Roma Victor, CNG Project and MMOs - Fred Hasson Interview
Written by Connor Beaton, published 23rd August 2010
I’ll forgive you if you haven’t heard of Roma Victor, RedBedlam’s massively multiplayer simulation game and a historically authentic recreation of life in Roman Britain. The game was developed on a shoestring budget, but amassed over 10,000 players without a single penny being spent on marketing, and that figure will no doubt expand when RedBedlam release their revamped sequel, Roma Victor 2, offering more objectives, better graphics and a great social platform. The distinguishing factor between RedBedlam and other MMO developers is that RedBedlam have done their homework - and by homework, we mean hours of hard research and surveying as part of the company’s 30-month “Community Network Games Project” research programme, funded partly by the European Commission’s 7th Framework.
“CNG project is looking at how services around massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds can be improved,” Fred Hasson, CEO of RedBedlam, told me when we spoke on Thursday afternoon. True enough, the project is covering the subjects of social interaction within games, user-generated content and its distribution, and some interesting marketing techniques - and the team are applying everything they learn to their own development process. “RedBedlam’s core technology strength is network server technology. We’ve got technology called ZoneBubble and we believe that it will be the most effective network server technology you can have.”
Before RedBedlam’s founding, Fred Hasson had a very different job as the CEO of TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry. Having now worked in the games development sector, he’s able to look at the industry from multiple angles, particularly in the way most developers handle research and development. “Every contract you get, you use to improve your own technology, and at the end of the contract, you hopefully get paid, but you’ve also improved your engine and bits of tech that you’ll use for the next game, you’ve added some features and all that kind of stuff. And hey, why not get paid for that research, that pure research, now and again? Quite often, the R&D a games company does, they don’t even think of as R&D. They just do it, it kind of comes naturally to them, and that was a problem when I was running TIGA, trying to get games companies interested in R&D tax credits.”
Hasson also commented on a recent event in the games industry, the fall of Realtime Worlds, whose recent MMO release All Points Bulletin failed to thrive and ultimately caused the company’s current administration. “The brutal truth is this: you don’t need to build an MMO with the same head-space and mentality as you build a triple A game for consoles. I think that if there’s one lesson that comes out of this, it’s that you need to focus on the game. At GDC, I heard people from Gameforge and Bigpoint talking about games that have cost them £100,000 or £250,000 to make and I heard them talking about canning them if they didn’t make more than a million a month in revenue.”
“It’s one thing to build a game, but if you’re using a console games approach to making MMOs, you’ve lost the point. You don’t really have to do that, you really don’t, and you’re taking so long to make a game, you build up the expectations, and it’s not good to do that. I was always very worried that putting £50m into a project, or maybe more, means needing to have so many active users from the word ‘go’, otherwise your server costs for keeping the thing alive while you’re building your user-base can be crippling… If I’d been Realtime Worlds, I’d probably put a lot less there on the screen, had less fancy personalisation features and stuff, and I would have let my community tell me what they wanted and obviously use that as a very important steer on how the game would have developed going forward.”
Hasson instead supports the business model of social gaming companies like Playfish, where they develop the bare-bones model of the game and add features as players demand it. This allows continued expansion that caters to the desires of your players and customers, and makes your MMO easier to update and maintain. Their game Roma Victor is a great example of this: they’ve listened to user criticism and are now compiling what they’ve learned from their research with user comments to create a new version of the game, which they hope to make available by Christmas. They’re also in talks with a big German publisher to help distribute the game.
The revamped version of the game is going to be built using the Unity engine, a versatile, cross-platform engine designed for 3D game development. “We like Unity, we like it for its ease of use and we’ve actually got a couple of projects running on Unity already. They’re in beta form at the moment but with a bit of luck - because they’re for other clients and not for us - they will bring in a lot of users, and if they do, we’ll actually be able to say ‘our system works’.”
Of course, RedBedlam have only just begun their long research programme, and the discoveries they make through their research will definitely be of interest to other developers as well as their team. You can help them by taking the time to fill out their survey here. You can find out more about RedBedlam’s server technology and Roma Victor at their website here. We’ll be publishing more of our 27-minute interview in the future, so keep your eye on the main page for any further updates.
