Curt Schilling to release first video game
Former Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling is about to make the biggest pitch of his life, as his video game company 38 Studios prepares for next Tuesday’s launch of its first game.
“Now we’re seven days away from the magic,’’ said Schilling in a telephone interview today. “This is our lead-off hitter. This is our introduction to the gaming world.’’
The release, “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,’’ is a fantasy role-playing game. Players control custom-made characters with special powers and weapons, and send them on quests to steal treasure and battle monsters. Billy Pidgeon, a video game industry analyst for M2 Research in New York, said Kingdom of Amalur will have to carve a niche for itself in a market that’s already crowded with quality games. “It’s going to beg the question of how big the audience for [role-playing games] is,’’ he said.
Role-playing is among the most popular video game genres. About 10 million people worldwide play the online role-playing game “World of Warcraft,’’ while last year’s “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’’ from Bethesda Softworks LLC sold 3.5 million copies in its first two days of release.
Schilling said that rather than saturating the market, the success of Skyrim and World of Warcraft is good news for 38 Studios. “You can’t be successful preying upon other people’s failure or loss,’’ he said. “Skyrim and Bethesda, I hope they do phenomenally well,’’ he said, because each success increases the total audience for such games.
Important as it is, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a preview of a far more ambitious game that 38 Studios is developing under the code name “Copernicus.’’ The forthcoming game is to be set in the same fantasy universe as Kingdom of Amalur, and like World of Warcraft, it will be played simultaneously by thousands of gamers connected to the Internet. Players will be able to join forces in shared adventures or compete against each other.
38 Studios hasn’t announced when that online game will be launched.
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