With all the controversy about EA’s business model for Star Wars: Battlefront 2, former SWTOR developer Damion Schubert offer some insights on the hated lootboxes. The whole conversion can be found on twitter and in our copy pate below: Damion Schubert was the Senior Designer/Lead Designer/Director of Microtransactions Design at SWTOR (May 2006 – October 2014). He was responsible for initial conception and design of key new F2P, monetization features, including random pack design, dye mods, minipets, player vehicles and animal mounts, and player housing (according to his Linkedin profile) Let’s talk lootboxes, and how annoying it is to watch AAA publishers fuck them up from the perspective of someone who has to design to them. (1) I’ve been working in Free-to-Play games for 4 years, and loot boxes are pretty crucial to that business model working. But it *is* possible to do them ethically, and they are super easy to fuck up….
Damion Schubert
Q&A session from community Cantina – Seattle, August 31
Redna and chill from ootinicast.com went to the Community Cantina held in Seattle on Saturday evening, 31 August 2013. There they had the chance to sit in on the Q&A session featuring Amber Green (Live Services Specialist) and Eric Musco (Community Manager) and Lead Designer Damion Schubert. The Community Cantina in Seattle might have been the biggest cantina ever, with more then 300 people in attendance. Therefor they had to split up the whole thing, including Q&A, into two parts, and the second round barely got everyone in who was still in line. The Q&A transcript also includes some questions that was asked afterwards that weren’t part of the formal Q&A. Check ot the snippet below, and read the whole ting over at ootinicast.com Q: Why not more playable species, like Nautilans? A: Each species takes tons of time to develop for all the options, moves, and so on. Because Cathar sold well, they are in…
SWTOR Cartel Coin Card Availability Update from Damion Schubert
Have you tried to buy any SWTOR Cartel Coin cards yet? Have you ran into any problems? DamionSchubert, SWTOR Lead Designer came into the forums yesterday to give us an update on the Cartel Coin card availability. This is actually a very useful post for anyone who plans on purchasing these since there has been a lot of confusion surrounding them both now and before they even launched. The post from Damion in the official forums reads: Current Status: Walmart. Physical cards are available in many Wal*marts. You may want to call ahead, they’ apparently sell out very quickly. Best Buy. You need to find a Best Buy with a Pre-order Kiosk. On that Kiosk, search for “Star Wars Old Republic” and you should see a 2400 cartel coin offering. Print a receipt, take it to the register, and they will print out a code for you. There are no…
BioWare on Grade 7 Ship parts costs
With Game update 1.6 new Heroic Space Missions saw the light of the day, and with that also new tier 7 ship parts. These are of course supposed to help players complete these new challenging missions. To get these new upgrades you need to spend hundreds of Daily and Fleet Commendations or just purchase them on the Cartel Market. This have off course sparked a huge debate with players crying “Pay 2 win”. Today Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez made a forum post with feedback from Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert indicating that BioWare is looking for solutions to reduce the gap between the two paths: Hi everyone, I’ve spoken to the design team about the issue of Grade 7 ship upgrades and the cost in game (resources and time) versus the cost on the Cartel Market, since this concern was raised by a number of people on our forums. Our Lead Designer for the game, Damion Schubert, has this to say: Unfortunately, there…
SWTOR F2P & Future content interview with Damion Schubert
Dulfy had the opportunity to interview Lead Designer Damion Schubert regarding the F2P option launching yesterday. Dulfy was good enough to take questions from the readers of her blog. reading through the interview I found some of the most interesting key points to be: Armor dyes seems to be in the pipeline No new items to the VIP/Collectors Edition vendors Cathar race will be by purchase only Returning events (i.e. sell your rakghoul items now before the word gets out) Check out the full interview over at dulfu.net or read our small snippet below: What was the biggest challenge in converting such a massive MMO into a FTP model? It would have to be giving away as much as humanly possible to our free to play players, while still ensuring that our subscribers felt like they were getting a great value. Both populations of players are a key component to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s path forward,…
Developer Update: Free-to-Play Option by Damion Schubert
With Free-to-Play going live later this month, Lead Designer
GDC Online 2012: SWTOR’s Damion Schubert Dissects Story as a Mechanic
This is a spinoff of the story we just recently brought you from Gamasutra but it goes back to the original source, Damion Schubert and what he has to say about SWTOR and story as a mechanic in the game. It’s definitely a different approach than other MMOs have taken at the game mechanic and we know how important BioWare places their storyline so if anyone could pull it off, we suspect it would be them. However, I bet no one knew exactly how hard it would be to pull it off and to sell it to the gamers. At the Game Developer’s Conference right here in Austin, Schubert talked about this challenge in more detail. Massively had a nice story covering what Schubert says at the conference and their own take on it. Massively reports: At the Game Developers Conference in Austin, Texas, this week, Schubert spent an hour explaining the…
SWTOR’s Complex Challenge: From Gamasutra
“BioWare’s Damion Schubert is a systems designer, not a writer. Yet he ended up dealing with those elements anyway, as the first designer with MMO experience on a team of traditional BioWare writers. His job was to tell them what elements of an MMO need to be considered in the story design process.” This is from an intro to a story from Gamasutra about SWTOR and the challenges they have had to face with the game. They talk about the complex challenge that SWTOR faced- BioWare story in an MMO world. One thing that I love so much about Gamasutra is the quality in which they can make a point. Some will say that SWTOR failed, although there are still many hardcore fans who stand by the game. There are others who believe it failed on a subscription model but is going to do just fine as f2p. But when…