Lol I love the way they make it sound like Roma Victor was a success. I’m an RV Veteran, I’ve played from beta and am still playing now, with the active community of 6 people. Red Bedlam are the worst developers on the planet. They never tell their community anything and when they do they lie. They promised us so many things in patches and updates that we never got. In practically 10 years of development Romans never even got houses, they lived in mud huts designed for the barbarians. They treated the community like dirt, especially KFR (Kerry Frasier Robinson). His reputation even got so bad with the community it is suspected that he created an alternative forum account “Gally” to post with. KFR is the most pretentious elitist on the face of the planet, if he has to be the one responsible for everything, except the horrible failures. An example is when a dedicated player, Meinard, went through all the game files in his spare time and created a bunch of animations and fixes for combat that would have made the game 100% better. The community wanted this, but when he posted on the forums offering the fix to red bedlam, for free, no strings attached, they banned him. I think the worst part about Roma Victor’s failure is that the game had immense potential but thanks to KFR it failed and failed miserably. He has said that Roma Victor 2 is in development but I doubt it. Let me make one thing clear, I hope KFR learned from his mistakes in RV, I hope RV2 is actually released and is a success. If KFR can listen to his community it will be. Veterans will flock back to RV2 if the devs can just listen to them and put in some effort when it is necessary. KFR’s ego is ultimately what crushed RV, don’t make that same mistake again. The Roma Victor community begs you.
The comment by “A Concerned Freeman” is full of half-truths, speculation (KFR is Gally?), and outright fictions. Some of what he says is correct, though. I suggest you look into the project for yourself to learn the truth. I for one feel like I got my money’s worth on a $20 US account with no subscription fee. Here’s looking forward to RV2.
I’d say “A concerned freeman” is somewhat overreacting. Yes, KFR made a lot of mistakes and the list of things that are wrong with RV would be long indeed, but the same can be said of any MMO. Fact remains that I played this game for 4 years, something no other game can even rival. Also, I find it very unlikely that KFR = Gally, Meinard was in fact unbanned shortly after and without KFRs ego, this game would’ve never been made. It takes dedication to run a game that never has and never will earn you money.
RB haven’t spoken to us for a couple of months now. The community has to research other sites to find out whats going on. We are yet to be introduced to Mr Fred Hasson but hopefully he is a step in the right direction. Sounds like the company is doing fairly good buisness right now and lets hope RV2 does come out. I do believe the devs do care about the game passionatly they just need to work on their community relations which are absolutely appaling.
RedBedlam hasn’t learned te most important lesson: neglecting your own community for months on end, repeatedly, will cause your game to clear out. You’d think it would be obvious to maintain your community relations, as that is where the money comes from, but apparently not.
“We’ve got technology called ZoneBubble and we believe that it will be the most effective network server technology you can have.” Massive LOL right here. Having experienced this awesome ZB technology I wouldn’t utilise it, or Redbedlam, to network my home pcs.
I believe a Roman accused me of “outright fiction” where have I lied? Where have I made something up be specific. Of course KFR being Gally is speculation but I never said it was true in my post. And like other people and my post said KFR’s neglect of the community and downright lies are the problem here. That hasn’t changed, we only found this interview thanks to Meinard. There’s been no dev contact on the forum in months. They haven’t told us that RV2 is deadlined to be released by Christmas. We don’t want them to regularly posting on the forums but I don’t think an update now and again is too much to ask. Right now we get nothing.
A Concerned Freeman: “I believe a Roman accused me of “outright fiction” where have I lied? Where have I made something up be specific.” Alright then, here are the specific statements you made which I consider to be untrue. 1. “They never tell their community anything and when they do they lie.” That is a blanket statement declaring that RB NEVER tells the community anything and ALWAYS lies, which is obviously not the case. 2. “An example is when a dedicated player, Meinard, went through all the game files in his spare time and created a bunch of animations and fixes for combat that would have made the game 100% better. The community wanted this, but when he posted on the forums offering the fix to red bedlam, for free, no strings attached, they banned him.” I was still playing when this took place. I remember him receiving a stern warning not to alter the game files in any way, but was not banned for it. If Meinard was ever banned, it wasn’t for that.
