Go inside the worlds of Fighting Legends, game industry with Maximum Charisma’s Steve Escalante
By Michael Lafferty

Deep in the heart of cyber-land, a new world has sprung to life. It is an amazing world, the landscape rich with fantastic characteristics drawn from the wellsprings of imagination.

Is this the next frontier? No, it is a game, but a game that bases itself on entertainment with a bit of battle intensity thrown in for good measure. The name of the program is The Fighting Legends, an online game from Maximum Charisma.

In Fighting Legends players play within a tribe of warriors on a quest to “engrave their name in history.” The land is a magical place known as Exisle, and if the name is intriguing, try some of the waypoints in the challenge – like Krag Peak and the Night Mines.

There are three realms, each with a set of clans (players choose which clan to become a member of) all with unique abilities. Each clan features nine characters, so players will find a total of 81 avatars to choose from. Players are initially given a single, semi-immortal avatar (age will kill your character, not combat) to control. However, the key to success lies in the creation, recruitment or trading for up to 16 other tribe members. Each tribe is nomadic, and the game incorporates a bit of the civilization genre into its scheme here with the ability to research new technologies, develop resources and train or recover units.

The game, as it was previewed, was graphically intensive, and required a lot of RAM to play, but don’t fret, the folks at Maximum Charisma Studios are working on that, and updates are coming along all the time.

There are quests and numerous challenges within this fantastic realm. Game controls are keyboard- and mouse-based, with the space bar acting as your targeting control and the z, m or left mouse button as the action.

The game boards are amazing, three-dimensional color fests (hence the reason for the graphical intensity). There wasn’t a lot of sound in the beta preview version of the game, but the game play and graphics more than make up for that.

The Fighting Legends is a wondrous escapade, filled with the core elements that make civilization gaming a joy. Because avatars can die out after a time, the game won’t be home to all-powerful players who whip on the newcomers just for the joy of remaining the top dog. There comes a time when everyone has to start over, though legends of prior lives will survive.

Maximum Charisma Studios is located in Colorado, and targets Internet game playing. Its goal is to create games featuring ease of play and “revolutionary fun.” Recently, MCS’s Steve Escalante took time away from the world of gaming to talk with GameZone about Fighting Legends and the world of Internet gaming.

Question: Can you explain a little bit about the concept of this online game? What inspired it? Was it a case of seeing a need for this style of game, or just a matter of creating the kind of game you wanted to play but it wasn't out there?

Steve: “The concept behind Fighting Legends came from a few broad ideas; we love online games and wanted to make one. We have played many other online games and think they were missing one major element (entertainment), and we did not want to be a cookie cutter game. With that in mind we had a week-long design session with the founders of the company about two months before we opened the doors. This was a week of yelling, laughing, debating, crying and beverages to ease the fun of it. From this bloomed Fighting Legends, the nugget. What was left, the chocolate coating for our engineer’s programming nougat, was a look and feel inspired by our art team. Many different influences were used to create the look of Fighting Legends, one thing is for sure, it is ours.

“What we saw in the market was a need for a product that brought entertainment to the emerging online gaming genre. Fighting Legends, while an engineering feat, is focused on the untouched market of FUN in online games. Serious action combined with serious genres, meeting up with our Dr. Seuss on acid look and feel creates a slapstick comedy, online game that has an entertainment value that lasts. That’s the game we wanted to play, it is also what the industry needs.”

Q: Does The Fighting Legends break any ground technology wise? What can players see when they log on, or log in?

Steve: “Our most notable ground-breaking technology is the amount of units (poly count) on the screen at any one time. Other games can have 60 players on the screen at once and its just 60 characters. With Fighting Legends 10 players could equal 160 characters, all moving around on the screen at once.”

Q: The world of true online gaming seems to be having its ups and downs. Some titles have been altered to embrace the single-player game, or just canned outright. What do you see as the future of online gaming?

Steve: “Online gaming as a whole is just coming into its own. All the large publishers are entering or have already been a part of the persistent online genre including Sony, EA, Microsoft, Vivendi, NCSoft and Ubi Soft to name a few. You have also seen small development houses and small publishers, like ourselves, Artifact Entertainment and Wolfpack Studios entering into this new genre with as much gusto as we can muster. The online category is still in its infancy in that when you look at mass-market titles and see how many units are sold and then you look at the AOL subscription base of online users, you can at least assume that there is an online category with great potential.

“Where I see online gaming evolving is in two distinct categories – the hard core and the casual gaming markets. The hard-core gaming category will push technology by using any means possible. Some massive games that encompasses email alert, cell phones, PDA’s, PC’s and the consoles all in one. The great thing is that it can be in any one category some FPS, RTS or RPG will be best suited in my mind. On the casual/avid gaming category you will see titles similar to Fighting Legends in that it caters to no single one gaming category, but is focused more on entertainment. These are the online games that are fun games that are simple on the surface and complex at its core, the games that remove age demographics. Games with strong filters so that an 8-year old can play with a 25-year old (and most likely win that battle or challenge) and still be enjoyable for both. These are the online games we haven’t seen yet. We have not seen their true capabilities because the casual consumer has been given that option. The hard-core gamer is much more suited and warmed up to this type of market as proven by Sony’s Everquest and Origin’s Ultima Online. Fighting Legends is the first breach into this mass-market category and it will be exciting to see how well it expands the markets for truly massively multiplayer titles in the future.”

