Export Games, position available: Concept Artist!

[DogCity]

Team Name:

Export Games

Project name:

Phoenix Feather

Brief Description:

Phoenix Feather is a second generation, browser based multi player role playing game. It will deliver a new level of immersion though graphical detail, unseen in current browser based games. We will also use impressive new technologies to deliver 100% streamed content, with no need for patching or lengthly downloading to install.

Rich, detailed 3D graphics and gripping content will merge in a quest driven world, which can be enjoyed for a five minute lunch break or five hour play sessions. Players can enter the world anywhere they find an Internet connection, and continue their adventures where they last left them no matter where they play from.

The Phoenix Feather world is as rewarding as it is exciting. Players will quickly find themselves developing strong bonds with their character, the lands and the community. Quests, Infinite dungeons, PVP, Housing, Pets, and unexplored lands beckon each adventurer and promote objective driven play sessions, which will ensure constant challenges and rewards.

Phoenix Feather will appeal to a wide range of gamers. By catering for different play styles and providing varied rewards we hope that any player will quickly find their favorite aspect and will be able to immerse themselves in it.

Planned Features:

- Vivid and characteristic graphical style.
- Rich sound effects and sound track
- Powerfull house editor for player designed homes.
- Visible character customization.
- Open skill tree and spell, weapon and armor designing system.
- Revolutionary community interface provides unprecedented depth of interaction.
- Infinitely extendable, modular world. With limitless possibilities.
- Customizable land plots and rideable pet training system.
- Guild and Faction PvP system.
- Constant story driven quests. Large group quests, side quests and bounty system.
- Intuitive tutorial (introduction) and help / support systems.
- Powerful GUI, fast and unobtrusive.
- All this in a simple, compulsive, 'play anywhere' package. Hard to resist!

Phoenix Feather has been in development for three months, and we have recently completed our first milestone.

Completed So Far:

- Development Center: An advanced set of web-based tools, to aid team communication and streamline content sharing.
- Documentation (7k+ words): Detailed game and tool design documents. Technical Specification. Promotional docs. Asset Lists.
- Map Editor: Imports height maps, allows height and texture editing of single and multiple tiles. Load / Save maps. Toggle Height / co-ordinate overlay for each tile. 3D preview.
- Game Engine: Imports maps and textured 3d models with keyframe animation. Lighting, Audio.
- Our own map and model formats.
- Server libraries, core server in alpha state.
- Concept audio tracks
- Concept and testing 3D models

Target Aim:

To produce an indie blockbuster. A title worthy of massive exposure though affiliate advertising and the game press. We have the resources to provide extremely high quality publicity and corporate quality web design to get people playing! Free to play, unlockable content with single or monthly payment.

Compensation:

We have a fair payment agreement for all members, which guarantees unlimited payments if we turn a profit.

Talent Needed:

Textures Artists:

We are looking for a talented and creative texture artist to begin bringing our architectural and/or organic models to life. You will be responsible for creating varying sized texture maps and for unwraped and simple texturing of items, characters, npcs and buildings.

Any art program you are skilled with is just fine. We require a moderately high degree of detail in your uncompressed textures, so you should be comfortable with this too.

Sound Effect Artists:

We are also looking for audio artists to work with our composer and designer to create some fundamental environmental and 'action' sounds to add depth and substance to the Phoenix Feather interface and world. Initial responsibilities include a small selection of combat, creature, environmental and menu audio effects.

All applicants will be asked for examples of previous work although I'm pleased to chat with anyone interested in finding out more about these vacancies! You will be working with a relaxed but focused team, which is proud of its high production values and artistic achievement.

If you have any other skills, and like the idea of the project then please do contact me, there will be numerous positions available throughout development so why not get your foot in the door now?

We work hard and play hard so please make sure you have enough time and energy to give to this project. We don't expect miracles, but be aware this is a fast moving team. Best of luck!

Team Structure:

The export team includes a number of industry, graduate and student developers, eight of us in total. We are exceptionally well kitted out for an indie team and are managed with great care and dedication.

Website:

www.Export-Games.com

Contacts:

Our main source of communication is MSN and irc. You're welcome to msn IM me: dogcity AT hotmail.com
E-mail me: dan AT export-games.com
Or join our irc channel: irc.afternet.org #export

I look forward to chatting with you!

[Madeline]

why would people pay monthly for your rpg game and not pay for world of warcraft which has more players and alot more content?
Not to be horrible or anything but I just think that making a online multiplayer game is alot and I mean alot of work and money.
If you are doing a free online game that is cool, but one where you have to pay? Less cool

[DogCity]

Hi, I understand your concern, the market seems to be swamped with massively multiplayer games at the moment. however the popularity of WoW and other mainstream MMO's is in fact a very great advantage to Phoenix Feather.

Our primary market difference, as should be made clear in my post, is that we are developing a game which is playable anywhere: the library, school computer labs, a laptop on a plane, Internet cafe's and office computer's. So in fact, while our player base may well enjoy playing other popular MMOG's on their home computers, there is often a very great amount of time spent without access to an online world. Phoenix Feather will take advantage of this by giving players quickly and easily access to the world, their characters and friends, wherever they are.

This is a market which is difficult to overestimate; far simpler, far older projects like Runescape and Adventure Quest consistently have 100k+ players online, with roughly 10% paying a fee and the rest producing income from advertising.

