industry-figures
Latest
Second Life CEO Rod Humble leaves Linden Lab
Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab for the past three years, officially announced via Facebook that he has left the company. Humble has worked on both The Sims and EverQuest, pretty much exactly the two games that you would think could be mashed together into Second Life. Linden Lab has not issued a statement about Humble's replacement at this time. In a statement on the move, Humble wished his former coworkers and customers the best of fortunes, stating that he was moving on to form a startup company to make "art, entertainment, and unusual things." Whether or not this will be another startup in the online gaming space or something entirely different remains to be seen.
Richard Garriott's Portalarium raises $7 million in funding
Richard Garriott designed Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa, and he has also been to outer space. This has apparently convinced several investors that funding his new company Portalarium is a sound decision, as it was recently announced that Portalarium has secured roughly $7 million in investment capital. The money is being pushed into the final stages of development on the company's first title, Ultimate Collector, which is slated for release later this summer on Facebook, mobile, and browser-based platforms. Some of the funds are also earmarked for development on the company's second game, alternately known as both Ultimate RPG and New Britannia, which does not yet have a release window. The chief investment firm was London-based m8 Capital, but several other sources also contribued to the groundswell of support, including Richard Garriott himself. Last month, the company announced that it will be working through the Zynga Platform Partners program to publish Ultimate Collector.
Bill Roper looking to partner with Korean companies for more MMO development
You may remember Bill Roper from Diablo. Or, more likely, you remember him from Hellgate: London and Champions Online, probably with emotions that are somewhat less than fond. Several months ago, he was appointed the Vice President of Disney Interactive Media Group, and it looks like Roper is continuing down a path he's walked many times before. As he oversees the production of games based on Marvel properties, he's also looking for partners to start developing an MMO. Specifically, Roper is looking for a partner company in South Korea to work on co-development for several titles, which include MMOs. The obvious benefit for the Korean company would be increased visibility of licensed properties, with Roper hoping that a visit to the nation will produce a better way of developing new games. No word yet on whether or not anyone is interested in the offer, but there's probably no shortage of gamers made apprehensive by anything involving Bill Roper and a new online game.
Richard Garriott predicts the death of consoles as a gaming medium
Considering his influence on the realm of MMOs, many gamers would argue that it's hard to dismiss Richard Garriott's thoughts on development out of hand. A recent interview with the man includes him predicting the fall of traditional console gaming in favor of portable devices, and the end of MMOs as a major market share compared to social and casual games. As Garriott puts it, the era of MMOs was chiefly between 2000 and 2010, and the explosion in social gaming is now a new part of the overall game development cycle. Naturally, since Garriott's current company, Portalarium, is targeting specifically that demographic, he might be just a little bit biased. But he's hardly the first industry insider to claim that modern games need to be easily be picked up with little to no up-front cost. Take a look at the full interview for more, including Garriott's thoughts on how present designers are lazy and his self-comparison to Tolkien.
Richard Garriott running Portalarium with robots
Have you ever wished that instead of having to go to your job, you could just turn on the computer, log in to an avatar in the same manner as an MMO, and take care of everything that way? Perhaps to the surprise of no one, Richard Garriott has begun doing precisely that at his company, Portalarium. Rather than commuting between New York and the studio in Austin, Garriott has a small robotic avatar to allow him a face-to-video-monitor presence in Austin even when he's away. The robot itself is a $15,000 Anybot QB from the eponymous company Anybots, Inc, which Garriott claims was originally purchased so that his mother could virtually attend his wedding in France. He also stresses that it's not a means of keeping tabs on employees, merely a way to bridge the gap between two very distant locations. And really, if you had just won millions of dollars in a lawsuit, wouldn't you be attending all events via robot?