Q: Can you give us a timeline of the creation of the game? When did it start, when do you expect to get some breathing time, and what is the favorite down-time experience for developers who have labored so long and hard that we few might revel in their creation?

Steve: “Back in November of 1999 the founders of the company met for a the week long design session, mentioned previously that came up with the core gaming nugget of what is today Fighting Legends. We actually did not open the doors to the office until January of 2000. Between November of 1999 and January we were of course researching all the gaming categories, setting a preliminary look and feel for the game, and beginning the architecture design.

“January 3rd, of 2000 we opened the doors for the original five and three others; one artist, and two programmers. Before anything could be done a basis and foundation of how we were to manage the company were to be established. We hired a consultant that came in for a week that helped us lay out our goals, method of management, company metrics to track progress, and a hierarchy within the company. Between January and March of 2000 we laid the foundation for the company, had a good solid architecture foundation laid and the beginnings of some exciting concept art.

“It was in March of 2000 that the true development began. Not with the hack methods used today, of throwing some 3-D graphics into an engine and calling them screen shots, but true development. First and foremost we had to develop the infrastructure of what was to be our core competency the server side strategy that will host future Maximum Charisma games. It was not until nine months later that the first code for the client side began. With the strong architecture on the networking and online aspects of the game well in tow, the client fell right into place with the first screen shots being produced in December 2000, right before the holidays.

“Many design meetings were coming up, the threat of feature creep on the rise. We had to put into perspective what we wanted to deliver, and when. Most development houses I am sure get into the feature creep trap of constantly adding features and then slipping for two possibly three years. We had made a choice to deliver the product in November and had to check out the realities of doing such a thing. I think around December we were seventeen people strong, with the year 2001 slated as the large growth year, planning for heavy QA and Customer Service.

“We were on track for our June 1 beta test, shortly after our debut at E3. Just before E3 we joined up with SMP (Strategic Marketing Partners) to represent Fighting Legends as our sales force to the buying community. It was one of the final partnerships that we have made this year. SMP had joined a mighty list of Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems, Expanents, Internap and Oracle to name a few. July began the second phase of beta with some 10,000 people signing up for the chance to participate. Then, around the middle of August we were complete. Fine-tuning everything, handling customer service requests, implementing strong Game Master strategies, analyzing and balancing load, you name it, we did it.

“Come September 14th we were distributing 55,000 discs to major retail channels including Best Buy, CompUSA, EB, Gamestop, Fry’s Electronics, Hastings, EB Canada, Future Shop, Chips and Bits, and DVDEmpire.com. Which brings us around to the present day. We have thousands of people playing the Beta III. We have received great feedback and support from these testers and are excited to move forward with the launch this November 1st.

“In terms of past times and moments in peace spent … we all have our preferences. A good amount of people spend time with the other people that are a large support group to our team, the friends and family that allow us to put these insane hours in and still think us normal, fun, loving people. In terms of activities the people at our company do everything from attacking the skate park, skiing (it is Colorado), 4-wheelin, total TV vegg-out for sports, working on a horse farm, playing video games (aaahhhh!) … you get the point, everything.

“When do we see a breather? Hahahahahahahahaha … whew … oh that’s funny. In all seriousness, we do not plan on taking a break. We are a service company that makes games. We are supplying a fantastic gaming experience to the gaming community, but it is the support, the implementation of new and fresh content each and every month that keeps these gamers playing. Then and only then will we take a break. If it were up to me, I would say a break would be nice around the year 2015.”

Q: What is your favorite part of putting this game together? What was the biggest challenge in building the game?

Steve: “My favorite part of putting this game together would have to be spending all this time with these people I work with. When you work for a company and are building business software, managing sales teams, programming, what ever it is, there is not the dynamic that happens within a game development company. To work with creative guys like our artists, true technical geeks like our engineers, guys that talk too much like myself, and our customer-service team, testers, project managers, webmasters, etc. and bring it all together. Very late nights, sometimes never going home, sleeping under your desk nights while the people around you are blaring the music to stay awake. Having spontaneous celebrations for someone’s birthday or just because it seemed like the thing to do at that moment. So for me, as one of the founders, it is working with an extremely dedicated crew that has as much heart and dedication into it as any one of the founders. That has been the most rewarding and my favorite part of putting this game together.

“The biggest challenge has to be third-party management and partnership acquisition. Our development teams were working all the time on the project and delivering on time. Yes some things were cut or simplified, but in many cases for the better of the game. The research, time, effort, and negotiation periods with the third party companies like Hewlett Packard, Navarre, Cisco, and Internap was the biggest challenge. Without these companies we would not have as strong an infrastructure, or a powerhouse distribution team, or a dedicated sales team. While all of these things have been set it is the constant managing of these relationships, expanding on old ideas, developing new ones that is exciting and challenging. They were in my mind the greatest challenge of first figuring out exactly what needed to be done, what we couldn’t do alone, and finding the companies to do it with.”

