Blog @ Canadian Geek

Experience Points #7: Mind Storm Labs

Posted on 2008 under Experience Points

This is the first in a series of interviews that have sent to various independent publishers to get a sense of what they have coming and to spotlight the products they already have available for purchase.

I couldn’t think of a better company to start with than Mind Storm Labs. With offices here in Canada, it would be very silly for me not to interview MSL for Canadian Geek. MSL’s first product, Alpha Omega was released earlier this year. Indie Press Revolution describes Alpha Omega as follows:

The world has been remade, cast from the fires of war, plague, and the vengeance of a long-abused planet. It is a dangerous world, reclaimed by the primal forces from which it sprang and no longer subject to the will of humanity. It is a world stalked by monsters, marked by the gleaming towers of humanity’s ingenuity, and home, once again, to the angels and demons of the ancient world-long-forgotten, un-Earthly creatures of incredible power. Earth is a world shaped by incredible shifts in science, culture, and the environment.

The 21st century nation states are no more, and the human population on Earth has declined dramatically. Most of the planet’s surface is wilderness, inhabited only by those brave, foolish, or desperate enough to risk the terrors of the New World’s nature. Known as Freezones, these incredible expanses of wilderness are pockmarked with the remnants and ruins of the Old World, evidence that humanity’s reign over the natural world has ended.

Most Humans, and the other intelligent species with which they now share the Earth, have retreated into the Arcologies, massive city complexes scraping the very edge of space. The civilized world is controlled by powerful organizations spawned from the corporations, religions, criminal syndicates, and secret societies of the 21st century.

The president of Mind Storm Labs, Tom McLaughlin took the time to respond to my questions.

Alpha Omega

You released the Alpha Omega RPG a few months ago. How has the reception been so far?

We released the game in mid January ‘08 and to date the reception has been fantastic. We’ve heard from a lot of players who said this was the first game they felt they could introduce their non RPG friends to, one player told us this was the first game he could get his girlfriend interested in.

Did the connection (even if it was made in error) between the Ethan Haas website and the movie Cloverfield garner more interest in Alpha Omega?

We launched the Ethan Haas Was Right website (http://www.ethanhaaswasright.com) in June 2007 and began leaving messages and clues across the Internet about a mysterious website that had just appeared , shortly thereafter we began receiving, what we thought at the time, was great traffic to the site.

When the trailer for Cloverfield came out and a film website decided to declare our marketing campaigns were linked it just exploded and we started receiving millions of hits a day and tens of thousands of emails. By early July the majority of online and print media outlets, including the mainstream press like USA Today and Forbes were running with the story. We left in-game messages through some of the characters, to let players know the two were not connected, but that just created more debate and conspiracy theories. It also didn’t help that Paramount contacted YouTube to have our video clips taken down.

Even after our marketing campaign ended we still had people coming up to us at conferences and telling us they didn’t believe we were real.

A great unexpected result from it was the exposure a table top RPG received in the mainstream media. We received a lot of emails from people who never played an RPG before, or had years ago, and this got them interested in playing again.

What kinds of supplements are planned for Alpha Omega? When can we expect to see them?

Our first major supplement will be a compilation of creatures for the world of Alpha Omega titled, “The Encountered Volume One”. The Encountered will contain over 200 creatures, rules for creature creation, templates for modifying or customizing creatures, an encounter management guide and several optional factions. We’ll be previewing some of the artwork and layout of The Encountered at Gen Con Indy this August as well as posting various images on the AO forums (www.alphaomegathegame.com/community).

As community content is important to the development of Alpha Omega, this supplement will provide the first opportunity for players to contribute directly to a core supplement. Players can submit their creature concepts to the New World Science and Engineering Commission (NWSEC) (www.nwsecom.com), a science and engineering research body set in the AO world. Later this summer we will select five designs to be included in “The Encountered: Volume One”. This supplement is scheduled for release in late summer ’08

We’ll also be releasing our next free module called, “The Larsa Meteor”. It will be similar in design and length as “Milk Run”, the previous 70 page free module we released in March.

Next on the list is an equipment guide (official title to be determined) that will be filled with weapons, armor and equipment that will add depth to the various levels of technology found in the world of Alpha Omega. We are aiming to release the equipment manual in late fall ’08.

I see you’ve published a free adventure on your website already. Do you plan on continuing web based support for Alpha Omega?

We have another free module coming out this summer called the “Larsa Meteor”. We have brought the New World Science and Engineering Commission out of the pages of the Core Manual, created a website for it and a community wiki where fans of AO can share their own creature and equipment creations with other players. We plan on going beyond standard web based support for the game by making what we do online a part of people’s games and allowing players to offer content to other players online. AO will always be a pen and paper RPG, but that is only phase one of the game and the game world’s development.

Do you have an over arching story line, or metaplot, that you’ll develop, or will your sourcebooks be based on explaining what the world is like, or has become?

Although there is an over arching storyline, we are planning on keeping it out of the core sourcebooks such as The Encountered and the equipment manual as we want GMs and players to feel free to develop their own versions of our world if they do not embrace our metaplot. With The Encountered we made the factions optional so GMs could still use the individual creatures in their campaigns and adventures regardless of whether they want to make use of the history, societies and areas of influence described for each faction. Critical to the metaplot will be the political, military and economic maneuvering between key individuals, states and factions that will culminate in the next Evolutionary War. This will be the first time that the residents of Earth may influence the outcome between the two warring alien races, the Seraph and the Ophanum.

General

Do you have any other new properties that are currently in development? When can we expect to see them?

We are developing several new properties and partnerships at the moment; we expect to make an announcement about the first one later in July with a sneak peek at Gen Con Indy.

Does being a Canadian publisher pose any difficulties in marketing and selling your product?

We have offices in Canada and the US along with artists and designer from several other parts of the world so I see us more as a multi national collaboration. With most marketing and sales conducted online now I don’t see any specific barriers to entry being based in Canada. In the internet era it really has more to do with your product, if you have a game that people want to play where your company is based won’t have much impact on your success as you can reach a global audience online.

What sort of challenges does an independent gaming publisher face? What did Mind Storm Labs Labs do to resolve these challenges?

I think the challenges are similar for any new venture start up, whether it’s a game company or another industry. There are always specific challenges for every industry but the business fundamentals you need to solve the challenges are the same. In our case we overcame our specific obstacles with hard work, teamwork and never sacrificing our vision for Alpha Omega.

Recommendation

I think this month is a no-brainer for my recommendation. I think Alpha Omega looks to be a very exciting product and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

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1 Comment

My other writing | Video Games and Building Blocks said

July 10 2008 @ 9:29 am

[...] gaming publishers over at Canadian Geek. The first in that series was posted today, which was an interview with Tom McLaughlin of Mind Storm Labs. I’ve got several in the hopper, so keep your eyes peeled there for more in the [...]

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Experience Points #7: Mind Storm Labs

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My other writing | Video Games and Building Blocks said

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