“You have to be able to break the rules a little” - Interview with Amazon Games VP of MMORPGs in the Lord of the Rings Universe

An interesting interview with Amazon Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann appeared on the gamesindustry.biz portal. It talks about the closed Lord of the Rings MMORPG, the current 2007 game The Lord Of The Rings Online, and the upcoming MMORPG being developed by the authors of New World.

Amazon is creating an MMO based on The Lord of the Rings. If these words sound familiar to you, it is because the company already announced this in 2019, when it worked in partnership with Chinese developer Leyou Technologies. Two years later, it became known that the project was canceled – largely due to the fact that in 2020 Leyou was bought by Tencent.

“It was not 100% clear whether they would switch [права] to Tencent or not,” Amazon Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann told GamesIndustry.biz. “We spoke with Tencent. We know the people there and I have a lot of respect for them, but it’s probably better for us not to work together as we are two big companies. I mean, it’s a project for decades. Who knows what will happen? It’s better to be friends.”

He added that Tencent wasn’t thrilled with the project either, in part because of the restrictions imposed by the license.

“It wasn’t like, ‘Do whatever you want, just stick to the books, otherwise just make a great game,'” says Hartmann. “I don’t want to go into details, but there were certain limitations, so it wasn’t that easy.”

Middle-earth Enterprises, the company that controls the rights to J. R. R. Tolkien’s works, then told Amazon that the license had returned to them. New negotiations began, but the two companies “just couldn’t come to an agreement” – again, partly because of a “rather limited license.”

Last summer, Middle-Earth Enterprises was acquired by Embracer Group, a company with which Amazon already has a close relationship and announced last year that they were working together on the next Tomb Raider.

“There were a lot of people I knew, like Randy [Питчфорд] from the Gearbox I worked with [в прошлом]. Didn’t think it would work, but I figured I could just call them and ask. It won’t hurt. And they were really interested. I think we’re a bit lucky that the person now in charge of Middle-earth Enterprises is an old colleague of mine, literally from the early days of Take-Two and Rockstar in the 90s from the UK, so that certainly helps with trust issues.” .

Although Embracer has just under 100 in-house studios, Hartmann convinced the company and Middle-earth Enterprise that Irvine-based Amazon Games Orange County has a lot of experience making massive MMOs, thanks to its recent success with New World. Discussions moved forward, an agreement was reached and the partnership was announced yesterday.

As previously reported, Hartmann aims to make “the biggest MMO in the world”, which is somewhat complicated by the already existing long-running MMO The Lord Of The Rings Online.

The Lord of the Rings Online, now run by Standing Stone, has been around since 2007 and is still getting major expansions like last year’s Before The Shadow. Considering this game is over a decade old, will this affect the potential of Amazon Games’ own Tolkien game?

“Not at all,” says Hartmann. “First of all, I have a lot of respect for them for holding on for so long. They have a not huge, but very loyal fan base. But if you look at technology, where we are now, and where we will be in a couple of years, then these are just different worlds. I’m exaggerating a bit if I say it’s going to be like going from black and white to color, but that’s the approach I want to take. It’s just a completely different world.”

“I think they can really coexist. Even the most likely scenario is… that people just go [в новую игру]because the other one is already old. The game is not bad, but the industry at some point moves to a new level, and it’s been a long time from their release to ours.

Hartmann talks about expanding the genre’s client base, creating MMOs for non-MMO players. If Amazon is able to achieve this, it could very well give them an advantage over LOTRO, which is very similar in structure to World of Warcraft.

It is worth noting that Amazon itself does not name its MMORPG project, which are LOTRO and WoW. The concept of mass multiplayer has evolved significantly since 2007, when games like Destiny created an MMO for FPS players. It’s not yet clear what Amazon’s game will eventually turn out to be – the team is just now building prototypes – but it’s clear audience expectations have changed as well.

“Everything is looking for instant gratification, and with the advent of social media and the internet and all that, that instant gratification has become very important,” says Hartmann. “Everything has to be faster and faster.”

