Interview with Jess Lebow of Carbine: The Next Big Thing?
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http://www.edge-online.com/features/we- ... orking-wowCarbine is composed of industry veterans, a great number of whom were formerly World of Warcraft developers who left Blizzard to form the studio, and who later hooked up with NCSoft. Their executive producer Jeremy Gaffney was a VP at NCSoft and co-founder of Turbine, where he headed up the development team for Asheron’s Call. From the ex-Blizzard core group of ten, the team has grown to 45 at last count.
“It’s a very seasoned team,” says Jess. “It reminds me a lot of working at Arena Net, when we were developing Guild Wars. It’s like working for an all-star team where everyone is as good as they can be in the position they’re at.”
Rosethorn: Is this an original IP?
Jess: It’s an original IP. It’s also a proprietary engine that they’ve been working on for about three years. We’re just about ready to get the green light to start hiring and building up our team to ramp this up and get production going.
Rosethorn: You told me before that it’s a sci-fantasy setting?
Jess: Yes and that’s one of the challenges we’re going to face. We have an overarching storyline of what the game world is going to be. My job is to take that and translate it into gameplay and add some bits to it so it evolves as you go along. One of the important things is to make science fiction and fantasy work together. We’re very early in the story implementation process, so it will surely evolve over time. We have a story, we have a world, there are sci-fi elements to it, there is space travel and there is magic as well.
Rosethorn: What else can you tell us about the game?
Jess: There will be different unique races. Players get to choose sides or factions so obviously there will be a PvP endgame but my focus is more on the PvE end and telling the story in a world where anything is possible. We’re not going to have the constraints of a typical fantasy world. We’re going to be able to use communication devices, for example. The average player is going to have a lot of content. We’re going to be releasing some screenshots of the game soon, so at that point I’ll be able to talk more about it. It’s a great game.