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DEVELOPER SPOTLIGHT: AARON RIGBY
Meet Soul of the Ultimate Nation's Senior Producer
LQGaming Services:: What was it like working on Lineage 2? And how glad were you that you didn't wind up working on the original?
Rigby: Lineage 2 was a unique experience. Its design is more open than most games, so it felt very alive. It also had the benefit of being designed with the experience of the original title taken into account. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded working on the first Lineage back in the ol' 20th century, but admittedly, it was really showing its age by 2002.
LQGaming Services:: The way in which you found yourself finally working for Webzen was?
Rigby: I was at NC's LA office when they decided to consolidate their US operations into the Austin headquarters. They offered to relocate the Lineage 2 support and production staff here from LA, but I wanted to stay here (blame my wife). Coincidentally, Webzen was just starting their offices here in LA, so I made the jump.
"MMOs are the most dynamic titles available today. I feel more like the mayor of a virtual town than the game's producer!"
LQGaming Services:: OK. Let's rewind a little bit - how obsessive a gamer were you back in the day?
Rigby: Too much of one. Games were, and still are, my number one choice for entertainment. To this day, I'd rather play a game than go to a movie.
LQGaming Services:: Your favorite types of titles include.?
Rigby: I love them all, man. I'm just as likely to be playing a PC shooter as a Game Boy RPG, depending on my mood or what was released in the last month.
LQGaming Services:: Given that this is the case, why devote so much of your life to the massively multiplayer online market?
Rigby: MMOs are the most dynamic games available today. I mean, not only are the game systems adjustable over time, but the players themselves influence these changes. It doesn't take long until I feel more like the mayor of a virtual town than the game's producer.
LQGaming Services:: Which ones have been sucking up most of your time lately?
Rigby: I just got back into Star Wars: Galaxies to check out the latest update. It's been about four months since I was last in and it's fun to be back in and playing my old characters.
LQGaming Services:: Any pearls of game design wisdom you live by?
Rigby: Primarily, I just try to remember that we're making games that need to be fun to play. Strangely, players don't seem to like games that aren't fun.
LQGaming Services:: Mind explaining this in slightly more practical terms?
Rigby: Overall, I just want to create a memorable experience for players. As I said before, a game needs to be fun or else what's the point? Nowadays, game designs have to focus on flexibility to make titles appropriate for multiple territories as well. We designers need to use anything and everything at our disposal in ways that developers never had to think of just a few years ago.
Take tools, for example. With Lineage 2, we started using a lot of the back-end and support tools to create in-game events when a server-wide event wasn't available or would have been inappropriate. When you're talking about an online game, whatever you have at your disposal to make the game more fun - use it.
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