Greg Street, the studio head at the newly announced Fantastic Pixel Castle, sat down for an hour-long discussion with Twitch streamer Kanon_XO to talk about the upcoming MMO his team is working on. The discussion was wide-ranging, hitting on creative freedom under NetEase, monetization, and more.
Street, who until recently was working on the Riot MMO as its executive producer, left the company earlier this year to attend to personal matters. However, after a bit of rest and getting affairs in order, Street started to look towards what was next. Some speculation has been that he left Riot in order to start Fantastic Pixel Castle, which, in the interview, Greg disputes, saying that NetEase's offer to start his own studio was simply one of many coming his way after he left Riot. NetEase's just happened to be the most attractive.
Kanon_XO (who we interviewed recently as part of our article on Black Desert Online's community initiatives back at TwitchCon) has actually interviewed Street once before during his days at Riot. However, that conversation was massively edited thanks to the corporate overlords dictating what could and could not be public then.
This time, though, Street and Kanon's conversation was unfiltered and unedited - an hour-long livestream where Street touched on many topics. One of the major drum beats Street has mentioned at every step is just how much creative freedom the team has under NetEase. Talking with Kanon, he made a point to explain that NetEase is fully funding the studio, and has even given assurances that if the first game doesn't exactly do well, it's not the end of the relationship.
When answering a question about whether there is a minimum NetEase is expecting or a deadline from the parent company, or whether or not they are just trusting Greg's team and believe in them, Street responded affirming that, with NetEase going so far as to say that if the first game doesn't work out, they'll try again.
"They believe. What they would say is they're very picky about who they work with; they're not just going to give anyone a studio. I have some other colleagues who have studios with them now. But they've even said, like, 'You know, if the first game let's make another game.' You know, making games is hard, and you hope the first game is a big hit but sometimes it doesn't work out. And that attitude is so unique and so healthy."
Street told Kanon that this is the "happiest" he's been in his career, thanks to NetEase's freedom and attitude towards the studio.
The interview also touched on some of the gameplay elements we know about Fantastic Pixel Castle's "Ghost" MMO right now, including the Blue and Red shards that it'll have. The team touched on this during their Q&A, and Greg talked about the differences (Blue is for building and creating, while Red shards are meant for exploration), as well as how those two types of shards are connected for players to hop into ("We want to avoid the list of servers because that I think really takes you out of the world, and that feels like you're playing UI at that point."), and even touched on monetization strategies the team are thinking of (Greg would really like to avoid having an Early Access period, though he won't completely commit to not having the type of head start access many games sell nowadays).
You can check out the full interview in the embed below.
