David Brevik outlines his vision for a new Marvel-themed massively multiplayer online game (MMO) that aims to avoid many of the pitfalls of past MMOs. Key points include using the Unreal Engine 3 for high-fidelity graphics, randomly generating zones to reduce development costs while keeping gameplay fresh, emphasizing fun moment-to-moment action over grind, licensing the popular Marvel IP, and adopting a free-to-play model to reduce barriers to entry. Brevik believes this new approach can help the MMO genre evolve beyond what has come before.

1. Making new MMO history
David Brevik, President and COO,
Gazillion Entertainment

2. Who am I?
• President of Blizzard North for 10 years
• Creator of Diablo and Diablo II
• Worked on StarCraft and World of
WarCraft
• Creator of Hellgate: London

3. MMOGs are stuck in the past.

4. MMOGs are stuck in the past.
• Made with bespoke engines
– Often unproven and unknown
– May not scale as required
• Contain huge game worlds…
– … which are enormously expensive to create
– … and can become ‘boring’ before too long

5. MMOGs are stuck in the past.
• Subscription based payment models
– Ensuring some level of ‘grind’ to generate
maximum playtime and maximum revenue
– Also ensuring a quick conversion, it seems
• Same old fantasy, sci-fi settings
• Aimed at the same niche audience

6. Being stuck in the past helps no-one.
• The MMO industry since WoW is littered
with failures
• Almost every MMO launched since WoW
transitioned to free-to-play
– Age of Conan, LOTRO, DDO, DCUO
– Even EA’s SWTOR – biggest launch in a decade
• This free thing might not be a fad…

7. Meanwhile, social games…
• … are not niche; an order of magnitude
more popular than the biggest MMOs
• Require time – but as an alternative to cost
• However, they do make money
• Don’t require gigantic teams and long
development cycles…
• … but are inevitably not deep, not that
exciting and definitely not ‘hardcore’

8. It’s time to do something different.
• Gazillion already started:
– Aimed our first game at kids, not hardcore
gamers
– Based it on an established and well-known IP
– Created a small but re-playable game world
– Blended the subscription and MTX models
together
– Built in Unity to run in a browser

9. And next…

11. An industry standard engine
• Using Unreal Engine 3
• Gives us standard tools and pipelines
• Also the kind of graphic fidelity most
gamers expect
• … but we’re still allowing our client to be
streamed for fast delivery and download
• Transition to other platforms is relatively
easy

12. Large worlds? No problem
• Our ‘zones’ are randomly generated when
the first player enters them
• They persist as others play in them
• This allows players to co-ordinate in the
short term and team up for Open Missions
• Eventually zones re-generate – again,
randomly
• Reduces (but doesn’t remove) necessity of
hand-crafting each zone

13. Grind? Why?
• We’re making an action RPG so the
emphasis is on moment-to-moment action
• Just like Diablo, the goal here is to make
every click and every attack fun
• Game sessions can be completed quickly
• The game rewards both short and longer
term play with loot and objectives

14. A new but familiar setting
• We licensed the Marvel IP to gain access to
Marvel’s incredible characters and history
• While players have seen Marvel games
before, they haven’t seen a Marvel MMO
before (unless they played Super Hero
Squad Online!)
• Doesn’t ‘feel’ like anything that’s been done
previously, except Diablo…
• … and we see that as a good thing!

15. And all free
• Completely free to play, end to end
• Subscriptions are a huge barrier to entry
• So is a box price
• So take both away…
• … while giving people options to pay you as
much as they like.

16. Anything else is stuck in the past.