Thursday 23 August 2007

Enthusiasm: Paul Barnett vs. others

Paul Barnett is the Creative Director for the upcoming, basement geek drooling MMO, Warhammer Online. Warhammer is an alternative to Warhammer 40k, explanation here. But I don’t want to talk about that; I want to talk about Barnett’s level of enthusiasm for the project.

In all the interviews, vodcats, podcats etc I’ve seen him in he’s always overflowing with enthusiasm for the game. Even at the EA Mythic Christ-mass party, where I’m sure he was pissed if not indulging in other substances, he managed to remain coherent and enthusiastic.


I’m surprised it’s not something that other developers are taking on board. In contrast to Barnett every other spokesman for a developer I’ve seen often looks glassy eyed and zombified. This is understandable; no doubt they’ve had to utter the same sentence a hundred times to different gaming bodies. But so has Barnett.


Who knows, maybe it has something to do with him being Northern and toughing it out. His vodcasts are some of the most downloaded content on the Warhammer Online site, which just goes to show that gamers really do respond to genuine enthusiasm and authenticity. There could be a whole new line of work there: Game Cheerleaders. You’d have to be careful not to employ slimy PR types or rabid fan boys but a happy medium could see more hype and loyalty build for your game than any knee jerk publicity stunt.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I tell you what, I took some stick for that last batch, I basically had to do three 2 min vids about careers way ahaed of time. All I had was a picture (in fact I didn't even have that for one fo them). The vids are ok, though some really are just me and a picture. So far those have been the toughest to watch because without the actual game proof it gets a little grinding. Still i am excited about the game so thats no bad thing.