Mark Kern of Red 5 Studios talks with MMORPG.com. See what Mark has to say about his past, present, and upcoming future with Red 5 Studios.

Mark Kern was the Team Lead on Blizzard's gargantuan hit, World of Warcraft. Now, he is the President and CEO of Red 5 Studios. In this interview, Mark answers Garrett Fuller's questions about his past, future, and the direction of the MMO industry.

MMORPG.com: Great to talk with you Mark. Can you tell us how you got started in video games and more importantly MMOs?

Mark Kern: I wrote my first computer game on a TRS-80 computer so I've been at this for some time now! I knew I always wanted to make games, but it wasn't until college that I started to think about online games. I played a commercial mud called Gemstone on the Genie bulletin board service back when you paid $5/hour to play. I was absolutely hooked, and nearly flunked out of school until one day I quit cold turkey. But even though I had quit, I kept thinking about designing the ultimate text-based MMO. Things have changed now, but I'm still trying to create teams and make the best games possible. And if you look very, very closely, you'll see some Gemstone influence in World of Warcraft today.

Read the entire Interview here.

Just something I enjoyed reading.

Looks like it's gonna be sci-fi to me from the artwork on their website. http://www.red5studios.com/  Which will be a welcome change imo. Tabula Rasa isn't going to be a persistent world and I'm already sick of Startrek and Stargate and CCP.

This looks promising

The lead designer of the tribes games is apart of it.

God, please, PLEASE, let them make a Tribes MMORPG with skiing, discing, all that. God that would be sweet.

Vivendi pissed all over the Tribes series. I've been jonesing for a good complete Tribes game since Tribes 2.

Based on a few bits of easy research the Tribes mmo is a good guess.

points

1. 18.5 Mil in funding. http://www.red5studios.com/about/press/1

2. Looking for people (on their recruitment site but you have to dig) with Unreal engine experience hints at poss fps related game or reverse engineering http://www.red5studios.com/recruit/

3. Tribes sold (dynamix/vug/sierra) picked up and lost by french company then abandoned for years to Garage Games who converted to unreal engine.  http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/archive/t-421542-p-3.html

4. Red5 signed exclusive use of the Offset engine (project offet is an FPS game/engine) http://www.red5studios.com/about/press/3

5. Signed deal with webzen, this ones throws me for a loop not sure where they fit in ....yet....after a little review of their site I see Huxley and APB both shooter types so could be a possible GTA knock-off as well. It's a good guess, since Huxley another webzen is fitted with an FPS engine as well. http://www.red5studios.com/about/press/2

Overall, with the art work I'm leaning more towards a new tribes mmo then a GTA  style mmo. Mainly because of one word which was used in their most recent announcment on this and their site. The word Tribe. http://www.red5studios.com/about/press/7

Originally posted by Yaisha
Great interview.  I'm really excited to see what these guys come out with.  I would much rather see a new IP though rather than a Tribes MMO.  It would be wonderful for an MMORPG with such a big budget to be a fresh and totally new world.

It's not like the Tribes IP has been done to death or over used.

Tribes would make the perfect MMOFPS.

Tribes is fun, fast paced, you could easily make it skill based to be able to use light, medium, and heavy armor; not to mention weapon usage and utlities. Not only that, but Tribes has a rich history of lore from which to pull from.

Most, if not all, of the new MMORPG IPs are uninspiring, boring, and shallow.

Originally posted by Ugottawantit

Looks like it's gonna be sci-fi to me from the artwork on their website. http://www.red5studios.com/  Which will be a welcome change imo. Tabula Rasa isn't going to be a persistent world and I'm already sick of Startrek and Stargate and CCP.

This looks promising

 

Q: Can you tell us about the game you're working on?

A: We're still hard at work on our announcement, and for now everything is still under wraps. What we can say at this time is that we have no desire to create yet another fantasy based RPG MMO as our next title.

Originally posted by Romse

Originally posted by Ugottawantit

Looks like it's gonna be sci-fi to me from the artwork on their website. http://www.red5studios.com/  Which will be a welcome change imo. Tabula Rasa isn't going to be a persistent world and I'm already sick of Startrek and Stargate and CCP.

This looks promising

 

Hmm that artwork looks like a crashed or exploding Death Star to me... which might just be a little acknowledgement to their name... and not a hint on their current project.

But maybe it is about their game... they've got a lot of art that seems to be about a particular project as they use this in some sort of hiring kit with branded iPods. There's also little blurbs of texts that to me immediatly said something about "terraforming a planet"... "colonists tot a new world" kinda thing...
http://senzee.blogspot.com/2007/02/red-5s-pitch.html

also from their FAQ:

Q: Can you tell us about the game you're working on?

A: We're still hard at work on our announcement, and for now everything is still under wraps. What we can say at this time is that we have no desire to create yet another fantasy based RPG MMO as our next title.

I think we're a long way from hearing anything from them... Webzen doesnt talk too much about what they work on until they're close to release... we're barely hearing anything from Huxley and APB and that's supposed to release this year and next year.

Wow...

That's an amazing recruitment package. I really hope that that is indicative of the passion, effort, art, and polish of the their new game. I'm really impressed by that.

I hope that they stay true and create games for the sake of the players' enjoyment, and not for the sake of profit margins. With a recruitment package like that though, it says volumes about the company. Only time will tell.

so, he agrees with what a lot of people labeled as wow-haters and naysayers have been saying all along about wow.  yet again, a dev-type agreeing with the non-fanboi opinion.

incredible.

gives me hope that they're actually ignoring the fanboi-base and listening when people have intelligent comments to make and understanding that this shouldn't be a JOB, it's a game and should be entertaining.

now, having read and said all that, i wonder if their mmo will be just more of the same old eq-clone with touch-ups here and there (ala wow, vanguard and quite a few others), or if they'll try to break the mold somewhat (ala eve, pre-cu swg, old school UO, and a couple of others).

Originally posted by stormbaron
Go to http://www.projectoffset.com to get a preview of what we could expect (graphics wise) in their next game. Looks FANTASTIC from what I can see. Gonna need a beefy pc for that.

Project offset does look incredible... unless I'm mistaken it's not related to Red Five though.

Originally posted by neothoron
"The real issue is that our worlds are static, and they need to become much, much more dynamic."

You gave me hope. Thank you.