During a session conducted at the recent ION Conference, Joseph Ybarra of publisher Firesky compared and contrasted online and offline game development, comparing them to television and Hollywood, respectively."Movies are much like video games," said Ybarra. "[Execs] spend a lot of money to make one experience, put it out there and if it goes great, they make another one. if it doesn't, they move on to something else."In television, continued Ybarra, the production cycles are shorter and have a lower budget, but are more frequent. Ybarra then showed a trailer for Stargate Worlds, the publisher's forthcoming MMO being developed by Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. With Stargate Worlds, the goal is to "tell stories more like TV," according to Ybarra."If you have a successful MMOG you'll never stop making it - similar to Stargate making TV and DVD movies for more than 13 years," Ybarra continued....

Funcom may have announced it had 1 million people sign up to beta test Age of Conan but the development team for Stargate Worlds seems to be very happy with a tenth of that amount. The team quietly launched their beta sign ups back in April and now they have announced that they have reached the 100,000 mark.The game, based of course on the long running movie and TV series franchise, hopes to launch sometime before the end of the year (although we think that's a little optimistic). We hope to get more info on the title before the beta test begins....

City of Heroes and City of Villains scribe Shane Lacy Hensley has been tapped by publisher FireSky to head Superstition Studios. Hensley, who is famously known for creating such pen and paper RPGs as Deadlands, will lead development of a new MMORPG that has yet to be detailed.Prior to the promotion, Hensley was the creative director of Superstition where his vision and key hiring decisions made him the "perfect" candidate for the promotion, according to FireSky senior vice president of product development Rod Nakamoto. "With Shane's leadership, success is a given for Superstition Studios."Without giving specifics on Superstition's mysterious upcoming release Hensley explained his work with the studio is helping to fulfill a career-long dream. "FireSky and Superstition Studios have given me the creative freedom to build the game I've been dreaming of since I entered the video game industry back in 1992."Currently FireSky is developing Stargate Worlds, based on the long running science fiction series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, which is now accepting beta sign-ups....

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has been working for some time on Stargate Worlds, their sci-fi MMO based on the massive movie-TV series franchise from MGM. They have already used the current TV show Stargate Atlantis to promote the game via a contest that allowed one of the TV show's viewers to come to the developer and put his face in the game itself.Now comes word that if you happen to sign up on the game's web site to get a free email newsletter, you can also put in a checkmark to sign up to play the upcoming beta test for Stargate Worlds (Make sure you check the right box at the bottom of the page or you will get spammed with third party emails). There's no word yet on when the beta test will begin so just consider this an pre-pre-announcement (whatever that might mean). At the moment the game is scheduled to launch this fall....

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has been known for some time as the independently funded developer of the TV and movie based sci-fi MMO Stargate Worlds. However, the company has announced today that it has also decided to launch its own publishing brand, Firesky, to handle the publishing duties of the game as well as other unannounced titles it has been working on.The games that Firesky will publish are described as being part of "SNAPs", which stands for Social Networks at Play. According to the press release issued this morning, SNAP games are meant to combine " . . . social interaction, economies and game play." The founders of Firesky hope to combine gaming with a true social community which they claim has not yet been done in most games of this genre. They even have their own term to describe it: "Project: Ascension". They are not yet ready to reveal exactly what "Project: Ascension" really is all about.So is Firesky just a game publisher with a interesting press release or is the company going to evolve and release games that have something different? Only time will tell. Stargate Worlds is currently set for release by the end of 2008. Firesky currently has four studios working on a number of unnamed games which should be revealed in the coming months....