Last week, we presented former Matrix Online live team member Rachel Thompson's response to an article discussing the practical impossibility of live content. This week, former live team member and current Senior Systems Designer at Carbine Studios Steve Williams weighs in.
My name is Steve Williams, and I am a Senior Systems Designer at Carbine Studios, working on their unannounced MMO. Before I was a systems designer, however, I got my start in the computer gaming industry as one of the Live Events Gamemasters for The Matrix Online (MxO), an MMO that launched back in 2005.
In those days live events were Matrix's risky plan to help provide a game world that had a developing story and an ongoing relationship between players and important figures from Matrix lore. We knew the issues up front with live events, best summed up as: "they are not fun... unless you are at one."
In this article, I wish to break my experience with MxO down into three parts - what we did at Matrix, what the goals are in doing live events, and what I think we can choose to do as an industry to make viable live events in any MMO. Rachel covered some of the more fun parts - writing short stories, IM conversations with players, and more. In this article I cover the more standard responses we gave.
Read Another Perspective on Live Content
