IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Interview: Dragonica Online's Challenge to MMOs

Posted February 23, 2010 by David Radd

THQ, whether rightly or wrongly, is traditionally regarded by most gamers as a publisher of licensed titles from Nickelodeon, Disney-Pixar and the WWE. The company has worked hard to be regarded as a genuine AAA game company, with recent acclaimed releases including Saints Row 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, and Darksiders. In recent months, THQ has been pushing into the online and download games sphere with a new division called THQ*ICE. IndustryGamers spoke to Eddie Chen, CEO of THQ*ICE, about this new initiative and an interesting promotional campaign for their MMO Dragonica Online.

IndustryGamers: Tell me about the founding of THQ*ICE and how important you think it will be for the publisher going forward. 

Eddie Chen: Interesting question. The idea to incorporate us was in August 2008. THQ has been around for a long time, but they haven't been active online; they didn't have the experience online and they didn't have an online title. They contacted ICE Entertainment and we had Dragonica. They were amazed by the quality of the game and thought this could be their first title for the online market. We both complement each other, with our specialty in online and their specialties in the Western market.

IG: It seems to me as an outsider that THQ is trying to incorporate the “City state” model, where divisions independently make decisions about different fields but report back to a common main office. Would you say that's accurate? 

EC: I can't speak for THQ, they did a re-org last year, where they founded divisions for their family and core business and one focused on online games. In order to run an online game, the process and the reward system has to be different from a traditional retail title, so that's why we're a separate business. 

It takes along time to push out a game in the traditional game biz, but then after you release it you're more-or-less done with it. After you launch an online game, it's just the start of it; you have to react to your customers online and and you have to respond to issues that cross up immediately. In a retail game when you make a mistake, it simply dies and you don't hear it anymore. For an online game, if you make a disastrous mistake, [the title] will go away, but if it's a smaller mistake, they can correct it but it's up to the operator to fix it.

When Dragonica first launched overseas, people weren't that interested because it was a plain side-scroller, but then we polled Chinese gamers and told the developer, 'You're not much different from other games, so it needs its own spin.' That was a major change - they spent another year and a half working on it and making it the game we know today. Today it's a 3D side-scroller, and its quality is something you haven't seen before.

IG: Are you happy with the reception to Dragonica Online so far in the U.S.? 

EC: We're quite happy with the performance of the game and how the users like it. There's no limit for success, so we wanted it to be known by more people because side-scrollers is a huge category online. Dragonica Online is a brand new animal compared to what they've known! So we want more people to know and try the game out and Side-Scroller Showdown allows people to try it. We're paying people to try it out.

IG: Tell me about this Side-Scroller Showdown campaign.

EC: It's an interesting challenge for gamers. We wanted more people to know about this brilliant side-scroller and we wanted to get the word out. Traditionally, North America is a very console heavy market, so it's a difficult task to get them to try something new. Instead of spending a longer period of time waiting for them to get bored with whatever side-scroller they're playing now, we thought 'Why don't we pay for the switching costs?' So as far as the gamer goes it's a win-win. We're very confident about our product, though.

Honestly, where I brought up the idea of acceptance of the game among side scrolling gamers it was controversial - spending in-game money isn't expensive, but paying for other games is potentially not cheap. It's interesting that most people that play our game stick with it, so it's really that confidence that allows us to do something this aggressive. We could do a lot of media ads, but at the end of the day, if the game is bad users won't rate it high. Having media share is one thing, but having players try it and like the content is worth more. How we offer the game and service it will make the game or destroy it.

Whenever we go out there with this challenge, we're challenging ourselves. But we don't think it's much of a challenge because it's a great product and I'm confident that gamers will be happy with it one way or another.

IG: Thanks Eddie.

David Radd has worked as a gaming journalist since 2004 at sites such as GamerFeed, Gigex and GameDaily Biz.