Skyrim is every bit as good as people thought it would be, and due to the game’s sprawling environments and innumerable quests, it has a longevity which few can rival.
This casts a large shadow on all other releases attempting to compete in the same RPG market space. Despite this, Ken Rolston, creator of 38 Studios’ Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning isn’t worried – good games will always find an audience.
“I suspect that they won’t know that they want something else,” Rolston said of the Skyrim players. “That’s always the challenge when you make something that hasn’t been made before, and usually it’s opinion leaders who will stray outside or color outside the lines and say, ‘Hey! This is cool. You should be playing this.’
“I think that’s the way, very often, revolutionary products work and we’re intending to be revolutionary in that sense. But I think anybody who works in the industry and who is concerned about releasing a product into the current bloodbath of blockbuster releases, it would be disingenuous to say that I didn’t notice, but at the same time it’s absolutely true that I don’t feel uncomfortable at all.”
Rolston is coming from an informed position, having worked as a lead on both Morrowind and Oblivion, but he says he worries about some of the company’s fresher faces.
“I know our game is wonderful, because I play it and actually I feel a lot more emotional concern for the younger people working here who haven’t been everywhere and done everything, who might really care about that stuff and really – this is their first game, so this is a big deal for them.
“From my point of view, a really good game always finds its audience, and role playing games more so than others because they have long shelf lives, because when you start playing them, you’re going to end up playing them forever unless they’re terrible. So I think I probably just have a far too adult and mature attitude about the whole thing,” Rolston added.
Kingdoms of Amalur is set to release in February – will you be sticking with Skyrim, or is there room on your shelf for both?
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