Eidos Picks Up Conan MMOG

Gamespot has the word that Eidos will be publishing the delayed Massive game Age of Conan, with a release date sometime next year. They've also revealed it's being developed for one or more of the next-gen consoles. From the article: "The deal marks the first time that Eidos has become involved with either an MMORPG or a game based on the Conan character. The fictional barbarian was created by the late author Robert E. Howard in print during the 1930s and played by Arnold Schwarzenegger on film in the 1980s. (The Conan films also costarred Japanese-American character actor Mako, who succumbed to cancer over the weekend.) The franchise has since spawned novels, comic books, and a short-lived television series starring German bodybuilder Ralf Moeller (Gladiator). "

Comments

Another MMO?

[Ryan Amos]

How many MMOs can the market support? MMOs are absolutely dependent on achieving critical mass to be successful, and with so many out there and how many are so time consuming you can only play one at a time, it seems that more of them should be failing. Are they just being propped up by VC or are these companies genuinely turning a profit?

Re:I hope the movie does not influence the game.

[ultranova]

If Conan was Howard's only character that had a large number of stories, or Howard only wrote sword and sorcery fiction, or Howard was a complete recluse, or Howard never tried to publish his stories but only recorded them, I would give some credence to the idea he believed Conan himself actually told the stories. As it is, I think at best it's an urban legend, at worst it's a marketing campaign Howard or someone else invented to boost sales.

It's a description of a certain kind of feeling. You sit in front of your computer (or typewriter or pen and paper) and the story and characters in your mind are so strong that the text seems to write itself. You can see the events you write flash in front of your eyes. You can feel the characters you write about standing behind you, telling their story. Of course you know they aren't really there, but it sure feels like they were. And when it feels like that to the writer, it feels like that to the reader too. That's why Howard's Conan is so popular.

It's the literature equivalent of the trance some coders can fall to, and it's the difference between those characters that can endure the test of time and those that can't: the enduring characters are those their writers imbued with a soul, so that they feel real to the writer and reader alike. A character that doesn't seem to talk to its writer is going to be little more than a puppet on strings; while you can still make very nice string puppet shows, the puppet cannot hold a candle to a real human, imagined or otherwise. Unless the puppet happens to be a Muppet, but then again, Muppets were arguable imbued by souls by their creator...

This got a bit metaphysical, but the point is that Howard was really quite serious and quite correct: Conan spoke to him. That is where the stories intensity and power comes from.