John Smedley Speaks Out

The Warcry network recently sat down with Smed, the President and CEO of SOE, for what I found to be a pretty candid interview.  The exclusive interview covered a lot of ground, touching on nearly all the titles SOE has in its (ever expanding) stable.  There were certainly nuggets from the interview that interested me, and I’ll highlight those here with thoughts:

1.  The MMO genre is stale and “grindy”.  Did anyone NOT know this?  But it’s kind of nice to hear the top exec of a (maybe the) major MMO company just come out and state this.  Smed states that MMOs today are all “me too” games, and if you look around, you pretty quickly conclude that it’s an accurate picture.  Even the most recent SUWT talked about how much influence WoW has had on the genre, with almost every competitor borrowing successful elements from that game.  Smed is hoping to take SOE in new directions in the future – enough with the grind he says!  He points towards The Agency, FreeRealms and Pirates of the Burning Sea as examples of this new direction.  Will SOE be the company that leads us into the light of new gameplay? 

2.  MMOs can work on consoles.  Smed talks about his belief that previous ventures like the PS2 “EQ:OA” MMO was ahead of its time.  The technology of the day on consoles simply wouldn’t let them realize the vision they had and support the game properly.  BUT, today is a new day of 80 gig harddrives and wireless connections.  He contends that MMOs can work well on the console, and both The Agency and the DC comics MMO will release both PC and console.  That all may be true, but I’ll probably never play an MMO on a console.  PC Gamer 4 Life!

3.  Another Everquest MMO coming??  Smed just comes out and says that making EQII a “sequel” to EQ was a mistake.  He goes on to say that “In hindsight, I wish we could have had a do-over and not called it Everquest II”.  He states that the two games were really very different – the games shared a common name and world, but EQII was set in the future.  Smed then states that they full intend to do another Everquest MMO, but that no, no one is actually working on such a project at this time.  I wonder what his definition of a true “sequel” to EQ is?  I for one wouldn’t mind seeing another Everquest MMO, and I think a lot of fans would to as they felt like EQ2 was never a true successor.

4.  Vanguard FTW?  Vanguard sold over 200k copies.  Lots of people gave it a look, and lots of people left because it was an utter disaster at first, punctuated by the disclosure of what McQuaid had done (or not done) behind the scenes.  When Sigil folded, that took yet another batch of people out of the game (I was actively playing at that time and saw the player base literally shrink in just a weeks time).  But, Smed sees in VG what I’ve always seen as well – tons of potential (gotta love the P word!).  He readily acknowledges that VG is what it is, a hardcore game, and that the high system specs are hurting the game at the moment.  But he seems genuinely committed to growing VG and staying focused on what it is – a more hardcore game with some unique features not seen elsewhere.  Will that be enough?  I think SOE will do enough good things that VG will survive and have a (niche) audience for the next 2-3 years at least.

Smed also goes on to talk about the NGE in SWG, but as I wasn’t ever a player of SWG that interested me less than the other pieces.  The one thing that did speak to me from that segment, and he mentioned it elsewhere, is the fact that SOE did not listen to their community when they made the NGE change.  Smed seems very committed to geting the community “into the mix” and hearing from them about future games and gameplay elements.  If SOE can truly do that, they might win back some of the goodwill that was lost by a lot of folks year ago, and gain a competitive edge.  After all, WE are the ones playing the games, and if they don’t listen to us, who the heck are they listening to? 

I think SOE has a bright future.  They will have the most diverse stable of games on the market, something to appeal to almost everyone, from sci-fi to high fantasy to pirates to spies to FreeRealms.  We know they are a marketing juggernaut, and they seem poised for growth in the years ahead.  If they can also innovate in gameplay and listen to their community, their future will be bright indeed.