An Interview with John Smedley

*snickers*

This is an excerpt from a 3 page interview on Warcry from John Smedley, the CEO of SOE.

That other lesson is the infamous "New Game Experience" the team put into Star Wars Galaxies in 2005. On that, he was completely frank.

"With the NGE, I'm sorry about the mistake we made," he told us. "We screwed up and didn't listen to the fans when we should have, and it's not a mistake we're going to make again."

The NGE completely altered Star Wars Galaxies, a game that had launched in cooperation with LucasArts over two years before. Classes disappeared and the game fundamentally changed in almost every way. It came as no surprise to observers that this change was massively unpopular among the playerbase.

And what was the mistake SOE made that Smedley is sorry for?

"[The mistake was] to not just think we know the right direction without bringing the fans into the mix," he explained. "We made the cardinal sin of not listening, but assuming and we were wrong."

He went on to point out that after two years, the game is once again stable and growing. They continue to update the game with new content and those fans, old and new, who enjoy the current incarnation of the game are being listened to. The old game won't come back - to change now would be as unfair as the first time they did it - but he believes SWG still has a solid future.

Damn right you're sorry.

Anyhow, here is the full article by Dana Massey. Enjoy!

An Exclusive Interview with John Smedley, SOE CEO