![]() ![]() I was really confident that we could recruit enough engineers, you know, out of either Mythic or, you know, from Bethesda to to fill the team. The single biggest thing I would have done is just not say three years. But that would have meant going to investors, where they would have taken a much bigger cut and they would have wanted bigger control. Financially, I think what I probably should have done differently, but I didn't want to for a host of reasons, is getting money first, and then go to Kickstarter. You know even recently with Fortnite, they had to make adjustments to their engine so it can even support 100 players. We could have scaled it down and it could have been just a really great game, but without the large scale battles. MJ: Something that I go back and forth on is, you know, should we have tried to make it with the Unreal Engine? And the answer is we could have, but it wouldn't have been this game. I've been fan of Chris Roberts right since Wing Commander back in the day.ĪC: If you were to do this thing again with Camelot Unchained, what would you do differently? I want it to succeed, I want it to be huge. ![]() And, you know, it will engender I am sure, massive lawsuits, and so I'm the last person on this planet, maybe other than Chris and his team, who wants to see a fail. I mean I've said if Star Citizen fails, it will be the worst blow to Kickstarter backed games ever. You don't get the time and the leadership, and the money. Usually what happens is you don't get all three. Any talented team with enough time, money, and the right leadership can deliver. You know it's not that they can't deliver on their expectations but you raise $400 million for a game, and you take as long as they have, expectations are astronomical high. Chris has painted himself into a really tough corner. But you have to be careful with over promising. A huge community, a million plus based on the number of units they've sold. MJ: You know, one lesson from Star Citizen is certainly that you can create this community. But then they started doing other things, selling spaceships, and it took off.ĪC: They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars now. Look at the numbers and compare it to what we raised, it's about the same. And in the beginning he did it without spending a lot of money, you know, because it wasn't like that Kickstarter was all that successful - it wasn't. It isn't like he was a Blizzard, where a new game comes out and their audience goes right over there so they already had they already have a built in audience for anything they do. Chris and his team have one an amazing job on building a very strong community, they galvanised an audience. ![]() We have not done that.ĪC: In terms of crowdfunding and backers, it's impossible to ignore Star Citizen and their scale. For example, horses, we haven't gone 'buy horses" or "now we can sell other kinds of mounts and maybe we can sell birds and we can sell all these things to try to bring in new money". We've done all that without trying to sell extra things to our to our existing players, or to sell things to bring in even new players. So, the classes have been going in, extended classes are being worked on. MJ: We're focusing on game, game, game now. So, you know, we've accomplished that part. It can handle lots of people, it can handle buildings falling down with real time physics, all handled by the server with hundreds or thousands of people playing. The good news is, especially if you've seen the recent tests, you've seen what the engine can do. We were supposed to have an engine done by now, and it's taken longer. That's our focus.ĪC: And you're seven years into the project? We hope to do what Dark Age did - and better - in terms of RvR. We hope it to be universally a spiritual successor to the greatest RvR game ever made, which was of course Dark Age of Camelot. MJ: So Camelot Unchained is our RVR (Realm vs Realm) game. As the true initiatives in contemporary gaming come again and again from outside the big companies, it's encouraging that a veteran such as Jacobs still dreams with his eyes open.ĪC: Can you describe Camelot Unchained for those unfamiliar with it? It is no wonder that Jacobs has ultimately ended up running his own studio and created his own engine for his vision of what a PvP MMO should be about, even if that's taken seven years. In an era of massaging the message, this is a welcome departure from bland corporate statements that are supposed to appease everyone while saying nothing. We were a long time pursuing an interview with him, but now we've got it we're delighted he is so direct and clear in his beliefs on what is right and what is wrong, even if those wrongs are his. ![]() Before we dive into the interview, one remarkable thing we'd like to note about Jacobs is that he comes across as unapologetically genuine. ![]()
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