John Smedley to keynote GDC Austin

 John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, will deliver a keynote address Game Developers Conference Austin (GDC Austin. Smedley’s keynote, “From Dragons and Daggers to Kart Racing, Cooking and Concerts…It’s a Whole New MMO World,” describes in detail how SOE’s freely available tween and teen title Free Realms has worked to expand the base of players coming together in online worlds. Smedley’s keynote will inform attendees about the challenges and lessons learned when creating a full-blown MMO for younger audiences including the challenges and opportunity of creating connected games.

GDC Austin features three days of main conference content focused on connected games, online games, virtual worlds, and social networking game play - along with four two-day summits including the Game Writers, Game Audio, iPhone Games and Independent Games Summits. The event takes place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-18, 2009. Early registration discounts for the event will end on August 13. Find out more at www.GDCAustin.com

Sony Makes Marv Wolfman/DCU Online Deal Official

Although the big surprise was spoiled last week by a story in Wizard Magazine, Sony Online Entertainment officially confirmed today that legendary comic book writer Marv Wolfman has joined the likes of Jim Lee and Geoff Johns to help with the development of SOE’s ambitious DC Universe Online MMO game. Wolfman will work with the developers on write story arcs, quests, and in-game events for DCUO. Wolfman’s prior comic works include a classic run on DC’s New Teen Titans, as well as the universe altering Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Read the rest of this entry »

Vanguard Developer Gone Wild

Vincent Napoli is mad. And when I say mad I”m not talking about the We no longer sell the Whopper mad; I”m talking Howard Beale in Network mad.

In a recent post that could only be categorized as angry to the Fires of Heaven guild’’s official forums, former Sigil developer Vincent Napoli gives his version of what went wrong during the development of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. A litany of complaints against everyone from Sigil management and his fellow developers to parent company Sony Online Entertainment and its President John Smedley are shared along with a strong statement as to why the game fell short of its expected glory.

In his post, Napoli takes credit for the game’’s failure and says that Brad McQuaid was too busy feeding an opiate addiction to care; that the original Sigil lead designers didn”t contribute much to the game’’s development and were eventually let go; that Sony Online Entertainment didn”t do much to support the title; that SOE President John Smedley didn”t do the research before buying Sigil; that Sigil’’s Dave Gilbertson is apparently not a good manager; and that Vanguard as it exists now was designed in a single year by people with no experience in the MMO field.

The post was in response to GameSpy awarding Vanguard its Most Disappointing Game of 2007 nod.