This is a special edition devoted to our interview with The Secret World‘s Game Director, Joel Bylos. Episode 43 will be live tomorrow if TSW isn’t your thing, although it’s worth hearing a senior MMO designer’s ideas all the same. If you are into TSW then you’re in for a treat as Joel covers a lot of areas of the game and gives some hints on the future of the game. A big thanks to Joel for taking some of his valuable Sunday morning at a park with his family to speak to us.
Points of discussion:
– Joel’s journey from Australia to being game director at Funcom
– What being Game Director involves
– Question from The Angry Postman: promoting TSW outside the Alternate Reality Game niche
– Transparency of Funcom/TSW with the struggles over recent months
– Question from Ed Goldstein: scaling between zones
– Question from Belladawna: Does the new position mean Joel can outdrink Ragnar?
– Question from Belladawna: Plans for an official hi-res model viewer?
– Question from Hyperjumpgrandmaster: Making PvP more meaningful, open world PvP an option?
– Question from Voodoo Shark: plans for streamlining skills and mechanics?
– Question from Voodoo Shark: ongoing free trial offers?
– Any other teasers willing to be disclosed? (Yes – including a heavy hint on Issue #4’s auxiliary weapon)
– The impact of layoffs on the team and optimism for the future and bringing some people back
– Can the output of issues be maintained?
– Ability to change body-shape in the future?
– Lessons learnt from Age of Conan?
– Lessons learnt from other MMOs?
– Rift doing panda charity donations (and a lame joke from the host on funding a different type of panda)
– Comparing TSW, GW2 and WoW combat
– What’s a measure of success for TSW over the coming year?
Post your thoughts on the interview below – we’ll have a summary of Joel’s responses posted in 24 hours or so but nothing beats listening to the full thing – enjoy.
Please review or rate the podcast on iTunes if you can – it makes a huge difference!
Listen via iTunes or right here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:29 — 19.9MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Loading ...
What’s that awful snapping-clicking sound that plays through the podcast?
My bad: Don’t play TSW while listening to podcasts. TSW’s sound system interrupts the playback.
Actually there are some clicking noises during one part of the interview that I couldn’t pin down the source of, so you were right 😉
What a great interview.
I’m thinking chainsaw for the next auxillary weapon… If so, YES!!!
“somebody shut that damn kid up” – we’re recording in here!
Awesome game, awesome interview.
Was really refreshing to hear stuff directly from the source and got a ton of interesting info from it that got me hyped up for the month to come