The Turbine Story - An Interview with Turbine Founder Johnny Monsarrat

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The Turbine Story - An Interview with Turbine Founder Johnny Monsarrat

Thanks to an anonymous tip, we've had our attention drawn to a recent interview conducted by "Andang", a prolific LOTRO content creator, with Turbine founder Johnny Monsarrat. The hour long interview covers everything from the ins and outs of starting a gaming company to the early days of the MMO genre. According to our tipster, "the interview ends with Johnny sharing his recent project which aims to be the next Pokemon Go". Check it out!

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Vandarix

Meh just give me a real successor to Asheron's Call Turbine.

Wizardry

So the real founder of trubine was MOM and her 250k.


Real funny dude mentions microsoft was known for stealing ideas,well they stole all my buddies work and really never paid him.Besides the first Morphing software you see in games now they also did an interactive website design for Microsoft as well they never got paid for.

There is also a video on you Tube of the history of how Microsoft actually began and it was Bill Gates stealing ideas,so Bill gates all these years made to be a genius but in reality he stole information/code from a fellow employee otherwise there might be no such thing as microsoft today.

So these guys were lucky to get 3 mil from Microsoft and mom's 250k or Turbine likely does not happen.

Very interesting to hear him mention they created tools for artists to work with,sort of a pioneer as that was about the time frame.

he talks about trying to port the game over to the Playstation but wasn't possible.it makes it all the more impressive that Square Enix did FFXi on the PS2.At that same time blizzard was hiring outside their huge firm to get console work done and still failed on that scope trying to make Ghost.

Overall this interview was kind of cool,i see this guy as a sort of derpy intelligent person but he is intelligent none the less.However his mention of Pokemon is nothing brilliant it is simply a popular brand,i don't agree with the walking around being the attraction.So now he is honest,he wants to cash in on the brand.So he is going to have another in his words a very limited game simply cashing in.

Yeah he is way off on the 3-4 years to peak but as he said he doesn't have time to actually play games.He wonders about why more has not been invested in Pokemon Go..haha this is the era we live in,devs do not invest more if anything they try to cut costs and simply ride out the money train.Pokemon is a popular brand that will remain popular no matter how bad the products are.

"It's a secret!!" but he is showing the idea to cosplayers at some convention.I see this is going to be decently marketed but imo the product won't get me to feel any different because i don't consider the phone a game app and simply cashing in on Pokemon idea does not interest me either.He will likely get rich just because cell phone addiction is a real thing,just came back from the grocery store,first thing the couple does getting out the car is grab their cell phones.

Po_gg

Wizardry said:

However his mention of Pokemon is nothing brilliant it is simply a popular brand,i don't agree with the walking around being the attraction.

Yep, that was odd, since it was nothing else but the brand. Ingress was up and running for years before PokeGo, without much attention or success... then they reskinned it with pokemons, and that was it, instant success. Just a hype though, as he says too it lasted just for a few months.

It was a really good video, those early pictures could be any demoscene group or starting dev team from the early '90s, nice memories... and the possibility of AC launches 2 years earlier, mind boggling. Who knows, where would be Turbine, and the genre, if they launch before EQ and AO.

ChildoftheShadows

All of you are so negative.

Sandmanjw

DMKano said:

Trying to make the next Pokeman Go without it being a Pokeman game... ugh.

Also most MMOs dont peak until 2nd or 3rd year... lol, sorry but that is so wrong, no clue where he is getting that from.

I am sure he has WOW on the brain like a lot of others.  WOW and EVE both are very strong exceptions to how most MMO's perform and grow. Both continued to grow for quite a while, even though EVE was no where close to the numbers of WOW. It was still unusual for a MMO to keep growing for years.

QuarterStack

ChildoftheShadows said:

All of you are so negative.

Well you have the number 1 and 2 "Supercritics-of-Everything" showing up in the first four posts, doing what they do. Not that it's surprising. I think they have an alarm that sounds any time a new article is posted on this site.

Negativity has always been the dominant mentality around here. However, certain specific people apparently harbor a lot more negativity than most, about almost everything. It's surprising when I don't see either of their names in the first page of a forum thread.

Ungood

Vandarix said:

Meh just give me a real successor to Asheron's Call Turbine.

Asherons Call and Asherons Call 2, are officially dead now. Turbine has openly said they are getting out of the MMO scene, and moving on to other projects, like mobile games. Standing Stone bought the rights to DDO and LotRO, leaving AC and AC2 to die away into ash.

So if you are looking for a real successor to Asherons Call, you're pretty going to have to make it yourself, or start looking on Kickstarter to see anyone is already trying.

Ungood

DMKano said:

Trying to make the next Pokeman Go without it being a Pokeman game... ugh.

Also most MMOs dont peak until 2nd or 3rd year... lol, sorry but that is so wrong, no clue where he is getting that from.

Given that Turbine, Asherons Call, was in competition with EQ, it would be the progress of many early games like EQ, DAOC, UO, where they spiked up, fell, and then began to grow again. Marking that by the 3rd year of growth would be around the time they paid off their initial starting loan, and now all their income could be put into building up the game and company, as opposed to paying interests, so they could really take off and develop their own game better, or start building other games.

Gotta think about where they are coming from. 

Gutlard

Middle-Earth Universe Online please & thank you!

Gut Out!

bcbully

ChildoftheShadows said:

All of you are so negative.

Man about an hour ago after reading some post I thought about making a thread about it.