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General: Africa: E3 2006 Preview
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Guest Writer Sean Dahlberg, the Community Manager of Shadowbane (watch carefully for his plug), pens this preview of Africa, based on his interview with Tracy Spaight at E3 2006. The game took home hardware as the Most Innovative (concept) from E3. Find out why.
;) While attending E3 2006 this year, I had the pleasure of having a sit down with none other than Tracy Spaight, the Vice President of Research and Development at Rapid Reality, LLC. While currently more known for their upcoming title The Chronicle , Rapid Reality has also been working on a design for a new massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) entitled Africa.
So, who is Tracy Spaight? Well, aside from being the VP of R&D, he is also a historian by training and a teacher by profession. Tracy studied history at Santa Clara University, took courses at UC Berkeley, and even went through most of a PhD program at Cornell University. In addition to that, he taught world history for five years, to include African cultures. More importantly, hes a gamer. Tracy has played on a Commodore, participated in a variety of text-based multi-user dungeons (MUD), and even played on the Great Lakes shard of Ultima Online. He was even a member of the guild Covenant of Swords in Ubisofts MMO Shadowbane, which obviously earns him some brownie points with me at least. |
You can read more here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
haha well you are going to have to wait!
Africa mmorpg was 75% finished when they formed the partnership with rapid reality.
4 months later, now they are 8% done.
I'm not sure where you got the 8% done from. From what they were saying to us they were much further than that though they still had a few pieces of technology they wanted to work on and get to work the way they wanted that would be enhancements to the overall concept and feel.
I'm also looking forward to what they do with this one and it is a very aggressive concept based in some fascinating research and background.
I'm going to have to agree with Sachant, I'm not sure where you got either of those numbers.
Could you provide link(s) perhaps? Because it sounds like a very interesting read to present to my company.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Wow, I'm really liking this one...
I'll keep an eye on their website
you know, I read mmorpg.com daily and enjoy a lot of your articles, and I don't normally comment because I like the coming-soon aspect of a lot of your interviews. I know what they're about and I like to keep informed of what's in the works. But this article seems irresponsible.
And I am quite confident it will make it to the market... In addition, Africa has a lot of buzz and not just in the MMO community; the global community. John Sarpong, the grandson of Ashanti king Prampeh of Ghana, is a firm supporter of the project.
Sure, Africa sounds like a great MMO and I hope it gets launched, because I'd enjoy its innovation. I like to support unique games. But you guys present zero evidence for some of these claims. This is a new team, very academic in training, and frankly its a title that's really really early. I don't understand how you can award innovation for a game that doesn't even have screenshots yet. Come on guys. This feels wierd. Thanks.
No, no screenshots. Just a lot of research, solid technological background, a staff of dedicated professionals that are immersed within the various cultures and more. They also have a little thing they are working on called the chronicle from which all their technology is coming. They didn't have to recreate the wheel in order to start laying down the actual game because of this.
Here's their site. Then they just have a little thing called a trailer that has shown in various venues and received a lot of buzz. including VH1 and MTV. I don't remember where I stumbled on it before in the past myself but it made an impact.
Then of course there is a lot of other information about the web as well, including on mmorpg.com.
What would be irresponsible would be to discount this highly ambitious project and not be supportive of it. I personally like supporting innovation and am very excited to see how it all turns out. Also, alot of the observations we made were based on past experience of knowing what projects have flat out failed that had similiar aspirations and which have that chance to get off the ground. This is one that I am looking forward to playing not just reading the concepts of.
Sean "Ashen Temper" Dahlberg
http://www.seandahlberg.com/
The one thing I didn't like about my review is that I could of written
about 10 more pages... at least! Tracy gave Sachant and I a wealth of
information and the game sounds extremely cool. Hopefully Tracy
remembers me when it comes time for Beta Testing, heh.
Sean "Ashen Temper" Dahlberg
http://www.seandahlberg.com/
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
I'm going to have to agree with Sachant, I'm not sure where you got either of those numbers.
Could you provide link(s) perhaps? Because it sounds like a very interesting read to present to my company.
Just as a side note CS. When you practise an air of silence towards your community members concerning your own games and carry an air sarcasm borderlining arrogance when regular people (read as: none press) come asking for more information, then these things will happen.
People will grasp at just about anything when their told one thing and then see another happen, it's pretty much just human nature, especially when there's little to no explanation to clarify it all. That's why previews like this, even though minimal, go a very long way to helping those of us that have questions to at the very least practise some good faith and restores some patience.
That asside, it was a fantastic preview, thank you much.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
Well, I just created an account to post this, so this is in fact my first post, been coming to MMORPG.com for quite a while though, just never made an account :P
to Remyburke: I've been to the MMOcenter site and I tend to agree with you on that, I've read about the whole deal with preorders and beta access for the Chronicle, how times are pushed back and the fact that they don't have a game website specifically for the chronicle even up makes me wonder about this whole thing and the credibility of RR sometimes and makes me worry about whether or not this game will be made.
But at the Africa main site and forums Tracy Spaight has been doing a wonderful job keeping the community updated with frequent links to articles and often daily responses to all our questions, and has been just great about keeping us in the know, so I'm glad at least that he's working on making this thing happen.
oh for a screenshot though, when its ready its ready I guess, isn't that the usual answer? :P
"All hail, king of the losers!"
-Age of Empires 2