{"id":846,"date":"2012-10-25T07:56:01","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T13:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/?p=846"},"modified":"2012-10-25T07:56:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T13:56:01","slug":"randall-bills-ama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/?p=846","title":{"rendered":"Randall Bills AMA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening, Randall Bills from Catalyst Game Labs held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) about his role with MWT and MWO. \u00c2\u00a0While some folks asked questions totally unrelated to Randall’s role on the two games (Open Beta date, Founder’s Package questions (that have already been answered by the MWO Devs), monthly payments), a lot of good questions about BattleTech in general, as well as MWT\/MWO got asked.<\/p>\n

Here’s the link<\/a> to the AMA over on Reddit, so you can read everything for yourself.<\/p>\n

Here’s a couple of the Q and As that I found most informative:<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Q: \u00c2\u00a0Tell us exactly what your job means with respect to MWO and MWT. You’re in charge, or at least influence, how they handle lore within the games?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n\n

A: \u00c2\u00a0I write most of the fiction material that appears at\u00c2\u00a0www.mwomercs.com<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0as well as mwtactics.com. Anytime the developers have continuity\/universe related questions, they toss it my way; i.e. details of a world where they want to place a map, questions about “how would you do X in the universe”, as well as asking for my input on “what should be our next batch of ‘Mechs” and so on. I’m not in charge by any stretch, and I don’t really have any say when it comes to game play…that is their strengths…instead, I work with them to simply ensure that as much flavor of BT is embued into the games as possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Q: \u00c2\u00a0Not specifically related to MWT\/MWO, more of a general question.<\/p>\n

TableTop RPGs seem to have waned in popularity over the years (at least, in my neck of the woods), with people moving online to get their ‘fix’. Do you think the popularity of video games based on tabletop games can\/will give a boost to the tabletop ‘family’ as well?<\/p>\n

A: \u00c2\u00a0Absolutely. There are some very specific examples of just that. For example, I know that when the Ticket To Ride app was released, it was done in such a way that people were made aware of the board game and suddenly sales spiked high because people who didn’t even know it existed could find it? I can see the exact same thing happening with Will Wheaton’s TableTop on Geek & Sundry…I’ve been in the store watching kids coming in, excited to play a boardgame because they were ‘shown’ that they exist…it’s far less about video games taking away kids from wanting to play TTs as it is, IMO, trying to show that video games can and do lead to more TT play if done right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening, Randall Bills from Catalyst Game Labs held an AMA (Ask Me Anything) about his role with MWT and MWO. \u00c2\u00a0While some folks asked questions totally unrelated to Randall’s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[21,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BPLE-dE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigdamnheroes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}