Twin Skies Pow-Wow: A Chat with Adam Powell

I recently had the opportunity to put a genuine game producer on the spot. I asked Adam Powell, CEO and creative director of Meteor Games, a few questions, and he graciously played along. Adam has been in the online gaming realm for nearly a decade. He hit it big with Neopets, an online version of the virtual pet experience, and his new MMO, Twin Skies is currently in closed beta (released at PAX). He shared some great details on Twin Skies, and online gaming in general. Hit the jump for the interview.

GotGame: The Neopets universe has had a long, successful lifespan in the world of social networking and gaming. What was the inspiration to take the “virtual pet” phenomenon and turn it into an online community?

Adam Powell: Honestly, we don’t really know. We were just doing what we thought was fun and it started to take off.  We did aim for Neopets to become our jobs, and to pay our bills, but we were completely blown away with the rate at which the site grew.  The rest, as they say, was totally awesome.

GG: You’ve said that “Twin Skies” will be a “much more ambitious undertaking” than Neopets. Considering Neopets receives upwards of 4 billion page views per month (according to Wikipedia), this seems a very lofty claim. Do you think Twin Skies is capable of achieving this level of popularity? What will help propel it to the status Neopets has reached in its nine years of existence?

AP: Yeah I think it was nearer 12 billion a month or something, quite incredible really. I’m really pessimistic, so I probably would have to say that we’d have to be super lucky to duplicate that success, but then again I was really worried that everybody would find Neopets boring and leave, so who knows. I’m not much fun at parties.

I think Twin Skies does have a good chance of becoming as big as Neopets, I certainly hope so. The Internet has changed a lot in the past 8 years though, and there’s a lot more competition. It’s certainly going to be tough! We do have an amazing game though, and the site is growing every day, so we’re all fairly confident.

GG: Twin Skies seems like it will appeal to the “tween” age range you’ve already mesmerized with Neopets—but are you aiming for a more diverse audience this time around?

AP: Not really tween, we’re more 13 to 18.  We’re aiming a couple of years older this time, as we felt Neopets was aiming a bit too young by the time we left, the characters were getting super-cute. You’ll find lots more intelligent humour (by our standards, haha), in-jokes, and more adult plots in Twin Skies, but we certainly haven’t forgotten our roots at Neopets. Donna [Williams] and myself haven’t become any less silly with age unfortunately.

The MMO actually has some really in-depth concepts planned that we hope will appeal to the older audience.  We’ve learned a lot about PvP from World of Warcraft, and our lead designer is a huge EVE player - he wants to build some similar concepts into the Twin Skies economy. I’d actually say that the MMO is probably going to appeal to a slightly older userbase than the games on the Twin Skies website, but they both work really well together.

GG: Twin Skies will be featured not only on the web, but also through mobile gaming and social networking sites, as well. How will we interact with an RPG on our mobile phones?

AP: We’re not going to create a copy of the game world on each device. We’re going to let you interact with the game world in meaningful ways. The website, for instance, will have more of a character and house management vibe. You can’t really replicate the thrill of going into combat with a dragon on the site, so we’re not going to bother. You’ll be able to manage your inventory, give the pixies looking after your in-game house tasks, research recipies, water your plants, etc.. You’ll also be able to play flash games on the site that will earn you site points, these you’ll be able to spend on customisations for your character. The website experience is totally different than playing the MMO, but they both complement each other in many ways.

We’re aiming to harness social networking by letting you post achievements and accomplishments on a Facebook feed, for instance. We may even do some social games that try to replicate the feel of the MMO to let people know what we’re all about.

Lastly, we’re trying to have people playing simultaneously in Flash and in the MMO world. Imagine sitting in your player house playing a game of chess against somebody on the web site. We’ve also thought about doing games such as Tower Defence where the defender would be setting up the traps in a flash client, and the people running through attacking the towers would actually be real MMO players. I think that would be beyond cool, but that’s really ambitious, could take a while to get stuff like that implemented. We certainly have the infrastructure to do so though.

GG: Would you tell me about the April fools joke MMORPG you posted on your site? What was the inspiration for this game, and what sort of reaction did you receive from the public?

AP: So many people think that Veg Wars is an April Fool!  And while they are all technically correct, you’ll find some Veg Wars games and in-jokes in Twin Skies.  We’re planning to have a in-game collectible series of Veg Wars figurines to start with.  I think the idea behind it is that the poor kids who grow up on the farms in the game don’t have access to all the latest cool toys, or something like that.

We haven’t had a whole lot of positive feedback about it yet, but we’re keeping our hopes up. At this moment in time I can confirm that we hold free and clear title to the movie rights if anybody from Hollywood is reading this.

GG: Why “Meteor” Games?  Is this name significant to the direction you’re aiming for (reach for the stars)?

AP: We’re going to come out of nowhere and make a big impression!

(Thanks to Meteor Games and Adam Powell for taking the time to chat with us. We can’t wait to check out Twin Skies in all its Eleplant-filled glory.)