wraggster
March 16th, 2009, 22:01
The game’s developer told me the company’s proprietary CloudMMO tech works on consoles. He also reveals some updates for ‘”Justice is Coming.”
***
Just after the release of “Watchmen” in movie theaters last week, I spoke with Seth Gerson, president of Last Legion Games, the company that developed “Watchmen: Justice is Coming” for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Released day and date with the film, “Justice” is touted as an massively multiplayer title combining RPG and fighting elements. And like “The End is Nigh,” the XBLA/PSN/PC title developed by Deadline Games, “Justice” is set in the 1970’s before the time of the movie.
However, there was no connection in the development of the titles aside from having the same writer, Peter Aperlo, as well as contact with Warner Bros. And instead of playing main characters Nite Owl and Rorschach, players will are able to create their own unique anti-hero, though Gerson suggested that one of the movie’s characters will appear in the story.
“First you customize your character, then you enter the world and as you’re walking through you’re gaining experience,” said Gerson in a recent phone interview. “There’s two ways to gain experience is: there’s combat, where you can fight other people and [non-player characters], and you also gain story points for completing quests.”
Gamers are able to explore five different locations and rummage through dumpsters to find costume pieces that boost skills. As players level up, they can assign points to attack and defend, depending on their fighting style. “There’s also a timing element in the fighting style, too,” Gerson added, “so if you want to throw a punch, you want to throw it earlier in the round, rather than a Judo-style move where you would want to hold back and throw later in the round.”
I asked how Last Legion came up with a fighting-based MMORPG for the iPhone. It started off with the company’s proprietary, patent-pending multiplayer technology that utilizes Amazon.com’s Web Services. Last Legion Games was established last summer by console veterans, and have been working on the CloudMMO technology for several years. With “Justice” as their first release, the development studio is solely focusing on their new technology and plans to create more iPhone games in the future.
“We met with Warner Brothers, showed them the technology, talked about some things we would like to do, and we started building in that way,” Gerson explained. “As we developed it, we kept trying to create features that really made sense for the iPhone. When you call it an MMO, I think everybody’s mind is thinking ‘World of Warcraft.‘ But it just happens to be on the iPhone, and that’s how the technology functions. We’re trying to create something that’s kind of a new genre in gaming because the iPhone by nature is much more of a social device.”
Although players can chat with each other in the game and view each other’s profiles, Last Legion plans to add more social aspects to the game. A buddy list and the ability to “snap-to” wherever your friends are located are some of the first things they’re working on, though they haven’t announced any dates for when these updates and expansions would come.
“We have a bunch of ideas that we’ve been talking about, things we’d like to do and places we’d like to take it,” Gerson said. “It’s open, and we plan on keeping it that way. We also want to hear from the community; what they want is important to us because at the end of the day, that’s who we’re building it for.”
One thing I noticed in my brief playthrough of the game were the long load times between fights with other players and traveling to different areas. Gerson said it depended on my connection but it was also due to the game’s detailed environments.
“A lot of that has to do with the ability to have the beautiful, gritty environments,” he said. “The way everything is constructed is very similar to a console. It’s basically the way you make a game for a 360 or a PS3, or a DS or PSP. I’d say it’s more on the PSP side of things. We like to aggressively push what we can push. The load times, I think in the future there are a couple of things we have to reduce those a little bit but there are some constraints that we can’t get around.”
But could “Justice is Coming” come out on other platforms? “Yeah, it could,” he said, saying that many employees have decades of experience in console development. “Right now, I don’t think we have anything in the works but it really depends on what the hardware is. We just really wanted to work on the iPhone; it’s is a fantastic gaming device, and we wanted to really try something different and ambitious.”
So while we might not see the CloudMMO tech by Last Legion on other platforms at the moment, that won’t prevent other developers from crafting CloudMMO games for consoles. “At some point we’ll allow others to use our toolsets and technology, but not quite yet,” Gerson said. “The actual technology can work on any client. It can work on a PS3, an Xbox 360, a PC, an android. We’re really looking to push the boundary in what you can do on the gaming side.”