Look, we know that we made false claims to sell RV and keep getting players to give us money. We feel really badly about that. We know that we deceived and neglected the very community that kept the game alive when we couldn’t do it ourselves. We feel really badly about that as well. RV was a success. Many people claim that it was not. But were able to get MUCH more money out of players than we deserved to. In that respect it was a jolly good show. And we feel badly about, too. In fact, the RV community probably deserves an apology more anything. So here it is: we apologize, and we won’t ever do something like that again. Just wait until RV2 comes out. You’ll see. Trust me.
The opinions expressed by Mr. Hasson are “informal” and should not be taken as official statements by RedBedlam. We are hard at work this very minute, but there is no offical timetable for any type of release. Features in the pipeline include hair and beard growth, tatoos, mounts, boat travel, animal taming, advanced construction (including monuments, aqueducts, fortifications, etc.), farm structures, a playable version of the trial islands, silkworms, and a new “what’s that smell?” mini-game.
Well I have to say that the feedback/comments from Fred Hanson and KFR do not strike me that they have come from people with business skills nor communication skills. The terminology simply reflects one of younger years and if reading between the lines, it simply sounds like false hopes and misleading information. The RV community has been for years, simply ignored, pushed aside and ignored by the RB team and in some cases the RB team has simply been rude arrogant and self centred. Lets see if they can change their ways for RV2…..
“1. “They never tell their community anything and when they do they lie.” That is a blanket statement declaring that RB NEVER tells the community anything and ALWAYS lies, which is obviously not the case.” Oh come on it’s an exaggeration not a lie, when you pick things like that apart I know you don’t have any real examples. Do people who say “Why does this always happen to me?” mean it always happens or it happens too often? I was still playing when this took place. I remember him receiving a stern warning not to alter the game files in any way, but was not banned for it. If Meinard was ever banned, it wasn’t for that. Does getting a detail wrong make it a fiction or slightly incorrect? Whether they banned him or not is overshadowed by the fact that they wouldn’t implement something that would have improved the game.
Mr Hasson, You claim to feel really bad about deceiving us and ignoring us. Yet you do nothing about it. Go post that on the forums. Follow it up with some hard proof that RV2 is being worked on. And post the apology there as well. Its ridiculous that you will post that apology here, but not on your own, official forums. What I’m saying is you should do something more than “feel bad” and offer an apology in the comments of a press release. You should apologize and then attempt to fix the issue. Kreon
Yeah, most likely but I’m guardedly optimistic. Maybe it is him. Would posting an apology (that could likely be fake) on an external website to make them look good there be RB style: unfortunately yes. Playing to the press is something RB tends to like to do…
“Does getting a detail wrong make it a fiction or slightly incorrect?” When the detail was whether or not somebody got banned, I think it’s pretty important. Especially when the example was given to show how KFR is “the most pretentious elitist on the face of the planet”.
KFR is a pretentious elitist and he’s probably well aware of it. Anyone who spent much time in the RV community could come up with their own support for that statement quite easily. It’s surprising that anyone would think it’s worth debating. But does anyone read the comments and actually believe that the poster really thinks KFR is the most pretentious elitist on the face of the planet? Um…it’s called “hyperbole.” Hyperbole (pronounced /ha??p?rb?li/,[1] from ancient Greek ???????? ‘exaggeration’) is a rhetorical device in which statements are exaggerated; obvious and intentional exaggeration; an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity” (or “is the most…on the face of the planet.”). But hey, don’t let that stop the debate. ;)
Probably off topic (if there is one), but I was wondering at what point one can claim to be “veteran player” of a game. For example, if a game has been released for 4 years, and you only played for the first 6 months (plus a couple short visits later on), should you really present yourself as a VETERAN? Meanwhile, “noobs” have played for twice as long as you! You stopped being a veteran a long time ago. There are people who started playing 2 years after you did who have more game experience than you do, even including beta. You lost “veteran” staus a long time ago, so STFU, noob!!!
Stop arguing about stupid shit! Craigslist has stopped carrying adult ads. @#$%$! How is my wife going to support my dream now? Get over yourselves. This has never been about you! If anyone wants an erotic “massage” you can contact “opensource1951” directly on the RedBedlam website. We are still “open” for business! Cheers!