neverwinter posts

Jack Emmert, perhaps the most well known of the faces behind Cryptic Studios, is now the game developer's new CEO. It's parent company Atari announced today that Emmert would take over the position of CEO following the departure of John Needham who is leaving "to pursue other opportunities within the games industry." Emmert was previously Cryptic's Chief Operating Officer

Emmert co-founded Cryptic and helped to design its first game, the MMO City of Heroes which was later purchased by its publisher NCsoft. Atari purchased Cryptic in 2008 and launched two more MMOs for the publisher; Champions Online in 2009 and Star Trek Online in 2010. Cryptic is currently working on the non-MMO fantasy RPG Neverwinter as well as at least one unannounced game for Atari.

[Via email press release]

Atari is the latest game publisher to reveal its financial numbers. The company announced that for the nine month period that ended on December 31, 2010 it had 41 million euros in revenues. While that's a decline of 55.7 percent compared to the same period a year ago Atari said those results were within its expectations.

Atari's latest game, the open world driving title Test Drive Unlimited 2, was released last week. It has a number of downloadable PC games due out in the next few months including remakes of Star Raiders and Yars Revenge along with Dungeons and Dragons Daggerdale and Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime. It's next major retail game release will be The Witcher 2 in mid-May.

PC gamers love role playing games in many different forms. Some prefer the huge sprawling single player RPGs while others like the fast pace of action-RPG titles. Still others like to gather with lots of friends and players in massively multiplayer RPGs. As Big Download continues our look into 2011's most anticipated PC games we give our picks for the top 10 RPG and related MMO games that we want most to play in the the next 12 months.

There are tons of sequels to previously released RPGs on this list. One developer, BioWare, has a whopping three games on this list. That includes perhaps the most anticipated MMO game launch in the post World of Warcraft world. Check out our top 10 list in order of their planned release date, plus two games that may or may not actually make it out in 2011, after the jump. You can also go back and check out our most anticipated 2011 games in the FPS and action categories.

Atari is making a slight change in its executive ranks. The publisher announced today that its president Jim Wilson will now also take over the CEO spot at the company. Wilson succeeds Jeff Lapin who is leaving the company. Lapin came to Atari as its Chief Operating Officer in May 2009 and became CEO in December 2009.

Wilson, who was also deputy CEO at Atari before today, is heading up the company as it prepares for its 2011 slate of titles. That includes major retail releases like Test Drive Unlimited 2, The Witcher 2 and Neverwinter along with a large line-up of downloadable titles including remakes of Star Raiders and Yar's Revenge, a new Ghostbusters game and the just announced Dungeons and Dragons Daggerdale.

If you thought that developer Cryptic Studios has its hands full with maintaining and updating two MMO games (Champions Online and Star Trek Online) as well as making the upcoming RPG Neverwinter, well you might be right. However Cryptic has even more up its sleeves, at least according to a new Eurogamer article.

The article quotes Cryptic's co-founder Jack Emmert as saying, "We've got plenty of other games under wraps." And when ask to clarify he added, "These other projects have been underway for quite some time." While Cryptic has been known as an MMO game developer the announcement of the non-MMO (but still online only) title Neverwinter could mean future games could also deviate from Cryptic's MMO formula.

Last week, developer Cryptic Studios surprised many when it announced that its next game, Neverwinter, would be an online RPG title instead of an MMO game like all of Cryptic's previous games. However that doesn't mean the Dungeons and Dragons-based game will be a standard retail product.

In a chat with Gamasutra, Cryptic's co-founder Jack Emmert admitted that the developer was still debating what kind of a business model Neverwinter will have, saying, "I can guarantee you that we envision this as an online product that will continue to grow over time, that we continue to add content to." He said that subscription fees, microtransactions, play-for-free and even (as a joke) pay-by-minute models were all being considered. The game itself is still a long way from release; Neverwinter is scheduled to come out in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Some folks were taken aback by the announcement on Monday that Neverwinter, the latest game from developer Cryptic Studios, would not be an MMO like all of the team's previous titles but rather an online-oriented RPG. In a chat with our sister site Massively, Cryptic's founder Jack Emmert admits this new approach is a big sea change for the development team in more ways than one.

Not only is the gameplay design for Neverwinter different than an MMO, Emmett told Massively that the development team is changing the way they make a game. He honestly states that the last two MMOs the team made, Champions Online and Star Trek Online, were developed and released quickly. However he added, "super-fast doesn't mean super-good", saying that its last two games "ended up having lots of half-done features in some quarters."

Emmett states that "we can't just keep repeating the same methodology over and over -- we've got to make stuff that's great." He says that the development team for Neverwinter has high hopes, saying, "We know we're getting better and better. The ultimate goal is to get a score of 90 or above because we want to make great products." Neverwinter is currently scheduled by publisher Atari for release in late 2011.

It looks like the various online rumors that a new Neverwinter Nights game coming from publisher Atari and developer Cryptic Studios was in the works have been proven to true - kind of.Today Atari officially announced that game, which is simply called Neverwinter.

The game, due out in the fourth quarter of 2011, is oddly enough not being called an MMO but a "co-op role playing game" where players can pick from one of five Dungeons and Dragons-based character classes and then team up with friends or with AI-controlled characters to form five-player teams. The game will also have support for user-generated content via a new system called Forge, much like how the Neverwinter Nights games developed by BioWare also had such tools.

While the game isn't due out until late 2011, the fictional backstory behind it will be launched on October 5 by author R.A. Salvatore in the novel Gauntlgrym. It's due out on October 5 and is the first of a planned trilogy of novels based on Neverwinter's world and storyline. Dungeons and Dragons owners Wizards of the Coasts also plan to release a Neverwinter-based tabletop RPG game. More info on the game is revealed on GameSpot in an interview with Cryptic co-founder Jack Emmert.