“If you’re just counting on people to pick up the mechanics quickly, that’s great, but the main thing is accessibility and getting rewarded very early for a sense of progress. Then you can slowly let them get better and better, and basically let them start playing at a different pace. That’s what’s important. For many PvP games, it is also a big problem to attract new people. Let’s take League of Legends though – the game is great, but how many newbies will remain in it if everyone shouts at them?

Luckily, Amazon Games Orange Country can learn from its debut New World game. Perhaps the most obvious are the technical lessons; New World, like many other online games, experienced server problems at launch, but Hartmann notes that they have been fixed and helped the team better understand their own technology. The biggest lesson, however, concerns the demand for content.

“People are just literally burning content at an incredible rate,” he says. “We didn’t keep up with the development of new content. At the very beginning, we said “we clearly need post-launch content”, we looked at timelines in our world, where a lot of experienced people say two or three months, but people were burning what we thought would take them two or three months, in just one.”

“We just have to prepare for the next round and take into account that there are people who will really stop sleeping and will run through content at three times the speed.”

Amazon has confirmed that the game will center on stories and characters from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and that in itself creates another problem. Even though the books are nearly 100 years old (The Hobbit was first published in 1937), players are just as likely to be familiar with Peter Jackson’s films from the past 20 years. How do you create a new Middle-earth that is both your own creative vision and familiar to those who have enjoyed previous adaptations?

“I can already see the debate going on in the studio,” says Hartmann. “We have die-hard fans of The Lord of the Rings, and they are already saying: “We can’t do this”, or “Middle-earth [Enterprises] won’t allow it, and we won’t be able to change the story, introduce new characters, or rewrite the books.”

“But it is still very important for me that this is, firstly, a game, and secondly, a reflection of books. So I’m already reminding the team of this: “I understand, but it’s not about every person walking around and pointing out if this part is 100% perfect.” Let’s say the way [Толкиен] describes the world, might look a little different because either we can’t achieve that, or the artists think it might look a little different than what people imagine from the book.”

“I definitely want to put the game first to make sure it’s a great game because, like I said, we want people to play for ten years. It won’t help me if someone says, “This is the perfect representation of the book in the game.” If you really like it, read the book. Read it five more times. Otherwise, if it’s a game, then it has to be related to the gameplay, and it has to be playable, so you have to be able to break the rules a little to make the game great.”

He adds that this balance is also key to the success of any licensed MMO. We discuss examples from the past, starting with two Star Wars MMOs, continuing with Star Trek Online, the aforementioned Lord of the Rings Online, and ending with defunct examples such as Pirates of the Caribbean Online and The Matrix Online. Hartmann says the amount of source material available from Tolkien’s works at least gives Amazon an edge over the latter, which was based on just three films.

Despite the longevity of games like LOTRO and WoW, Hartmann believes that the MMO genre is still underdeveloped, which is why Amazon has been investing heavily in it in recent years, releasing New World and now developing this game.

“Battle royales like Fortnite and PUBG have been a topic of discussion for a really long time and, as usual, everyone jumped on the subject,” he says. “They were really popular. But I say, “MMOs were pretty cool too, but they don’t get the attention they did ten years ago.” That is why we strategically went in this direction.”

That doesn’t mean that Amazon is solely focused on MMOs, as the signing of Tomb Raider shows. Hartmann adds: “The games industry is also opportunistic. If a great opportunity presents itself, you seize it. I’m not dogmatic or stubborn, saying, “I’m going to do just that.” If something as big as Tomb Raider comes up and you feel like you’re the right partner for each other, then go for it. How many more IPs of this level of quality exist?

No release date for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings game has yet been announced, but with the team currently in the prototyping phase and Hartmann aiming to create an MMO that will last over a decade, he’s in no rush to bring the game to market.

“It will be done when it is done and when it is ready,” he says. “That’s all. I want this thing to last more than ten years. We are not going to release something that is not ready yet. Of course, we’d like it to happen as soon as possible out of self-interest, but we’re only going to release the game when it’s actually ready.”