You can check out Last Legion’s CloudMMO technology right now with “Watchmen: Justice is Coming,” available now at the iTunes store for a limited-time price of 99 cents.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/03/16/watchmen-iphone-mmo/
***
Just after the release of “Watchmen” in movie theaters last week, I spoke with Seth Gerson, president of Last Legion Games, the company that developed “Watchmen: Justice is Coming” for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Released day and date with the film, “Justice” is touted as an massively multiplayer title combining RPG and fighting elements. And like “The End is Nigh,” the XBLA/PSN/PC title developed by Deadline Games, “Justice” is set in the 1970’s before the time of the movie.
However, there was no connection in the development of the titles aside from having the same writer, Peter Aperlo, as well as contact with Warner Bros. And instead of playing main characters Nite Owl and Rorschach, players will are able to create their own unique anti-hero, though Gerson suggested that one of the movie’s characters will appear in the story.
“First you customize your character, then you enter the world and as you’re walking through you’re gaining experience,” said Gerson in a recent phone interview. “There’s two ways to gain experience is: there’s combat, where you can fight other people and [non-player characters], and you also gain story points for completing quests.”
Gamers are able to explore five different locations and rummage through dumpsters to find costume pieces that boost skills. As players level up, they can assign points to attack and defend, depending on their fighting style. “There’s also a timing element in the fighting style, too,” Gerson added, “so if you want to throw a punch, you want to throw it earlier in the round, rather than a Judo-style move where you would want to hold back and throw later in the round.”
I asked how Last Legion came up with a fighting-based MMORPG for the iPhone. It started off with the company’s proprietary, patent-pending multiplayer technology that utilizes Amazon.com’s Web Services. Last Legion Games was established last summer by console veterans, and have been working on the CloudMMO technology for several years. With “Justice” as their first release, the development studio is solely focusing on their new technology and plans to create more iPhone games in the future.
“We met with Warner Brothers, showed them the technology, talked about some things we would like to do, and we started building in that way,” Gerson explained. “As we developed it, we kept trying to create features that really made sense for the iPhone. When you call it an MMO, I think everybody’s mind is thinking ‘World of Warcraft.‘ But it just happens to be on the iPhone, and that’s how the technology functions. We’re trying to create something that’s kind of a new genre in gaming because the iPhone by nature is much more of a social device.”
Although players can chat with each other in the game and view each other’s profiles, Last Legion plans to add more social aspects to the game. A buddy list and the ability to “snap-to” wherever your friends are located are some of the first things they’re working on, though they haven’t announced any dates for when these updates and expansions would come.
“We have a bunch of ideas that we’ve been talking about, things we’d like to do and places we’d like to take it,” Gerson said. “It’s open, and we plan on keeping it that way. We also want to hear from the community; what they want is important to us because at the end of the day, that’s who we’re building it for.”
One thing I noticed in my brief playthrough of the game were the long load times between fights with other players and traveling to different areas. Gerson said it depended on my connection but it was also due to the game’s detailed environments.
“A lot of that has to do with the ability to have the beautiful, gritty environments,” he said. “The way everything is constructed is very similar to a console. It’s basically the way you make a game for a 360 or a PS3, or a DS or PSP. I’d say it’s more on the PSP side of things. We like to aggressively push what we can push. The load times, I think in the future there are a couple of things we have to reduce those a little bit but there are some constraints that we can’t get around.”
But could “Justice is Coming” come out on other platforms? “Yeah, it could,” he said, saying that many employees have decades of experience in console development. “Right now, I don’t think we have anything in the works but it really depends on what the hardware is. We just really wanted to work on the iPhone; it’s is a fantastic gaming device, and we wanted to really try something different and ambitious.”
So while we might not see the CloudMMO tech by Last Legion on other platforms at the moment, that won’t prevent other developers from crafting CloudMMO games for consoles. “At some point we’ll allow others to use our toolsets and technology, but not quite yet,” Gerson said. “The actual technology can work on any client. It can work on a PS3, an Xbox 360, a PC, an android. We’re really looking to push the boundary in what you can do on the gaming side.”
You can check out Last Legion’s CloudMMO technology right now with “Watchmen: Justice is Coming,” available now at the iTunes store for a limited-time price of 99 cents.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/03/16/watchmen-iphone-mmo/