Gaming for the Broadband Era

(page 2 of 2)

“You can sit back, you can see what’s on tonight, you know there is an alien raid, but you can participate if you want, and whenever you want.”

Emerging in the online world

The question remains, where exactly does Emergent come into play? The company actually offers or will offer some tools in addition to Gamebryo that an online company such as Trion would find quite useful. Emergent also offers metrics that could in theory track what events or types of gameplay users participate in the most. That kind data is crucial for Trion and its vision of dynamic content that are suited on-the-fly to gamers’ habits.

Selzer stated, “…We have started with Gamebryo as a core, and a very solid core, and have architechted an entire system around that; a modular and flexible system that allows people to build the games the way they want to, because we’re all set up in modules.  So if somebody wants to use Ageia with us it’s very, very easy to integrate.  If somebody wants to use Havoc it’s very easy to integrate.

“We have built process tools that we think in some ways are really going to revolutionize the industry.  [Coming soon we have] an entire metrics environment that is completely data driven that allows people with a web-based dashboard to get visibility to everything from the production process, where we are in production, how the production is proceeding and how it’s playing against milestones. … You’re also able to get metrics on player behavior to correlate player behavior against engine performance.  So, what the metrics tool does is provide a great deal of visibility into this process that is traditionally been very opaque.”

It seems that Emergent’s relationship with Trion won’t end with Gamebryo. Selzer also described upcoming services from Emergent including an automated quality assurance system and a “rapid online publishing platform.” All of Emergent’s elements will work together.

“We’re putting together an automation suite of tools that tie in to our metrics dashboard that allow you to do automated testing directly from the build cycle of games all the way through bug testing,” Selzer explained. “And it really diminishes the number of testers you use and the amount of time that you need to test because it’s a much more efficient process.”

He continued by describing the company’s “rapid online publishing platform” for games.

“You need to look at online deployment as service.  It’s a service from top to bottom and if that service is not provided absolutely seamlessly, sort of at a prize quality level … then your game will never see the light of day.  So the challenges in this next generation of gaming are not only about dealing with the scalability issues and process tools through it, but also how do you deploy these games online.  We have architected from a system level a modular system that allows you to go from the day you start production to prototyping to the day you deploy. … It’s hosting, e-commerce, CRM [customer relationship management], the whole ball of wax.”

Selzer added, “The way we’re looking at it is we’re probably the only company out there external to say Microsoft or Sony that is looking at the direction of the industry and creating solutions starting at a systems architecture basis.”

A beautiful friendship?

Buttler and Selzer are clearly ambitious executives and it remains to be seen whether or not their plans will take with consumers. If Trion’s games coupled with Emergent’s tools can deliver an online experience that gamers crave, we could see truly “dynamic online content” and “large-scale” TV programming-like experiences in online games.

For now, though, both Trion and Emergent share a common vision. "Our visions are so closely aligned that we are attempting to make our roadmaps and product roll outs tie together, and to the extent they do we will be working together."

Provided by Next Generation—
Interactive Entertainment Today