Know your role: Warhammer Online’s ‘big three’ explain their dev team jobs
Fresh out of their recent presentation at the New York Comic Con 2008, EA Mythic‘s Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, Creative Director Paul Barnett, and Associate Producer Josh Drescher took the time to explain the different roles they had in the development team of Warhammer Onine: Age of Reckoning. You can read all about their responses by clicking on the “read more” link below.
Taking off from the recent presentation at the New York Comic Con 2008, EA Mythic‘s “big three” were able to stop by during an interview conducted by MMORPG.COM and explained the different duties they played behind the development of their upcoming MMO title, Warhammer Onine: Age of Reckoning.
As a collective trio, Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, Creative Director Paul Barnett, and Associate Producer Josh Drescher had to do a lot of PR work by showing up at various conventions and events to promote their new game. This forced them to operate remotely many times in various locations where any public relations work was needed to help boost Warhammer Online‘s image.
An important thing they also noted about their job was the ability to respond to the customer base and understand what they think about the features the development team have planned. They constantly made it a point to talk to the customers, either through their dev diaries or live events, to keep everyone updated on the face of the game.
To help break down each individual’s roles, Barnett described the different tasks assigned to them in the development team. Barnett describes his job as “ruthless delegation”. He makes sure that the overall vision of the game was being followed according to Lead Designer Mark Jacobs. He also comes up with different ideas and concepts which help bring Jacobs’ design into play.
Hickman’s role as Senior Producer makes sure that he is constantly on the lookout for any problem which may occur during development. He basically brings together the vision for the team and puts into perspective every last detail about the game being put together.
Finally, Drescher “does a bajillion things” as the Associate Producer. It’s up to him to collect all the pertinent information together from marketing, forum and boards to presenting. This means a lot of his time is spent traveling from place to place to help coordinate these events.
All in all, the development team has a big job on their hands if they want to properly deliver Warhammer Online to its many expectant fans. However, they seem more than up to the task considering all three members put together in front of its 250-strong dev team at EA Mythic. In any case, we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning when it goes live this fall.