38 Studios Yanks Everyone’s Chain At Comic Con

38 Studios is a brand new MMO development house founded by Boston Red Sox pitcher and long-time MMO player Curt Schilling. 38 Studios has been working on a new MMO, but little is actually known about the title. What we knew up until now:

• It’s a fantasy-based game.
• Schilling’s brought on author R.A. Salvatore to design the game universe and pen the back story.
• Schilling’s also enlisted Todd McFarlane to do the artwork for the game.
• Also on board are some veterans of the MMO game industry.
• And there’s going to be more details announced about the game at Comic Con.

A number of gaming sites were rather eagerly covering this story. Schilling’s an old hand at MMOs, even appearing as an NPC in EQII. This gives him, um, “street cred” with gamers. In addition, the official 38 Studios announcement talked about “exploring the new intellectual property” and giving gamers a glimpse into their new online world. This is all good; building buzz for a new MMO can only help the game succeed.

Being an MMO site (as well as being fans of Schilling himself) we duly attended the Comic Con announcement. We even stayed a little later than we had planned in order learn a little something about this new MMO. This was a big feat, considering we had just been pummeled by 60,000 or so nerds and geeks who were back-pack inept and hadn’t bathed in days. Elvyra, by the way, is not very good in environments like this. Come to think of it, Elvyra’s actually not very good in any environment where there are more than five people in a 20 mile radius.

We checked in at McFarlane’s booth and a staffer told us the big announcement would indeed be today at 4:00 PM as planned. I look at my watch and realize we had 20 minutes to get there. Being that we were surounded on all sides by wookies with lightsabers, naughty anime nurses and full grown men in Pikachu costumes, we dutifully started our journey through the throng toward the panel discussion and announcement.

When we got there, we noticed that Schilling wasn’t there. How could the Master of Ceremonies not be at his own announcement? We later learned that he’d suffered a pitching injury and was doing some rehab and pitching a couple of minor league games. It was understandable, as it’s hard to break away from his “travelling with the team” commitments.

McFarlane handled all the announcements, which included a discussion of all the products he’s currently working on. I learned about new Spawn figures, various other action figurines, even new Simpsons stuff. Elvyra and I both looked at each other with raised eyebrows several times, wondering where this was all going.

The whole thing dragged on for a while before McFarlane finally got to a taped announcement by Schilling. The taped segment, much to our surprise, was at most 20 seconds long. It consisted of Schilling declaring his faith in McFarlane and Salvatore and their handling the 38 Studios announcements/discussion in his absence.

Uh, what? That was all Schilling had to say? Surely, there had to be more.

We may not have learned anything about the new MMO, but we sure learned about the new “Commando Spawn” figurines.

And boy was there. Yessiree. McFarlane continued to discuss the game, almost as a side venture, mentioning it several times during his speech. His other projects also received co-equal billing. We waited patiently as the discussion meandered onward. In regard to the MMO, there were several, um, stunning developments:

• We know the game is based in a fantasy universe.
• We know the game is produced by 38 Studios. That’s the studio that’s founded by Curt Schilling. He pitches for the Red Sox.
• We know the game has some serious game development veterans involved.
• We know the game’s story and background is being authored by R.A. Salvatore.
• We know the art is being done by McFarlane himself.

Yep, that seemed to be the announcement. In case you’re missing my sarcasm here, the announcement/discussion appeared to be nothing more than a rehash of the crap we already knew. In all honesty, it was hard to be sure what McFarlane was saying, as any factoids about the game were mixed in with tidbits about various figurines and other projects he had in development. In a nutshell, this meandering foray turned out NOT to be the “more details about the new MMO” that we were promised.

Here you see Todd McFarlane leading a panel discussion about his new MMO project.  Oh, wait, never mind.  He’s still talking about Spawn. 

The MMO was the reason they called a panel discussion discussion in the first place, wasn’t it? McFarlane’s own staff seemed to think so when we’d asked earlier. As this non-directional mess dragged on, Elvyra was losing her patience. These moments are so entertaining; I really wish I could capture how funny she is when she gets ticked. “These dudes need to get a clue,” muttered Elvyra next to me. “Maybe they should go to some gaming conventions or something. You know, watch some industry professionals do a panel discussion. Or maybe they could hire a real PR guy. Or take a marketing class. Or maybe they could call Blizzard or Turbine or CCP or somebody. Those guys know how to make an announcement.”

Although gamers didn’t learn jack about 38 Studios new MMO, they can be comforted in the knowledge that McFarlane is producing some new Itchy and Scratchy figures in time for Christmas.

After about 20 or 25 minutes of this, Elvyra had become so downright pissed that she walked out. A big chunk of her agitation, understandably, had to do with being strung along. We’re in the business of MMO news. We thought we’d get some scoop on an upcoming MMO with some serious potential. Instead, this entire thing was a complete waste of time; this was not an announcement, it was a markteting discussion about Todd McFarlane’s products. The panel wasn’t really about the new MMO; McFarlane certainly discussed it, but it was among the 6 or 8 other projects he’s got in the works at the moment.

38 Studios’ moto is “World Domination Through Gaming”. All I know is that they’re not gonna dominate jack, if they can’t even handle a minor Comic Con event. I certainly didn’t get a glimpse of any 38 Studios games that would “dominate the world”. I didn’t see any games that could dominate even tiny Burkina Faso. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any games. Or hints of games. Or concept art for a game. Or even a stinking game title.

We managed to find an earlier (and more interesting) collaborative project between McFarlane and Schilling!

I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised. We’ve been strung along before. And, despite everything, we did manage to find out two new facts about the 38 Studios game. The first is that the fantasy universe in which the game takes place contains centaurs. We know this because the one piece of game-related art McFarlane did show everyone was, in fact, a picture of a centaur. Never mind the fact that it was some sort of 38 Studios logo; this was apparently the best they could do. The second fact we learned was that the game is expected to be in development for at least four years. This means that, because of their near-eternal development cycle, we can expect to see this game sometime around 2011.

To be sure, it’ll be a lot longer than 2011 before Elvyra willingly attends another McFarlane/38 Studios press event. I’m pretty sure that when 2011 rolls around, if I got her a copy of this mysterious MMO, she’ll simply run it through the shredder.

Whoo boy. Can’t hardly wait for 2011 to get here.