NOTABLE NEIGHBOR : New Yorker has game
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Northwest_Profiles/230593/
EUREKA SPRINGS — Patrick Wilkinson is terribly homesick, but that might be the right medicine for a mind trying to conjure up the next online gaming sensation.
Wilkinson moved from New York last year to partner with hotelier Marty Roenigk to form Brainstem Games LLC. He won’t say how much money Roenigk agreed to front, but the average capital investment for an independent video game start-up is $ 5 million, he says.
He came here on a one-way ticket with only a single “bag full of stuff.” He wasn’t moving, he told people, “just extending my dwelling.” All of his belongings wait for him in the city. After his video game launches, he’ll return to open a marketing offi ce there, he says.
The game is set thousands of light years from Earth, among two technologically advanced civilizations. The “mhori,” which resemble horses, are spiritual, peaceful. The feline “mentki” are tribal, aggressive. War befalls their worlds when the “mhori” receive video transmissions from space that show an alien horde (man ) roping and riding their kind. They suspect the “mentki” are involved when other transmissions show this same alien horde serving and worshipping “mentki” creatures, a la Fancy Feast commercials.
“We’re still working on the rights for Fancy Feast,” Wilkinson says.
When players begin Obscura Nomen (Hidden Name, in Greek ), the two civilizations are battling for supremacy in carefully contrived space arenas. In reality, the play begins anywhere on Earth a person can access the Internet. There is no limit to the number of players who can jump into the game at one time.
In 2004, Wilkinson started an online community organized for playing “massively multi-player online games” (MMOG ). Dubbed “The Lords of Clan Tribe,” today that community boasts about 1, 200 members. Instead of competing against artificial intelligence, players face each other. They
use
Voice-Over-Internet
Protocol to talk and write on message boards, all part of “a completely immersive experience.” “ With single-player games you have levels, and eventually, you beat all the levels and the missions and then you’re finished. The multi-player [platform ] represents the endless cycle of gaming, ” he says, and “the couch potato has developed into the cyberathlete — that’s the new trend, and 30 percent of these players are female, and they’re very hard core.” Wilkinson has introduced Brainstem to two dozen game “testers” who play Obscura Nomen in the Eureka Springs studio and give Wilkinson and his crew feedback. The game caters to women. It is, after all, a war between horses and cats, and there are realistic female avatars from which to choose. Not one of the testers is female. “Mars needs women,” he says. In the next few weeks, Wilkinson expects to have produced the first promotional trailer for Obscura Nomen and launched the product site. The game will be released before Christmas and will retail for about $ 30. Notable Neighbor highlights the unusual accomplishments and contributions Northwest Arkansas residents make to the area. Suggestions can be e-mailed to
cking@arkansasonline. com