This weekend I’m headed back to the Big Apple with several 38 Studios cohorts to take part in a panel discussion at New York Comic Con. The theme of the panel is “MMO Development: Year Two.” It’s a follow-up to last year’s panel in which we talked about, uh, year one of the studio.

So this raises the question of exactly why we’re travelling to the heart of Yankee country when we’ve made clear that we’re not going to unveil the details of Copernicus this year. Well, first of all, Ten Ton Hammer asked us to do it and we like those guys. Second, it gives the MMOG fan a peek behind the curtains at how development works. Finally, its Comic Con! We’re geeks at heart and love to soak it all in.

If you happen to be attending the show and would like to say hello, our panel starts at 1:45pm on Saturday. I’ll be wearing my Power Girl costume.

Massively has posted their interview with 38 Studios, featuring Mary Kirchoff (VP of Marketing) and Thom Ang (Art Director).

This article is largely focused on marketing and big-picture plans for the studio. I thought Mary had a couple really good quotes, such as this response to why we’re doing a fantasy game:

“Our other perspective on fantasy is that it’s the most globally accepted medium for conveying epic stories. It’s accepted over the broadest number of categories in book publishing, which is one of the categories we’re going to develop our intellectual property inside. We want consumers to enjoy that experience of being in the world 24/7 in different contexts. Fantasy delivers to a global, broad market – just like 38 Studios.”

As for when the game name and more detail on the IP will be forthcoming, Mary talked about that:

“Our current plan is to announce the name of the game and launch the IP website (as opposed to the corporate website) about this time next year.”

Note the phrase “our current plan.” A lot can change in a year, so don’t get too worked up if those plans change.

The folks at Ten Ton Hammer also spent some time with the 38 Studios crew at Comic Con, and wrote up a nice interview in which Scott Cuthbertson (VP of Creative Development) and Thom Ang (Art Director) discussed the art style of Copernicus.

Of course, every gamer knows that what gets created in concept often doesn’t wind up looking the same way in game. Thom addressed this point well:

Thom added, “One of the things that we’re doing to ensure this does translate into the actual game environment is that the concept artists who did this are actually the modelers. They’re taking their own paintings and, as artists they’re amazing, but as modelers and world builders they’re also amazing. They’re not having to hand this off to trust someone else to interpret it… They’re doing their own efficiency tests on it, so they’re involved from the beginning all the way through to end delivery.”

For you detail-oriented types, it’s worth noting that the TTH article included the captions that yours truly wrote for the postcards, but the Zam interview I linked yesterday did not. We’ll make sure the missing captions get out there.

At San Diego Comic-Con (which I did not attend), the 38 Studios team chatted with a few gaming websites who were covering the event. Tamat from Allakhazam talked to our art director, Thom Ang, and got a peek at a pair of concept art pieces from our upcoming MMOG, code-named Copernicus. Click the link to check them out.

No, this isn’t the opening of the information floodgates–we intend to go back to being quiet for a while. But the convention was a fitting opportunity to show off some of the amazing work of our artists, so we did. Hope you enjoy them.