Might & Magic Creator Updates Game Industry
Jon Van Caneghem has plans for this, "the broadband era."
by Daemon Hatfield
September 26, 2006 - Over 50% of US households now have broadband Internet access. The move to broadband in recent years has opened up entirely new channels for people to access all kinds of media online. Trion World Network, a new game company setting up shop in Redwood City, CA, plans to take advantage of all this bandwidth.
Jon Van Caneghem, creator of the Might & Magic and Heroes PC game franchises, and Dr. Lars Buttler, a former EA executive, have recently announced the formation of Trion, a "publisher and developer of games and original entertainment for the broadband era." According to the company's announcement, Trion is here to revolutionize entertainment by exploiting the new opportunities that have arisen with the mass penetration of broadband Internet.
IGN spoke with Van Caneghem about what gamers can expect from Trion, and how he plans to take advantage of the broadband era.
Jon Van Caneghem: The biggest thing that I believe is possible now that hasn't really been done yet to any great extent is the ability make products that can be updated and changed very quickly so that you can monitor them, add to them, change them on the fly, and really make products that almost become a service as opposed to a stand alone product. So for all those years when I shipped a product and it went to retail and I waited for the reviews and hoped people liked it, and if it did a good job I might be able to do a sequel… You take all the feedback, then you work on the next game. And that's how we've been building games forever.
IGN: How have the opportunities for game development changed?
Jon Van Caneghem: It's like a game developer's dream -- we make all this stuff, we ship the game, and we don't know what parts people like and what they won't; we're only guessing, right? In this respect we can actually monitor what they're playing, see what they're doing, add to it in a shorter turn around time. Instead of a year or two for a sequel, we're talking weeks or days at this point.
IGN: Do you have anything planned for consoles?
Jon Van Caneghem: Consoles with connections, yes. Any connected device is our target.
IGN: Your press release says you plan to produce games and "original entertainment." Do you have plans for content besides games?
Jon Van Caneghem: The idea here is there are a lot of other people who want access to large numbers of people who are online: the media industry, television industry, the gaming industry, of course… And if we can provide them a manner in which they can get to people, whether it's a game or derivative of a game or a game in combination with other mass market entertainment, then that's the direction we want to go. Hope that's not too vague for you! (laughs)
IGN: Do you think this concept of updating games after their release is something unique to your company?
Jon Van Caneghem: It's unique in our turnaround time. People do patches, and we've done that before, but that's not really building a product that's live or is an online service. That's a very packaged goods mentality: we build it, we ship it, people enjoy it and that's that. The idea is: you get home, you have your favorite game, you login and something interesting is happening; and every day interesting things are happening in that game world. It creates a very different experience than when it's a finished, shipped product that's the same and never changes.
IGN: Might & Magic Creator Updates Game Industry
