Jason
chasing a bee
<strong>[ Interview ]</strong>
<p><a href="http://www.galciv2.com/" target="_blank" title="Stardock">Stardock's</a> Brad Wardell granted an <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061115/mcmaster_01.shtml" target="_blank" title="Interview">interview</a> to Gamasutra to discuss MMOs, RPGs, and LEGOs. More importantly, he discussed what happened with that Master of Magic deal everyone was so excited about.</p><blockquote><p>GS: That's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. I wanted to ask about the Master of Magic license. You guys looked into that didn't you?</p><p>BW: Yeah, we did. We pursued it. Actually, Atari came to us a while ago. I thought they had a pretty good idea. That is, over the years, Atari has collected a lot of good IP (Intellectual Property) like X-Com, Star Control, Master of Orion, Master of Magic and a lot of others that a lot of people didn't realize that they held. So they came to us and said "We're not really interested in publishing these things ourselves, but what we'd like to do is license out the trademarks to third parties like you guys and we'll make a royalty off of them." So, we sat down and decided that Master of Magic would be our first, since it's close to something we'd done and Master of Orion 3 had already come out. We were able to agree on the money, so we thought everything was set, then their legal guys got involved, and that's where it stalled. They wanted the right to approve any marketing we did with a mutli-day stipulation. Say, for instance, me talking to you right now would be considered marketing and I would have to have approval first. That sort of thing. Then there was the weird thing, like if the game was manufactured overseas, someone from the company would have to be onsite to make sure there was no child labor. </p><p>GS: That's pretty odd. Do you mean from you guys or from Atari?</p> <p>BW: Oh, from Stardock. So if we were doing a Korean or Russian version, someone from here would have to be there. There were all sorts of things in there that made it difficult to do. Then Atari ran into financial difficulties and we just decided to do our own fantasy strategy game. At that point, no one was really doing a Master of Magic. I think that there's a strong market for a fantasy strategy game that has some of the elements of Master of Magic like random maps and building your own cities. It's not really a competitor to an Age of Wonders or Heroes of Might and Magic, they're completely different game mechanics.</p></blockquote><p>Wardell goes on to say that Stardock offered them six figures for the MoM rights and Atari turned them down. Atari should just give everything else up and develop a game that involves throwing money down a virtual toilet. </p><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.shacknews.com/">Shack News</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.galciv2.com/" target="_blank" title="Stardock">Stardock's</a> Brad Wardell granted an <a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061115/mcmaster_01.shtml" target="_blank" title="Interview">interview</a> to Gamasutra to discuss MMOs, RPGs, and LEGOs. More importantly, he discussed what happened with that Master of Magic deal everyone was so excited about.</p><blockquote><p>GS: That's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. I wanted to ask about the Master of Magic license. You guys looked into that didn't you?</p><p>BW: Yeah, we did. We pursued it. Actually, Atari came to us a while ago. I thought they had a pretty good idea. That is, over the years, Atari has collected a lot of good IP (Intellectual Property) like X-Com, Star Control, Master of Orion, Master of Magic and a lot of others that a lot of people didn't realize that they held. So they came to us and said "We're not really interested in publishing these things ourselves, but what we'd like to do is license out the trademarks to third parties like you guys and we'll make a royalty off of them." So, we sat down and decided that Master of Magic would be our first, since it's close to something we'd done and Master of Orion 3 had already come out. We were able to agree on the money, so we thought everything was set, then their legal guys got involved, and that's where it stalled. They wanted the right to approve any marketing we did with a mutli-day stipulation. Say, for instance, me talking to you right now would be considered marketing and I would have to have approval first. That sort of thing. Then there was the weird thing, like if the game was manufactured overseas, someone from the company would have to be onsite to make sure there was no child labor. </p><p>GS: That's pretty odd. Do you mean from you guys or from Atari?</p> <p>BW: Oh, from Stardock. So if we were doing a Korean or Russian version, someone from here would have to be there. There were all sorts of things in there that made it difficult to do. Then Atari ran into financial difficulties and we just decided to do our own fantasy strategy game. At that point, no one was really doing a Master of Magic. I think that there's a strong market for a fantasy strategy game that has some of the elements of Master of Magic like random maps and building your own cities. It's not really a competitor to an Age of Wonders or Heroes of Might and Magic, they're completely different game mechanics.</p></blockquote><p>Wardell goes on to say that Stardock offered them six figures for the MoM rights and Atari turned them down. Atari should just give everything else up and develop a game that involves throwing money down a virtual toilet. </p><p>Spotted @ <a href="http://www.shacknews.com/">Shack News</a></p>
uch: I am happy if they succed in making a game in the same vein as the original. Hopefully they manage to make it feel more diverisfied than GC2, which while I liked it for a while felt like they needed something more to it.
