Interview with Emma Jones (Mir)
September 25th, 2007
HeavenGames: Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role at Massive Entertainment?
Emma Jones: My name is Emma Jones and I am the Community Manager for World in Conflict. I have worked in the gaming industry for a bit over two years now, started out at the European Blizzard office in France. It was a great experience, but it’s nice to be back in Sweden
As a Community Manager I am present on the forums, although I’m trying to pool some of the forum work over to Vextor and daNte to give me more time for the behind-the-scenes work. At the moment we’re working hard for a release of a mod making tool – among many other things. I’m also trying to organise the events Massive plan to attend in the coming months.
HG: What’s a typical day like for you at the office?
Emma: Umm… I normally come in a bit earlier to the office for an hour of peace and quiet before the horde of coders storms in… I start checking new incoming e-mails and take care of the most urgent things, and then I try to list what needs to be done during the day and follow up tasks from the day before.
During the day I have a look at my list and try to make sure I have everything covered. Planning our participation in events and stuff can be a bit random, because you never know when to get replies from the people I hassle with my million questions…
Throughout the week I try to keep up to date on what’s happening in the community, and gather links and news to add to my news letter. On Fridays I compile all this for updating the Propaganda Wall on massgate.net. There are so many things happening! It’s great to be a part of an active community.
Every now and then I get interrupted by weird questions and issues I need to look up – it can be anything really. No two days are alike in this job
HG: How did you guys come up with the idea for World in Conflict, especially the unique style of Multiplayer games?
Emma: Having worked on the Ground Control games, we felt an urge to further refine our vision for the strategy genre, but with a more realistic touch.
The 1980’s Cold War setting became the obvious choice once we started to list potential settings since we wanted to try something new. The multiplayer style grew from our aim to make a strategy game that didn’t follow the conventional build-up mechanics that is so tightly affiliated with the genre.
We wanted to move towards something more similar to the shooter genre, with the same kind of fast-paced action. We wanted to make our multiplayer very accessible and explosive. And we succeeded!
HG: How often do you get to play World in Conflict? When you do, what’s your favorite faction and role?
Emma: It depends on the work load, but normally I play at least a few matches a day – during my lunch break or in the evening when I get home. The last week has been way too hectic though, but I look forward to having more time soon for some serious playing.
I normally play as armour, it’s the role I started out with and still feel most comfortable with. Especially if I have some nice support player covering my heavy tanks with anti-air and repair trucks
Regarding faction, I don’t mind that much. I play as USSR more often because they have way cooler accents… But if I play several matches in a row on the same server and with the same people I tend to switch team if I notice that one is way better than the other. It’s more fun to play if the teams are a bit balanced when it comes to the player skills (and it doesn’t really feel fair to stay in one team and keep bashing the team with less practised players).
HG: What was it like trying to come up with the different medals, ranks, and the requirements for them?
Emma: What we basically wanted to do was give the community various challenges that appeals to both the casual players and the more hardcore ones. Medals and military ranks just came naturally, with World in Conflict being a war game, and the design and requirements were hand-selected from many different ideas.
HG: What’s the Massive team up to now that World in Conflict is released?
Emma: The team is pretty divided at the moment, looking at different things. A lot of the team are dedicated to supporting World in Conflict post-release, while others are looking further into the future. =)
HG: Anything else you want to add for the World in Conflict fans?
Emma: As said before, it’s great to be part of such an active and caring community. We want to support the players in the effort of making this the best community in the world, and are planning for future releases of tools we think will benefit the community.
We just started a new forum for mod and map making where people can share their ideas, and plan for a release of map and mod making tools in the future (in a month or so). We know you are anxious to have the tool out as soon as possible, and we are working hard to make you a tool and a tutorial that we can be proud to release, so hang in there a bit longer!
We have other surprises in store for you, stay tuned!
HG: Thanks so much for taking the time out of your day for the interview Emma, we’ll let ya get back to work!
