Cryptic Studios: "Co-operative RPG was good, but we saw the potential to make a better game with an MMO"

Cryptic Studios’ Zeke Sparkes, Lead designer for its free-to-play MMO Neverwinter, has been talking about the why the developer decided to go from a co-operative multiplayer RPG to a free-to-play model.

”Stuff like that happens more than people realize. We had an idea of what the game was going to be, and we started going after it, and started putting it together, and it was good,” Sparkes said to Gamasutra. ”We enjoyed it, but we saw potential to make a game that we liked better. In the end, you get a stronger product, because it’s a product that everyone believes in.”

With three MMOs already behind it, Sparkes felt that Cryptic’s internal development tools and knowledge of the genre helped to push the development team back to a MMO. It also keen to keep the ”social aspects” that are experienced while playing MMOs.

”Most of the changes we made related to the content of the game and how its delivery is structured, and what the focus of that content is,” Sparkes said. ”We went from a narrow-band, richly-detailed game with lots of ways for you to go, to something that is vaster, with more places for you to explore and get into.”

Neverwinter should be playable on our PCs by the end of the year.