Red 5, a studio formed by key members of the World of Warcraft development team has managed to raise $18.5 million in funding, which it plans to utilize to build its platform. In an interview with Next Generation, CEO Mark Kern made a few interesting comments on just how the studio plans to make use of the money, and what their future course of action is going to be.
“We’re not really a PC company or a PlayStation or 360 company,” he said. “We’re really about building an MMO as a platform. Because you’ve got essentially what’s a supercomputer on the backend, the question for us as game makers is what to do with that. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“Our goal is to continue to build our team, and this funding allows us to do that while building that technology base that can be used across multiple games, too. …It’s very hard for indies in a non-online setting to be sustainable as a business because of the inherent problems with the box business model. … Once you talk about online games and a revenue stream that lasts several years, that makes the dream possible.”
The studio is currently working on an MMORPG, set to be published by Korean company Webzen. Considering a lot of good MMO games out there are Korean by origin, it’s safe to assume that Red 5 must have set some pretty high standards for their new game, if they managed to impress Webzen.
Following Next Generation’s coverage of these events, GameDaily BIZ managed to snag an interview with Mark Kern as well. Here’s an excerpt from a bit I found particularly interesting:
BIZ: What do you see as the formula for success in the MMO market?
MK: That’s simple: get many subscribers! [Laughs] The more detailed answer is taking things global, appealing in Asia as much as in the West. We’re going to leverage the experience we have from WoW, about 8 key employees from Blizzard in total. Taewon Yun was there for Blizzard in Korea by helping to launch and operate WoW in Asia, really making it a success in that region, something unheard of for Western MMOs.
Sounds interesting. An MMO that appeals to everybody … but is it possible? As for Blizzard … first the Diablo 2 team quits, now this. What are they playing at? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Hellgate London and Red 5’s MMO turned out better than Diablo 3 and WoW.
