POTBS – The CEO Recounts Lessons Learned on The High Seas

(continued from the previous installment, found here)

I have only played Pirates of the Burning Seas for a few weeks, and that casually. It’s great fun - no really... check out my AoC commentaries; I'd never lie regarding how I feel about a game.

I asked if Rusty felt you had to pour a lot of hours into the game on a regular basis if you wanted to succeed, particularly with PvP.

“It’s a question of what people decide is the appropriate way to play.” Williams responded, “With EVE Online, the way their pvp works, the general rule is ‘Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose’. We tried to go in very much the same direction, and we’ve considered that up until now, our PvP was mostly a matter of education. We tell players ‘Here’s how you should play PvP’… but at the end of the day, we have a very different market than EVE, so that ‘education’ is not working out for us.”

EVE Online has really drawn a lot of hardcore gamers. Their attitude and mindset are very different from the folks who play Pirates of the Burning Sea. This game has drawn a lot of the standard MMOG crowd, and their standard for investment of time and resources is somewhat different.


Cap’n Brakk Beerd…. Has more ships sunk out from unner him than any odder Pirate on tha ocean. Gud thing he allus has a spare!

“Right now, players get ships of the line, and they want to sail them but they are terrified of sailing them because of the investment, said Rusty, “So we’ve been rethinking how to change that dramatically, to reduce the pain.”

Will you not then get a subset of your community that will then scream because they’ve become used to the way things are, I asked?

“That’s always an issue,” he acknowledged, then widened his eyes and uttered the call of grumpy gamers everywhere, “NERF!”

He continued, “My theory is that we’ve still not seen our full audience because we are an extraordinarily novel sort of game."

He explained, "When we put it out, the UI was not very friendly and the tutorials did not teach you the depth of the game. We’ve been restructuring and reworking those, and as we’re doing that, we’re working on support for trial accounts. Then we’ll find that audience of people who don’t want to throw down $40, afraid that they might not enjoy it.”

I asked how the SOE partnership come about. At the time that POTBS signed on, SOE was still fighting the reputation of being a ‘big, bad evil company’… so it was interesting to see a small independent outfit like Flying Labs joining them.

“Simple,” Rusty replied, “Platform publishing. It’s everything.”


A comic Oi did waaae back in tha dae when tha deal between FLS an’ SOE was announced.

I noted that so many companies say they want complete control, that they want to do it all by themselves.

“Yeah, and how has that worked out for them?" Williams asked, pointedly, "Look at Perpetual. I walk into these buildings and talk to the people. They’re all nice, well-intentioned people, but there are fires, there’s wounded in the corner, there’s explosions, and meanwhile the person is explaining to me,” and here Williams puts on deadpan expression, “‘Here’s our ship date, and here’s our…’ and I am thinking well, hmmm, can you not open your eyes?”

Perpetual Entertainment was the development company working on Gods and Heroes, a game that was cancelled just a few weeks before launch, and also had the license for Star Trek Online. They are now... defunct, or re-formed, or something. Anyone know where the corpse went?

Yeah, the stench of death has got to be overpowering in some places. As a journalist, I see the people coming and going, and when the rats start leaving the sinking ship, or you see a look of desperation in the eyes of the employees sitting with heads down, desperately looking like they are working, you have to wonder. I remember the same thing happening close to the launch of Vanguard. I mentioned that it’s an interesting experience, watching people flat out lie to you about the state of their game.

“They have to, in the schadenfreude world of the internet,” Rusty observed, gaining fifty Brasse-points for using such a great word in a sentence, “Why then stick to the whole ‘I have to remain fiercely independent, and no one is touching MY game’, as opposed to forming strategic partnerships like every other industry does? It does not seem to have sunk into the land of game design.”


Anodder seagoin’ picture, in case ye was fallin’ asleep! This is whur POTBS really shines, in elegant an’ deadly sea battles.

You came from Microsoft, and you are used to seeing that sort of corporate partnership. Did that influence your own outlook on seeking industry partners for your own game?

“We talked to a lot of different people and we were very close to signing with another company much earlier on, “said Williams, “I can’t name a significant player in the MMO industry that we did not dance with at one time or another.”

“The problem was that there are a lot of companies that people think are doing well, and they are. They’re doing well for their publisher,” he observed, “And that I think is why people try to go it alone. They look at these ludicrous one-sided contracts. They think, 'I’ve got this powerful group to help me, but the vast majority of my money is going to be going to this group'. So it’s a trade-off. That is why I think that platform publishing is so fantastic, because you get to really reap the rewards of your work. If I were doing it all over again, I’d do it the same way. I see platform publishing to be a moral good in this industry."


Here Oi am, discussin' me own strategic parnerships within Pirates of the Burning Sea; me business partners kin be a bit more... unsavory types.

Rusty continued, “I’m afraid that this industry is heading for consolidation. People think company x is doing fine... they’re actually not doing so great because their cost base is so problematic. Having platform publishing creates an environment in which smaller independents can actually participate with in a meaningful way, alongside the big guys.”

It’s like being part of a cooperative, I noted. It is also very good for the consumer; if a game like POTBS signs on with SOE and becomes a part of the Station Pass subscription plan, it’s a no-brainer to go out and buy the box, because the monthly fee is already covered. The integrated accounts, forums and Station Launcher work to make the games part of a greater whole.

I decided that Flying Lab Software must be doing reasonably well, because I heard they were getting ready to move the studio to a new, larger location. The “Darth Vader” building had been mentioned in passing. Not being that familiar with Seattle, I had to ask… what is the Darth Vader building?

“It’s a force of evil,” Williams laughed, darkly.

That seems appropriate, given your alignment with SOE, I said.

“Actually, we’re not moving to the Darth Vader building, we’re moving to a building about two blocks south. The “Snuggles” building,” and I could swear he giggled, “It gives us about 50% more space. We’re a bit crowded here, so we’re looking forward to expanding out there.”


You just never know who you’re going to get on the phone when you call Flying Labs…

An interesting thing happened while I was conducting this interview. The phone rang. That, in and of itself, is not terribly interesting, but the reason it rang certainly is, and illustrates this CEO’s approach in his company.

“Flying Labs Software, Russell speaking. (pause) No, he is not, can I take a message? Ok, bye!”

So you are also the receptionist, too, I observed, must save a lot of money...

It turns out that in a certain unnamed location, Rusty’s direct number is given as a contact number for the company. No, I’m NOT going to tell you all where it is, or he’ll never get ANY work done.

“So, when anyone calls that number, it goes straight to me,” he laughed, “But I feel that if someone actually found that phone number, well, I guess I may as well help them! I used to do tech support, a long time ago. I actually started out in Quality Assurance.”

“It’s kind of fun too, cause they have no idea who I am,” Rusty grinned, “A guy calls with a question and I say ‘I can probably help you’ and he says ‘Well, I was thinking maybe somebody besides the receptionist,’ and I’d say… ‘Let me try.’”

The best part of these calls is that he ends each of them with a question, “How can we make the game better for you?”

This is a man who clearly loves what he is doing, and is involved in every level of the company he founded… even phone tech support. And if the CEO can’t help you with your issues… no one can!


Well… mebbe me parrot kin. He seems ta know whut he’s talkin’ aboot.

Pirates of the Burning Sea... give it a go! I actually have two buddy keys here, from when the Troll and I installed the game; send me a PM on our Forums and you can play for 14 days*!

*(First come, first served as we've only got TWO, void where prohibited by law, large 'donations' of grog, salted meat and pieces of eight may increase your chances of getting the key, insert other legaleze absolving me of any responsibility here)