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[Interview] General: What's Next for Mark Kern?
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
After a controversial exit from the company he founded (Red 5 Studios), Mark Kern has moved on to a brand new company and game. Since he's a sometimes columnist here at MMORPG.com, we're lucky enough to have talked with Mark about his next project: an online world steeped in VR, community building, virtual currencies, and user-generated content.
Read on for more.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
Proof in the pudding right there.
Actually, the game lost its heart and guts and turned into just another "more-of-the-same" MMO...
So if you want your MMO to be like the last, yeah, sure, he is a hack, but personally I weep at the how much FireFall lost its way in the end after he left.
"Since he's a sometimes columnist here at MMORPG.com, we're lucky enough to have talked with Mark about his next project:"
I MOTHERTRUCKING LOL'D!
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
Played-Everything
Playing-LoL
Mark had his issues, but Firefall is worse than it has ever been. If by a "solid game", you mean dumbing it down so any moron can play it, then yes, it is definitely going down that route. I was one of the biggest fans and supporters of the game ... only to see all the unique and interesting systems thrown out to make "WoW in Space". Red 5's vision is now less than 5 feet in front of them, at least Mark brought big ideas. I could seem him being much better in a think tank role, than a CEO.
Your comments remind me of why I stopped posting on these forums. More robots that just want every game to be like every other game. Firefall could have been 100 times better than what it is now, I am not sure what steered it in the current direction it is going. If any of his ideas were implemented, it would have actually been a next-gen game. But no, the general population is full of idiots, so they have to cater towards them. I am glad you are enjoying it, but it is unfortunate you are in that category of people.
Games need to start actually trying to do something new and interesting. Getting in the cage with the 900 lb. gorilla is a losing battle every time. I wonder to myself all the time, how most developers even have jobs. Their ideas are so horrible and short sighted, it amazes me. Then again, reading posts from the crowds they are catering to, it all starts to make more sense ... so sad.
First of all, thank you for assuming I'm an idiot.
Secondly, you can't throw out something that doesn't exist. All those ideas about a living economy, an ever-developing world, an AI playing RTS where you're the unit... they don't matter. Anyone can write a document detailing his dream game. We see those armchair developers all the time on this site. They all write about "living worlds", "player-controlled economies", "sandbox gameplay" and other features I'd love to see in an MMO. What separates great developers from ordinary wannabes is that the former can make those games happen. The latter can't and, if put in charge of a large project, will waste all their money without getting any results.
Thirdly, I never claimed Firefall is a great game. I barely play it. It's an average shooter with some nice features, but nothing more. (Oh, it has jetpacks. Giants: Citizen Kabuto made me love jetpacks. Giants is, by the way, an example of an ambitious project backed by a talented team of developers.) However, the current Firefall is solid. It's a game that works. Not ideally, but it works. Firefall under Kern's development was an utter mess that would've crashed and burned had it continued down its "development cycle" of eternal remaking. I don't know if it's because of Kern, but clearly he couldn't make his vision of Firefall happen.
The bottom line is that big ideas are easy and require nothing. Making them true is hard and requires talent.
Yeah I did chuckle at this.
I'm on the fence with Mark. I got into Firefall very early and have had access for several years. I really enjoyed it when I could play a support class and actually heal the fighters. I enjoyed the crafting system and hunting for the best minerals. Over time though, things went bad. I went from a healing beam like in TF2 to shooting a slow moving healing ball. If you ever watched a video of this game, players dont stand around, they have jetpacks and move constantly. How am I supposed to hit a fast, randomly moving guy with a slow moving healing ball? Then crafting slowly got reduced and now you cant find thump groups. That used to be an awesome part of the game, just running around joining random thump groups and helping out while earning minerals.
I think Mark had some great ideas and I think I would have enjoyed things if his actual vision had become a reality. Sadly, it didnt. I dont know if it was Marks incompetence when it comes to leading a team or the demands from the shareholders but somewhere along the way, this game made major changes away from what the original design was and has suffered for it.
Yeah, funny stuff there. Take 16-bits graphics, throw in "sandbox" and "steam punk" keywords, rotate a Minecraft grass block on youtube, promise some VR and then slap in (WTF) "Bitcoin". Winner.
What's that with Bitcoin anyway? An MMO as a giant crowd-sourced, Bitcoin-mining networked computer? Where people would pay and play to mine Bitcoins for them? HAHA. Awe-fuckin-some.
I have to agree that Firefall was a better game in early stages than it was at release, true they didnt offer everything they promised but from the armor trees to the Chosen Incursions and simplified crafting it became a nightmare. Hell even the early story line was more interesting than it is now.
Lets not even mention the screwing over of the early backers for Firefall... those who were founders in the early stages of the game had legitimate gripes with Red5 after the debacle that is the "have all 11 armors and an added buggy" founder package. Those early backers paid out the same level of cash and had to sit through constant dumbed down patches until the final release which was a joke.
Kern made Firefall fail? what a joke.
As far as this new endeavor. It sounds interesting, however as has been the trend, not going to give two licks of interest until he can deliver on what hes saying. Personaly, I am one of those players who has been waiting for a next gen game to be released... Virtual Reality sounds great and all but its not the end all... hell its been tried before, and that bandwagon hit a rut also.
What I would like to see in a future sandbox MMO game:
1. Virtual Reality - Sure it sounds great but this is a generalized term, I,m not talking about having a full dive technology like what is seen in Sword Art Online ( an anime that so far has shown how Full dive technology can be abused, a good series), but a simulated environment at the level where at least sight and sound clarity can give a damned good illusion of me being in the game.
2. A game that is rich in both graphics variety and mods - Lets be real about this for a second, Im sure many out there would like to see this kind of sandbox engine out there. Imagine when you are building your world.. I can have it be pixelated (Minecraft) or looking fine as a hot blond in a bikini (FFXIV). choosing the level of graphics you want for your world.. could be interesting.
3. Let me cross games - I have seen this in Sword Art Online (That anime i mentioned above) Basically you create a character in one world and after a while you want to try another game and dont feel like making a character but migrating over to the server with the character you like. Like in the anime, the MC switches from one MMO to another in the first season, and in second switches from the MMOs to a FPS game. Its an interesting Idea that has merit.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
The reason why game's don't seem to do a lot of different things is because they want to make a profit instead of going bankrupt by introducing things that many will likely not enjoy. Considerate game design has always made the most money in video game history. If you study into how the best selling games are designed you will see the simplicity that supports the player through it's virtual space. Instead it's better to build new things on top of existing designs that has worked for many player's.
Can only reinvent the wheel so many times before it's not a wheel anymore.
thnx for trying to hype this, but no thnx MMORPG.COM
I wish I could make something that fails like WoW...
It's very telling how the #3 google hit on Mark Kern is an extensive post explaining how poorly Mark Kern acted during his time in Red 5 Studios and why he was fired from his own company.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1tuf3c/this_is_why_mark_kern_was_removed_as_ceo_by_red_5/
But perhaps he will act more appropriate in his new venture.
Nah, the reworks of the game mechanics continued with or without Kern, the development was a mess regardless of his presence.
The point is, the concept of the game was more sound when Kern was in charge.
There is no way to tell any more more specific without having insight into a company management anyway.