We went Tigger on Meg from Next Island and bounced and pounced around her, until she finally had enough of us and agreed to do a short interview with us. The wonderful thing about Tiggers is In a recent post on the Next Island Forum you refered to challenges that Next Island is trying to deal with. What would you say is the single biggest challenge facing Next Island at the moment, and what will be done to deal with it? Meg: For me, the biggest challenge is simply that we have such a small team. We have some very talented people here, though, working really hard to make a good game. Ancient Greece was introduced and announced early 2010, and discovered March 6th. Is Ancient Greece considered to be finsihed, or will future updates work on adding more content to it? Meg: I don't consider ancient Greece to be finished. I'm really sad that there have been so many development delays, but it's also exciting to me to have a gorgeous ancient Greek world, and be able to design quests to be set in this environment. There's a lot of potential here for gameplay, both by adding activities to the lovely ancient Greek environment and by taking full advantage of the time-travel game mechanic. Speaking of Time-Travel, are there any plans for releasing the next Time Travel location anywhere in the near future? If so, where would Next Islanders be able to hop to next? Meg: David [Post, Next Island's CEO] has a lot of plans for more time travel destinations, he's discussed some very ambitious ideas. My personal goals, though, are to fill Greece and tropical Next Island with characters and missions. One of the exciting new introductions made recently to Next Island was the introduction of themed merchandising items, starting of with a Transformers shirt, followed by a helmet. Are there plans for adding more Next Island items like Armour, Weapons, Clothes and Furniture, and is the long-term goal to have the time travel locations have their very own craftable items? Meg: Yes! I have some lovely plans for Greek clothing! Right now, I'm working with our art teams on two blueprints for Greek clothing. These will be craftable and colorable garments that can be worn in Ancient Greece as well as tropical. I expect to be able to release these in November. With Harold Sipe moving to a new project, does that mean you will be shifting jobs internally, like for instance moving away from doing community relations towards more producing and/or developing? Meg: I am moving more into development, but it's not really related to Harold leaving... If one were determined to tie the two events together, I'd say that Harold's experience in games and his encouragement were incredibly helpful as I took on more design responsibilities! I had a bit more of a creative role in the October 4th release. I wrote the Tom Shepherd mission, and there's an upcoming mission in November starring Tom's girlfriend, Miranda. Since I've been at Next Island in more of a support role for a while now, I see how big the challenges are here. I'm sure you're aware too. Still, it's been kind of my dream since I was a kid to make computer games, so I'm really excited about it. I'm on the dev team now, but I'll still be posting on our dev blog (nextisland.com/blog), and our Facebook page (facebook.com/nextisland). You mentioned that you have always dreamt of working on making games. Now that you do, is it what you expected? Meg: It's really exciting to see what goes into the game, and I work with some very talented people in our NY office. After a few more releases, I'll tell you if my imagination and my real life matched up. How much personal creativity are you able to add to the Next Island environment, and it is difficult to ensure your ideas fit with the storyline envisioned by David Post? Meg: This is definitely David Post's gameworld, within the framework of the Entropia Universe. Our development priorities are set by David, and the Elysian back story was written by David. I'm excited to be contributing to the project, even in a smaller way. How would you describe working with Harold over the last few months? Has his involvement paved the way for a smoother implementation in the future? Meg: Harold Sipe is an extremely talented producer. I'm glad he came to work here, and I hope I find myself working with him again. He did an amazing job establishing a workflow and communication systems between distant teams. What does a typical day in the life for Meg at Next Island currently look like? Meg: Our staff is pretty small, so I end up doing a lot of different projects. This week, I attended a brainstorming session where David Post outlined his visions for the game, I attended production meetings with our brilliant programmers and platform guys to discuss what's doable, and I worked with the rest of the dev team to solve problems and plan a good game balance. I spend a lot of time at my computer writing dialogue flowcharts, collecting art references, and looking at blueprint specs, and then I sign into the test server to try to break the missions and items I've designed. And I try to find time to get on the blog and forum to tell the players what we're working on. You referred to a November update. Will Next Island strive to have one content update every month? Meg: I think we're all working towards monthly updates. It's a good way to use our development and production bandwidth, and to unfold the story of Next Island and the Elysians. How much is typically put into a content update? Recently we saw some a couple of new missions appear, will future updates be adding more, volume-wise? Meg: I expect them to be along the lines of the October 4th release, with a couple stories and a few items. Obviously, we all want lots of releases containing lots of content, but the more realistic goal is small, solid releases on a regular basis. Meg, thank you for giving us a brief moment from your undoubtedly busy schedule.
The highlighted part did catch my attention earlier today. Ancient Greece shall be a bustling place, with a large number of quests, with all the mythology and philosophy, a mini MMO of its own within NI within EU. And it needs a theater where 'RL' actors perform classic drama with avatars.
What it needs is a amphitheater where gladiators can fight and win glorious battles to the peoples amusement!!
So, other than amphi theaters, colloseums, aquaducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, health, wines, public baths and public order. What have the Romans ever done for us?
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to interview you :) Now with that said... Are there any women here today??
Ok, there's the complete script. Maybe we should aim at having at least 10% of the posts in a thread on-topic.
I would like to add that the flow of information from NI is great. Regular updates, previews, screenshots, etc. And most important: It's easily accessible for everyone and it's pure information. Professional! There are several EU companies who could learn a lesson from NI...
