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They Are The Champions Online: Jack Emmert

Written by Kieron Gillen on July 14, 2008.

If any single figure’s connected in the public mind with Cryptic games, it’s its oft-outspoken Chief Creative Officer, Jack Emmert. While he was particularly busy showing off his new child to anyone in the buliding, we managed to grab him to talk about the interface between online MMOs and Pen and Paper games, the biggest challenges of Champions and the sacred cow of MMO design that’s next for the slaughterhouse.
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They Are The Champions Online: The Game’s Afoot

Written by Kieron Gillen on July 11, 2008.

Los Gatos is the Beverly Hills of The San Francisco satellites. It’s not just home of people who really fancy a posh ZIP code, however. It’s also Cryptic Studios’ base. The veterans of the City of Heroes games are giving their first, real public showing of now-to-be-2K-distributed Champions to a selected band of gentlemen of the press. For some reason, I was invited. Spooks.

Since I’ve interviewed anyone who didn’t actively run away from me, I’ve a whole week of content to amuse you. But let’s start a little more general than that. Here’s an Jack Emmert and John Needham quote-packed overview of their action-influenced take on the MMO game, Cryptic’s love of the Champions pen-and-paper RPG, the tranquil-yet-troublesome expanse of Monster Island and what they have planned after Champions…
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The Making Of: City of Heroes

Written by Kieron Gillen on October 26, 2007.

[I was rooting around my hard-drive, trying to find the Freedom Force post-mortem which I swear to God I wrote, and I hit on something else similarly spandex-clad. The interview was done with Jack Emmert towards the end of 2004, so bear that in mind for some of the comments made.]

City of Heroes was the surprise Massively-Multiplayer game hit of the year. Yes, World of Warcraft dominated… but the surprise wasn’t that it was a success, but the sheer scale of it. For a game to come from a team no-one had heard of, about a topic that had oft seemed commercially unviable, and to quietly revolutionise the genre with a stripped-down action-RPG… well, that’s a twist ending. No-one saw this one coming, True Believer.

We take a few minutes to secure an audience with the public face of City of Heroes, at publisher NCSoft’s recent European launch. He’s the Statesman, the defender of truth, justice and reasonable ping. But no-one’s seen him in the same room at the time with mild-mannered Lead Designer Jack Emmert. Could these two figures be connected?

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