USA TODAY International Edition
Curt Schilling reveals his vision for gaming
Even before the majors, Curt Schilling, 45, had begun his video game career. He played classic games on Intellivision and Apple computers, and when he traveled during the baseball season, online games helped occupy his free time. Now he’s turned his talents to game making. A Q& A with Mike Snider:
Q: When did you decide to make the leap from gamer to gamemaker?
A: I had the conversations every gamer has. Why did they do this? Why didn’t they do that? The next evolution of that is, I can do this better, or We can do it better. I took that third step. You can call it smart or insanely stupid, but I put my money where my mouth was.
Q: When did game development become real for you?
A: Given what I did for a living, I’ve always been the eternal optimist. In my mind, I never doubted whether I was going to achieve what I wanted to do. I just had to decide what it is I wanted to do. In baseball, I was always in control of everything until I let the ball go. Here I let the ball go a lot sooner than I thought I was going to. But it is a byproduct of surrounding yourself with talented people.
Q: What’s special about Kingdoms of Amalur?
A: We went full tilt to get the best of everything we loved to play ( across multiple genres). A lot of times, that can either end up with a hodgepodge of something or a lot of nothing. I think setting out to do everything and be everything for everyone, a lot of games end up being nothing to anyone. In this game, the execution in those aspects is beyond those other games. Everybody sees the combat and the animations, but a lot of them are having a hard time believing ( it has) the depth and breadth. Q: What’s next? The massively multiplayer online game is in the works, ( and) we are working on Reckoning 2, doing a lot of groundwork. We believe the game and intellectual property will be incredibly successful.