We think Phoenix Feather will spearhead the next generation of these web based games, with graphics and content taking a serious leap forward from first gen games. We are also very excited about our gameplay design, which will introduce many new and exciting features that even mainstream MMOG's can't provide.

So you'll see we're not intending to take WoW's thunder, we're hardly competing with them. The fact is, the more players enjoy the adventure and community found in games like WoW, the more they will search for games like Phoenix Feather to play when they are away from their installed game. I am sure the quality of Phoenix Feather's graphics and gamplay combined with it's significantly lower cost will in fact draw a number of players away from mainstream MMOG's. But our main focus is the primarily uncontended arena of instant play-anywhere MMOG's.

[cheeseballz]

Yea, but the thing that you dont understand is that only 1 out of 100 mmos make it and if you charge money by law you have to pay your team, so this should not be in the mods section

[DustinB]

Originally Posted by cheeseballz

Yea, but the thing that you dont understand is that only 1 out of 100 mmos make it and if you charge money by law you have to pay your team, so this should not be in the mods section

ummm....

Originally Posted by DogCity

Compensation:

We have a fair payment agreement for all members, which guarantees unlimited payments if we turn a profit.

[DogCity]

Originally Posted by cheeseballz

Yea, but the thing that you dont understand is that only 1 out of 100 mmos make it and if you charge money by law you have to pay your team, so this should not be in the mods section

I don't know if you are joking or serious, but I'll indulge you because I'm nice like that . Firstly, where did you pull those numbers from? I have no idea if 1 out of 100 is true or false, but to be completely honest it makes no difference to me. Here's why.

The cynical attitude that has developed toward indie MMOG development is nothing more than a fad. It's a fair response to the badly worded posts, and help requests that spring from people who have discovered the Internet and MMOG's at the same time. I think you can see why they go hand in hand. I have first hand experience of these posts, and even responded to these poor souls, usually trying to encourage them to do something simpler.

On the other side of the coin, are experienced, highly organized and dedicated individuals who want to set out on an adventure. They want to test themselves and their friends with a project which encompasses nearly every programming challenge but doesn't limit their freedom or bog them down in the graphical oneupmanship that any FPS, Racing, Sport or Offline rpg project will naturally result in. They have the resources and skills to make a large scale indie project work and have distribution and publicity in mind while designing and producing the game. These are people who have produced exceptionally popular MMOG's like Runescape, A tale in the desert, Eternal Lands, Adventure Quest, and a wealth of other titles. Phoenix Feather is being developed by and entire team of this kind of person.

Unfortunately it's become the norm to classify all indie MMOG projects in the 'impossible dream' category, regardless of the clear distinction between new and experienced developer posts. Thats a shame, because it makes it all that much harder for the real pro's to get the job done. Oh don't get me wrong, we will struggle through you're short sighted group think and in a couple of years you might just be playing our game. Then who will be laughing .

[cheeseballz]

Well really because most mmos dont make it. Go on file planet and go to the mmo section... theres about 300 and only about 10 at the most are activly played

[Madeline]

I actually hate MMORPG's
I don't like games that you have to spend hours just to upgrade the character and also where you have to spend hours non stop.
I did play rose online once because it was free and cute.

[DogCity]

Now, far be it for me - the humble MMORPG developer with a nine member team of exceptionally talented industry and graduate developers, proof of concept and over 500 man hours dedicated to our project to be feeling a little put out by what now seems to be pointless waffle, but...

cheezeballs: Please see the first paragraph of my previous reply... "to be completely honest it makes no difference to me". You'll find things start making a lot more sense when you start paying attention when people talk to you. I mentioned my goals and I stated the factors which led me to believe they are attainable. Unless you have hard facts and figures to back up your argument, it's nothing to me.

In fact, I'll go one further and give you a quick education in indie economics. Indie team projects usually cost somewhere in the region of $500 - $5000 compared to budgets of well over 1 million dollars for corporate projects.
The break even point for most corporate projects is around 200,000 unit sales at $50 each. The equivalent break even point for an indie project where the entire development costs $2000 is just 100 sales at $20 each - an eminently attainable, and I think you'll agree, potentially very profitable business model. Regardless of all this, many indie projects actually match or exceed their production costs simply through donations without charging a penny for the finished game.

So those mmorpgs you see on fileplanet are probably quite comfortable earners for their creators, and at the least they are not loosing money, because if they were they would quite simply be closed, and then quickly removed from fileplanet. I hope that reassures you.

Madeline: Your admission that you've never paid for a MMORPG sheds some light on your first post. If you don't like MMORPG's, I suggest you avoid them.

I genuinely do appreciate questions and comments regarding Phoenix Feather, and i'm happy to allay some fears you might have about MMORPG projects. But if you want to discuss your personal opinion, please find somewhere else to do it.

[DogCity]

Hi folks! A big thankyou to all those who applied for the concept artist position, it has now been filled three times over and the artists already have some incredible concept artwork in production. I need to keep the ball rolling, so i've updated the help wanted to reflect our new available positions. Texture and Sound effect artists.

For anyone interested here's a quick sample of our main menu background track:
1:40 Preview

And a look at our client loading its first custom house (Yes the brown box) .
http://export-games.com/xoops/html/u...eee379dc46.jpg

Best of luck to any applicants!