubris. Sometimes, as we heard in the case of Total Biscuit from WoW Radio on show 41 , it’s just their shtick. It is understandable when someone takes a stand and defends a viewpoint… I do that myself. While this makes for some very absorbing conversations, it can also place you in the position of having to apologize on the air to people like Bill Roper and Dr. Richard Bartle. Perhaps the most dangerous positions are held by those individuals who fail to remember the adage “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, you will meet the same people on the way back down” – having to apologize could end up being the least of their worries.
I haven’t even made it yet
No matter where you are in the mmo community, be it consumer or author, there is a tendency to begin to consider oneself the Oracle at Delphi, sure of the eventual outcome of any given situation. My grandmother used to tell her version of Goldilocks and the Three bears, that ended with the famous blonde being told by mama bear, still in the process of making the soup, “bitch, bitch, bitch…I haven’t even made it yet”. While some corners of the mmo community discover the joys of pretentious, I will try and remember hard earned lessons and simply regale in the fact that ANYONE is making Neverwinter nights.
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather
[posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster]