Interview: Jack Emmert - Chief Creative Officer, Cryptic

For a guy who grew up on Dungeons & Dragons, lives and breathes role playing and was destined for a life of academia (try telling me anyone with two Masters degrees is thinking otherwise) Jack Emmert is, well, cool.

He’s got that genius thing going on. He’s as comfortable talking about politics as he is about game design, and he’s seriously connected in the MMO and gaming world. Then again when Massive Online Gamer magazine released it’s 20 most influential people in Massively Multiplayer videogames, Jack did come in at #5 (ahead of the likes of Richard “Lord British” Garriot and Square Enix execs, but behind Blizzard’s Rob Pardo).

Emmert – whose calm demeanour and steely shoulder length hair makes him come across as a intellectually superior Dicko – has a thing for superheroes, obviously. City of Heroes gave way to City of Villains. Then Cryptic got the Marvel Superhero MMO gig from Microsoft, but ultimately opted to blaze their own path of “total customisation” (a company mantra) for their heroes. And so Champions Online was born.

We got a chance to have Jack lay it out for us – here’s what went down:

BigPond Games: From what we’ve seen it looks as if Champions Online is aimed at a pretty hardcore audience. Would you agree?

Jack Emmert, Chief Creative Officer, Cryptic Studios: It depends on your definition of “hardcore”. We’re no more hardcore than WoW [World of Warcraft] is… it’s really just EverQuest done really well, but is extremely accessible to the game market, and one could easily make the case that …this is a game for gamers. We’re not aiming for the 40-50 year old housewife in Nebraska – which is actually what many companies are attempting to get. We’re not, we’re gamers, we know that. Look - you played D&D when you were younger, you’re gonna love Champions. You loved the Spiderman movies and you’ve got a console at home, you’re gonna love this game. That’s what really what we’re aiming for. I’m not making any claims like “oh we’re Sims”.


One of these guys lives in a fake world with artifical people; the other makes MMOs

BG: How much background knowledge would be required to play Champions?

JE:Well I’d hope none, for a lot of people for instance anybody playing Australia I’m sure they’ve never heard of Champions, really we want them to be able to play and absorb the storyline as they go along. Star Wars had this huge storyline when you walked in. Remember when Luke’s talking to Ben and he’s like “oh you fought in the Clone Wars!”?. I didn’t know what the Clone Wars were, and even after the recent set of movies I wish I didn’t BUT it’s that alluding to the greater storyline and having places for the person to learn about that’s what our goal is. So slowly but surely they’ll be introduced to this universe.

BG: Do you think console gamers are ready for a subscription based model?

JE: Boy, otherwise we’re in terrible trouble!

BG: That’s a dumb question…?

JE: [points at mobile phone] Do you pay a subscription for your phone? Do you pay for cable in Australia? Is that a subscription fee?

BG: Yep.

JE: So basically most of us (at least as far as I know most of us) have tonnes of subscription fees and we don’t really care about them at all. It doesn’t matter if we’re console gamers or non-console gamers what hasn’t been properly communicated is the value of a subscription in terms of an MMO. That’s just a matter of messaging and marketing.

It’s the best value in the world. You buy a new console game for $50-60 US, maybe you get 10-20 hours of gameplay. At $14.95 or twenty bucks, whatever the price is a month are you’re getting hundreds of hours of content, new stuff delivered to you every few months.

I think that people are more than happy to pay a subscription fee as long as they know what it is: “Oh I’m getting HBO, Showtime and Cinematix, great I’ll pay the subscription fee” – that’s not a problem. 1000 minutes on my cellphone. As long as we’re pretty straightforward about the product we’re delivering – what they’re getting out of it – people realise it’s actually good value and quite frankly we’re the first, but we were the first to do a superhero MMO in the first place.

BG: Do you think microtransactions are something you’ll consider down the line?

JE: I think subscription plus microtransactions we’re really in favour of that. I think anyone who thinks that microtransactions are the only way to go… here I think it’s an option but I think the subscription model’s a far more proven business [model].

Subscription fees allow developers to invest a lot more money into the product, which gives you a deeper product.

BG: You previously stated that Cryptic are in favour of player triggered world events… do you think seasonality-based events also have a place in Champions?

JE: Oh definitely a combination of both. Our company’s focus is putting more power into the player’s hands. Heck if players can throw their own events if we give them the tools we’d love to do that. We’re not quite there yet but we’ll definitely be doing seasonal events in combination with player triggered ones.

BG: Whose got the more difficult job? 2K in marketing and distributing Champions, or you putting it out and maintaining it?

JE: 2K in dealing with us [laughs]. The challenge is this is 2K’s first MMO, and I think that will be a learning experience for them. They’re one of the top publishers in the game industry. There’s no question some of their titles are the hottest and everybody recognises IPs like BioShock and Grand Theft Auto… but from our point we developed the game…the difficulty is translating it onto a console.

I think [for] 2k/Take 2 it’s going to be a learning experience. But we chose them because they were pretty smart. There’s a lot of dumbos in the industry. I talk to just about everybody.about Champions, and the great thing about 2K in my opinion was they were pretty sharp. They were among the sharpest guys around and they didn’t waste any time. There are a lot of really dumb people in the game industry.

BG: Okay and now can we have the names of the dumb people in the games industry?

[Laughter]

JE: I think you know the ones. You have these endless meetings and nothing gets decided. They don’t know what they’re doing and suddenly…boom. You can actually easily track them by looking at their stock prices.

JK: Last question. What traits would you like to think the typical Champions player will possess post launch? Shared attributes or values?

JE: I would like Champions players to be more social than other MMO players. Other MMOs its about the XP grind, it’s more about getting the loot. It’s not so much about enjoying the experience or meeting new people. I would say that is really something I’d love to see; I love it to be people who have had a hard day at work would sit at their computer and think “ah I’ll just play for half an hour” and then the night’s gone. Just the ability to release themselves just as comic books were a release for me…still are. I guess that’s what I’d hope.


Jack’s a legend – in the Aussie and general meaning of the term. Straight talking and one bright penny. Thanks to 2K and Cryptic for arranging the chat.