By Linda "Brasse" Carlson

Floating around the Austin Game Developer's Conference were a few folks from 38 Studios. Meeting up for interviews at these events can be an adventure. I was looking for Brett from 38 Studios. Meanwhile, Mary Kirchoff of 38 Studios was looking for someone named Nicole from MPOGD. Finding each other in the press, we began to chat and soon decided that the two of us would come up with plenty to talk about. As she later put it, "Ah, the wonderful serendipity of industry shows, crossed communications, and unexpected connections." Indeed!

Mary is a veteran in the gaming industry. I do not use that term lightly. Ms. Kirchoff started way back in the day, going straight from college to TSR and the original D&D role-playing game. She advanced through the company with the creation and evolution of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms brands. Eventually, Mary landed at Hasbro as Vice President of Marketing and Publishing with ultimate responsibility for the management of… the Dungeons and Dragons brand.

Full Circle.

What Mary did not tell me, being far more modest than the average person in the game industry, is that she is also a published fantasy author, with twelve titles to her name, most of them under the Dragonlance banner.

Finally, what I can tell you is that she has a comfortable, relaxed manner about her, is an excellent conversationalist and cuts a refreshingly elegant figure, with a timeless face and a myriad of subtle expressions. Combining savvy business sense with creativity and style, Mary Kirchoff is the renaissance woman of the gaming industry.

I was curious exactly how long Mary had been in the gaming world. "D&D was in my high school hallways because I lived in the town where it was created (Lake Geneva), the 'Gen' part of GenCon, but I didn't actually start gaming until I was out of college and joined TSR. I was about 20 then." She laughed, "Who has the luxury of coming out of college and saying, 'I want to get into the publishing industry - oh, look, my town of 4,000 has a publishing company!"

Back to 38 Studios now; the people smart enough to bring her on board.

If you have not yet heard of the studio, let me just give you three names. Curt Schilling, R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane.

Curt Schilling brought his competitive expertise from the sporting world to blend with his love of MMOGs. Naturally, the studio was set up near Boston, home of Curt's team, the Red Sox. Oh, yes, he is their pitcher, for the three people who have not heard of him before.

R.A. Salvatore, a prolific and beloved fantasy writer, is Director of Creative Content for 38 Studios, while the multi-talented Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame is their Creative Art Director.

It must have been a very easy task to draw talent in with this core group… and draw them in they did. SoE alone lost a number of fine people to 38 Studios, including Steve Danuser (Director of Community Development/Senior Designer), Ryan "Blackguard" Schwayder (Game Designer/Community Manager). Erik Theisz (Senior Producer) and Jason Roberts (Director of Design and Development). Many top minds from other corners of the gaming world also moved to Massachusetts, answering the siren call of this brilliant start-up company.

Biographies of the leads and principals are found at the 38 Studios site, on the Inside 38 page. The company also offers video features of their visionaries which clearly bring into focus the people who infuse the studio with creativity and direction:

38 Studios Genesis Video



38 Studios Artistic and Storytelling Visionary Video



38 Studios President's Vision



Initially known as "Green Monster Games," 38 Studios adopted their current name in March and immediately started working on pre-production for an original MMOG. That's right, an original intellectual property, not a knockoff of Dragonlance, Drizzt or Spawn. This should prove interesting.

The game currently lacks a title, 38 studios does not expect to launch it until late 2010. In fact, even the title will likely remain a secret until next summer, although it has a fantasy setting. Brief glimpses at the videos linked above hint at this, and it was confirmed in our conversation.

"There is a great challenge in not uncorking the bottle too soon," observes Mary, "Human nature being what it is, we can only sustain interest in the concept for so long." Much interest surrounds the title right now, particularly with the names involved, and we are all a little impatient for the next big shiny… but the shimmering ghost of vaporware always hovers about.

In order to provide the public with a sense of forward movement, 38 Studios plans a unique approach. "We are more than just an MMOG company, we are an entertainment company," Mary explains. To that end, they plan to release vignettes during the production process, audiovisual storytelling segments which will highlight the strengths of their team, while introducing people to their world.

I asked if the MMO would follow a theme familiar to the existing player base. Will the development team incorporate existing UI features? Do they play other games? I expressed my concern that sometimes game companies feel that coming up with a unique product means reinventing the wheel and ignoring the lessons learned from other games.

"As consumers, devotees of the products and fans of the industry, we are studying, pulling those threads together," responds Mary. "Sometimes a dev studio decides they are going to do everything from scratch. I feel that this would be a little disingenuous. You cannot pretend that you are not aware of what others are doing, on some level. My philosophy is that once you're part of the industry, once you've seen 'the backdrop of Disneyland', at the ground level, you have to be calculating and comparing things. We know we stand on the shoulders of giants and are not trying to take anyone down. We just want to bring something innovative to an incredibly successful industry.

"We are very respectful of what the industry is doing," she continued, "We're going to put our own special spin on it. You don't have Todd McFarlane involved and do standard issue stuff, but we want it to feel familiar. There are certain elements that fantasy fans are comfortable seeing. Familiar races, familiar characters. Bob (R.A. Salvatore) is working on creating some iconic characters, but as the creator of characters such as Drizzt, he doesn't do standard issue either."

38 Studios has not yet concluded which business model they'll be using for their game, though they are considering all options, including subscriptions and micro-transactions. "You have to put a stake in the ground at some point, but we're not there yet. A lot of great companies are experimenting with business models in the next few years, and we'd be foolish not to be watching them."

I mentioned the overall resistance to the micro-transaction model in the North American market, to which Mary commented, "I think people make gross generalizations based on their own experiences and biases, and project them onto what we think the world wants. I watched how well the micro-transaction process worked in trading card games. I think as consumers in any industry, we find ways to justify purchases, and smart companies market to that. We like to see a price tag of $4.99 so we can say we paid $4.00 and justify it to ourselves that way."

At what point will they open a community portal? Mary laughed, "We're not going to get into a schedule as yet, but we see Comic-Con (San Diego) as the place we reveal our major announcements. Comic-Con is not as much into gaming as some, but that may be just a matter of time as well. As a well-rounded entertainment company, part of popular culture, we feel that is our focus."

So how many people are working at 38 Studios during pre-production? "Part of the challenge was that we actually had to develop from the ground up. Many of the first months were spent bringing people in to make business possible, including all of our administration staff. We are a little north of 35 people now, including admin, but the bulk are focused on creating our intellectual property."

I asked about Brett Close, my original interview target, "Brett is our President and CEO, incredible pedigree, starting with being a software engineer by birth - no, by training. He has worked for EA, and most recently for Midway. Highly respected, highly organized, with the brain of an engineer, but a very human heart. When Curt approached him to lead the company, one of the pieces of common ground they had was in wanting to change not just the perception but the reality of how employees are treated in the game industry. Take them out of the slave-shop era; you can get work on time, get better work on time, by treating people as human beings. People who are overworked, in a crowded environment without windows with long hours actually offer diminishing returns.

"We have a production group that monitors production and makes sure that the teams are on schedule, but we have a strong group of people with a team mentality, one of the pieces Curt Shilling brings to bear; we rise and fall with the success of the entire group."

A solid group of disciplined engineers led by dynamic and brilliantly creative people, 38 Studios has the ingredients for a successful development cycle. I look forward to seeing the end results. I am adding Comic-Con to my must-attend list of shows for 2008 now, in anticipation of the next chapter of the 38 Studios saga!

For more information please visit http://www.38studios.com.