Gen Con Interview with Rusty Williams
While in attendance at Gen Con Indy, the MMORPG.com crew had the chance to sit down and talk to FLS CEO Rusty Williams about upcoming improvements to Pirates of the Burning Sea and their rapid pace in publishing updates since the games launch.
It’s not often you get to sit down and chat with the CEO of a development studio, but we did just that with Rusty Williams, CEO of Flying Labs Studio about their game Pirates of the Burning Sea. In this industry you talk to a lot of different types of people. Some come across kinda stuffy and almost rehearsed when talking about their product, others like Rusty, you can absolutely tell he loves what he does and the product he’s working on.
It was very apparent from our talk that Flying Lab Studios is very dedicated to Pirates of the Burning Sea and turning it into the amazing game it has the potential to be. Since the game launched in January, FLS has released a major updated every month so far. Currently they’re working on update 1.7 which will introduce new tutorials and overall improve the new player experience. It also adds a new camera system, added repeatable missions and new ad hoc rules on how you get into fights in the open sea, to help fight ganking.
Along with update 1.7 will come a big marketing push. There hasn’t been much marketing so far because they wanted to get the game ready for a more casual group of people. They launched at a point where they felt the game would be ready to go and would be a smooth launch, even though the game wasn’t as ready as it could be. Certain aspects of the game were set in motion before World of Warcraft launched. And as we all know, WoW definitely changed the face of the MMO map. Since then they’ve spent a lot of time polishing the game. Update 1.7 was targeted as a kind of “re-release” of the game and will include free trials and buddy passes.
They’ve also been working on new specific UI for the tutorials. Popup tips and advice didn’t work well since they interfered with combat, so now the tips and advice have been integrated directly into the UI. To learn more about these topics and even more, including but not limited to what to expect in updates 1.8 and 1.9, stay tuned for the full video interview to be posted soon!
