Funcom Questions

We will have the chance next week to interview Joel Bylos, Game Director of The Secret World. If you have any questions for him feel free to share these with us here

 

Joel,
In light of the upcoming release of Dreamfall: Chapters, I think many people are wondering... Did the time spent in your bunker at the end of days harm your relationship with Zoe?


-Bats
(oh... wait... you mean you wanted TBW-related questions? damn... sorry, I don't know anything about that game.)

 

My apologies, didn't notice there was a dedicated thread for questions.

So, to reiterate:


While I don't have that many questions personally, I'll try and post a few, just in case you should run out of things to talk about - nothing worse than awkward silence.

(the questions are, of course, directed at Joel)

1. How would you want to see the relation between TSW and TBW develop, if at all?
   • If so, what do you see as the primary challenge of creating such a bridge between TBW and TSW?
   • Would you rather see the factions of TSW put into TBW as-is, or as a "shadow" of their TSW counterparts?
   
   
2. If a bridge between the two IPs is made, how would this be expressed in TSW? One might imagine TBW agents came across an agent of one of the TSW factions in TBW, but how do you imagine TSW players might come across TBW agents?
   
   
3. Considering there is quite a bit of overlap between the two games, not only in terms of lore, but also in terms of pull (Investigation Missions/ARG puzzles), have you contemplated the financial benefits of supporting TBW during its infancy?
   • In addition, I am personally somewhat worried that over-exposing the link between TBW and TSW, might hinder the development of TBW as an independent (not disconnected) world. As such, if you have pondered whether to support TBW during this early stage - in exchange for the mutual benefit such interaction might carry for both games later on - how would you put to ease these concerns that any link between TSW and TBW at this stage might possibly push TBW from becoming something independent, back into being a sub-section for TSW?
     (e.g. co-operating with TBW, without players coming from TSW getting miffed that "This doesn't have anything to do with TSW!")
   
   
4. Other than financial support - either direct or indirectly via featuring it somewhere visible for the TSW community - how would you like to support TBW (if you do)? For example such as writing a mission, dropping hints towards TBW in TSW without directly linking the two (again, dependent on the level of interaction you and A&S decide upon), and so on.
   
5. What excites you, personally, the most about TBW?

Think that's it for now - they're a bit long winded, so that should hopefully make up for the relatively few questions. Not entirely sure if they're fitting for the interview, but, as mentioned, "just in case" you need something to ask

 

1. Joel, I love TSW, because the close connection to the real world is so fascinating and the community is just great. Furthermore TSW was and is a MMO for players with brains . TBW is driving this as ARG one step further. I would also like to see in the future a close interaction / integration of both games. Do you see opportunities for this? And if so, in what form?

2. In what form can Funcom as a company or you personally support TBW (as spin-off of TSW)?

3. In TSW was talk of puzzle quests that require the cooperation of many players some time ago. Would not this be an ideal starting point for The Black Watchmen?

4. Can we (The Black Watchmen) please get a secret headquarters in Tokyo or in one of the other main cities (within TSW)? PLEEAAASSE! That would be amazing!!

Thank you!

 

It occurs to me (having just glanced at the rather hostile TBW thread over there) that this is something that should probably be plugged over on the TSW forums, considering all the "it's not really TSW" sentiment.

-Bats

 

My thought wasn't that it would be worth arguing the point (it clearly isn't), but that it might be worth mentioning the upcoming interview and/or asking for questions over there.

Of course, the more I think about it, the less certain I am that it would be a good idea to bring it up before it's actually released.

I've been feeling like there's an awful lot of hostility over there, but, after re-reading the thread (after spending far longer than I care to admit on trying to figure out how to write this post diplomatically), I realized that it's basically just two people incessantly bitching, against a fairly steady stream of support (a lot of it, naturally, from names I also recognize from here).

In a practical sense, that could actually a good thing - having the ARG conversation spread over multiple fora just makes developments that much more difficult to follow, and fragments the community (both of which tend to be a significant problem even between forums and IRC)... but on a personal level, I'd be sad to see it happen. I haven't paid much attention lately (outside the ARG forum), but it really used to be a great community.

Admirably


-Bats
(speaking of things that make me sad to lose, does anyone know what ever happened to Ariensky? He'd been around since the very early ('07ish?) TSW ARGs, but disappeared off the forums shortly after the end of End of Days)