Thanks to trailblazing titles like Everquest and Asheron’s Call, online gaming has grown into a multi-million dollar industry over the past few years. And with the latest generation of PCs and consoles pushing the boundaries of what game designers are capable of creating, the immersive possibilities of these titles are becoming more and more exciting with each new game that hits shelves.
As a game system designer at Turbine, publishers of Asheron’s Call, Full Sail graduate Chris Clay is currently engrossed in helping to create one of the most eagerly anticipated games in the genre – The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.
As a fan of both the series and online gaming, working on The Lord of the Rings Online has allowed Clay the opportunity to flex his creative muscles in a genre close to his heart. “For me, the allure of MMPs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) is the social aspect of it,” he explains. “I’ve got lots of friends that I’ve made through online games, and bringing that human interactivity into the Lord of the Rings realm is definitely a thrill. It’s all been really exciting, and I think we’ve set the bar really high with this game!”
Bringing the Rings universe online for the first time has proved a lengthy process for the Turbine team, with Clay having worked on the game for more than 3 years. One look at the game in action, though, and you know right away that the extra production time has helped create a deeply polished game – and one that Clay hopes will please longtime fans. “Especially with the movies being done as well as they were, there’s a lot of expectations to live up to. Ideally, we want people who saw the movies or read the books and just love Tolkien to be able to get in and not be intimidated.”
While MMPs have traditionally been the realm of the hardcore PC gamer, Turbine is hoping that The Lord of the Rings Online may just prove to be the title that opens up the world of massively multiplayer gaming to a whole new audience. “We’re definitely shooting for the game to be accessible to everyone, because we want to attract people who might not have played MMPs before,” Clay says. “We don’t want that incredibly hardcore experience where they’re like ‘What the heck do I do?’ So a lot of attention is being paid to making sure that you can sit someone down in front of it and even if they don’t know what an MMP is, they can actually sit down with the controls and succeed.”
Chris Clay has been at Turbine for nearly six years now, and as production winds down on the company’s latest high-profile project, there seems to be no sign of him slowing down. “I’m really passionate about things I believe in, and I’ve been really happy with how things have been going here at Turbine. Having been at Turbine as long as I have, the company’s grown a lot. We’re up to over 200 people now and I feel like we’re finally to the place that I want to be in development, where decisions are made quickly and mistakes are made quickly. A quick iteration cycle of making mistakes and fixing them is really important to me. Its very satisfying to take mistakes and turn them into successes.”
Of course, there’s more to life than work, and Clay has been lucky there as well. “The people at Turbine are great,” he says. “Turbine has given me great friends, a livelihood, and I met my wife at Turbine. Aside from the work, Turbine has been an important part of my social life – I’ve got a lot to thank Turbine for.”