Q: Can you give us a little background information (as in how you got into the gaming scene, education, games you like to play, titles you have worked on, that sort of thing)?

Steve: “Sean (President and CEO), Bill (VP of Operations), Zak (Lead Engineer) and myself all grew up together in a small community in New Jersey, Blairstown. (For those curios, it is the sticks … don’t believe me? Watch “Friday the 13th Part One,” that is Blairstown back then … and today) Once we got older we started going our separate ways with Sean heading to Colorado for college, Bill in Maine, Zak programming then eventually Massachusetts, and myself stayed in New Jersey. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we were developing these separate skills that would later form what is today Maximum Charisma.

“Sean became a programmer on the R&D team along with Zak with a sales force automation software development company in the pharmaceutical industry. Bill turned out to be a closet-networking guy who set up entire networks for companies in the New Jersey region, and I had inserted myself into the world of sales and marketing through a few different means. So when Sean finally said we should start this company, we filled four of the five major elements we would need to get this company started. The only thing we needed was an artist. So around June of 1999 Sean and I were at a get-together with a bunch of friends and had mentioned that we were starting a game company. One of our friends mentioned that he had a friend in the industry but was unsure of his employment situation. As it turned out Brandon had just two weeks before given up his job with VR-1 in Boulder as one of the lead artists. Our company had all the leading elements it needed.

“We were all just gamers wanting to make a game that we have wanted to play for years, and were just tired of saying ‘this game would be great if …’ This also formed the core design team that came up with Fighting Legends. Sean and myself were hardcore RTS and RPG gamers with some dabbling in sim games. Bill had been involved with many of the online flight games War Birds for example and including Sean and myself had been avid Ultima and Everquest gamers. Zak was the first-person shooter gamer and Brandon brought it in with mainly console games. There are so many great things about all the different genres in the gaming category and they were brought to the test in the creation of the Fighting Legends nugget.

“On a side note, although along the lines of this question, this entire company has been built by gamers, not game development experience. That is an unknown strength that we relish in. So many companies get caught up in the thought that you have to have industry experience to be worth any value to the company. We are one to heavily disagree. Perhaps that is why you see the same version of games being created in the industry, games that are cookie cutters of a game created years ago. This industry was founded on the idea to bring fun and exciting entertainment into the past times of youth, which as we have grown has expanded into all age groups. We built a company filled with people of that generation that were milked on the fruits of Ultima, Zelda, Mario, Mega Man, Might and Magic, Pool of Radiance, Contra… you get the picture.”

Q: Where do you see this entertainment field being in five years from now? How about 10 years from now?

Steve: “There is a very strong push towards the wireless and handheld PCs. Microsoft is entering the console gaming arena next month with their Xbox, Sega is strictly a publisher, Nintendo still hangs tough, Sony putting up the first ante, and Infogrames bought half the industry. The entertainment field is changing. We have seen a strong consolidation with the full acquisition of Gathering of Developers, Vivendi bringing in strong names like Blizzard and Sierra under one umbrella, EA still owning the sports market, and some legends going down like Origin and Dynamics. It is difficult for the small-time developer to enter into the industry because the amount of publishers available to present your product to is limited. Of course these publishers will not look at anything unless you have developed something before, so the creative entity of the free spirited developer is being squashed into a world of games that fit into ‘the plan’.

“In five years you are still going to see the main arenas of the PC gaming markets and the console markets making expected games. Nothing really new, just exciting with technological advances. There will be a massive push of companies moving to the online categories, which we are currently seeing right now, and where I see the independent developer, the creative companies with new fresh ideas moving towards is the mobile gaming platforms. The cost of developing and the time frame needed to develop titles for the mobile gaming platforms allows small developers to insert themselves into greater opportunities. Mobile phone companies are still fresh to this industry so everything is fun and exciting; it boils down to mass-market games that are fun and easy.

“Ten years from now you will see the merging of the mobile-gaming platform with that of online games. One will not necessarily be without the other. Massively multiplayer games will build huge communities of men and women looking to keep in communication with their friends via phone, email and chat. Surrounding these community elements will be a game. It doesn’t matter what the game is, so long as it doesn’t distract them too much from the main objective of meeting and playing with new people.

“There is something to be said, that the stand alone, FPS, Adventure game, RPG or RTS will never go away. Gamers love their anonymity as much as they love to show their gaming prowess. Sitting at home for hours on end to finish a game on their own, faster and better than their friends, will always be an appeal that will not be taken away from the mass communities of online games. I think we are seeing the beginning elements of what these titles are truly becoming, which is episodic elements of the same game being released in optimal times, to keep the gamers coming back to a strong game title. Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider are the first that come to mind. Games that come out with not always new and exciting graphics, but exciting evolutions in game play.

“I think most people will agree, some of the best games produced come from the creative entities of new companies struggling to insert themselves into this competitive industry, MOD communities, and of course the development houses that have remained fixed on their extraordinary franchises by making them better and better each time. My hat comes off to all the people trying to make their game vision come true, it will get harder each and every year. My hat also goes out to those companies that constantly produce quality titles that last each and every year.”

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