Spawn Creator Says Kingdoms of Amalur Needs Word of Mouth for Sequel

Todd McFarlane, who is the leading developer working on the art of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, believes that the game has the potential to deliver a sequel as long as it managed to start up conversations between gamers and then turn them into sales.

Speaking to Gamasutra, the artist, best known for creating the character Spawn, has said, “There are some surprises in it. If we delivered enough of them, maybe they’ll phone up their buddy and go, ‘Hey, Fred, I just played this game and you’ve got to see it. It’s kind of cool, man.’

“If we can get that word of mouth going, then there’s a big potential for us to succeed and maybe have a sequel come out someday.”

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the first video game project that Todd McFarlane has worked on and he sees it as a positive experience, although he found it hard to accept that all development areas, from graphics to gameplay to story, are important for the success of the game.

He added, “If you ask ten different RPG players why they play those games, you will invariably get ten different answers. How do you develop for that? The only way to do that is to treat each one of those areas equally and with the same preciousness as you would any other area. You can’t pick favorites. You literally have to become a communist developer, treating them all as equals.”

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning benefitted from a lot of talent, with well-known fantasy writing R.A. Salvatore, the creator of Drizzt, penning the universe and much of the story, and with Ken Rolston, who was the lead designer behind the third and fourth Elder Scrolls games, creating the core gameplay concepts.

The development team at 38 Studios has plans to develop the game universe in an MMO called Copernicus, which is already under development and might arrive during 2013.