Curt Schilling’s video game finally gets on base
Curt Schilling, the former pitcher and two-time World Series champ is more nervous about his new video game than he ever was about baseball.
He told a New York crowd at an event put on by Electronic Arts on Tuesday that he slept like a baby before World Series games in 2007 — but didn’t catch a wink on Monday night ahead of the release of his company’s first video game.
Schilling’s personal fortune is on the line with “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,” a fantasy-action game that hit stores Tuesday. Schilling told Reuters last July he had invested between $30 million to $35 million of his own money into the 400-person company he founded that made the game.
“‘This is opening day of career 2.0,” he told the crowd . And it’s an opening day that’s seven years in the making–Schilling founded the company called 38 Studios (after his jersey number) in 2006.
Schilling has been a video fanboy for years. Peter Moore, EA’s chief operating officer said he first spoke with him in 2005. Schilling called Moore, who then worked at Microsoft, to see if he could get his hands on an advance copy of the Xbox 360.
Moore, who said he turned down phone calls from Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson that same day, took Schilling’s because he was a big Red Sox fan.
“We spoke one hour about massive multiplayer games. I tried to talk him out of it,” Moore said, of Schilling’s idea to bankroll a video game.
Penny Arcade Expo East: Nothing small here
Believe it or not, there were crowds gathered on Friday doing something else besides waiting for an iPad 2. About 60,000 people swarmed Boston for Penny Arcade East, a major convention for video game fans on the East Coast.
PAX doesn’t garner as much media attention as industry shows like E3 in Los Angeles each summer, where major games companies announce new products. While there aren’t as many reporters or or executives in attendance, PAX EAST is still a big event for gamers- the hoards of people who help make the $60.4 million video game industry bigger than Hollywood.
It’s for people like Andrew Hydrusko, a 23-year-old student who drove from Delaware with four friends so he could dress as his favorite Mega Man character, Protoman, at the show. He donned a poncho, bullets and a painted motorcycle helmet reminiscent of a power ranger, as he waited to play Guild Wars 2, an upcoming MMO game from NCsoft.
The publicly-traded Korean company lured people away from the main hall to a neighboring hotel so fans could fully immerse themselves in their game. With a raffle, an open bar and hors d’oeuvres promised, the lines got just as crazy as anything on the show floor next door.
Randall Price, senior vice president of global business at ArenaNet, which develops MMOs for NCsoft, says while PAX East isn’t as high-profile as some other shows, it’s his chance to interact one-on-one with passionate players of Guild Wars, which has sold 7 million copies since 2005.
“PAX is huge for us. This is where our fans get to tell us face-to-face what they are thinking about our game and what they want to see,” Price says.
Photo: Main show floor at PAX EAST by Liana B. Baker
WoW! Blizzard Entertainment turns 20
Blizzard Entertainment, the publisher of World of Warcaft and StarCraft 2 (Korea’s national past time) turns 20 this year. In February 1991, three UCLA grads, Allen Adham, Frank Pearce, and Mike Morhaime founded a publishing company called Silicon & Synapse. Based in Irvine, California, it would later go on to be known as Blizzard Entertainment and crank out $1.65 billion in revenue 2010.
Here are some highlights of an interview on Monday with two of three founders, Pearce and Morhaime, as well as Activision Blizzard’s CFO Thomas Tippl. Here’s a video the company made to celebrate.
ON HOW FAST THEY CAN GET OUT THE NEXT WORLD OF WARCRAFT UPDATE (CATACLYSM TOOK TWO YEARS):
“We want to do it faster. Two years is too long and one year is too aggressive for us in terms of being able to deliver the quality of content.”-Frank Pearce, Blizzard’s co-founder and executive vice president of product development
ON EA’S UPCOMING STAR WARS MASSIVE MULTI-PLAYER GAME ‘THE OLD REPUBLIC’:
“There is room for more than one successful MMO in the Western world.”- Mike Morhaime, Blizzard CEO, co-founder
