Interview With Dallas Dickinson of QC Games

With the announcement of QC Games' partnership with Nexon, I was recently given a chance to send a few questions in to be answered by the company's founder, Dallas Dickinson. Dallas is probably best known for his work on Star Wars: The Old Republic. I asked about the reasons behind partnering with Nexon and some of the company's philosophies.

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Is the "freedom to bring [your] vision to life" the only reason you decided to go with Nexon when choosing a publisher? Did any other factors influence your decision, such  as Boss Key Productions signing with them?

Nexon is a great company with a long history of building games specifically for the online space. That experience was honestly the primary factor in our choice—we love being partnered with people who understand our kind of game. Not all publishers out there have made the transition to digital and online, and Nexon started there.

That said, it also inspired confidence to see Nexon partnered with other developers we like and respect. The folks at Boss Key and Splash Damage are all developers with excellent resumes and track records, so it’s valuable to be in the same family with them.

Does the "QC" in QC Games stand for anything?

It stands for Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec and Toltec plumed serpent god. We’re an Austin-based company, and wanted to give a nod to our Southwestern roots while at the same time being able to use a GIANT FREAKING PLUMED SERPENT as a mascot. If you look closely at our logo, it’s based on a bird’s-eye view of the Aztec pyramid of the sun at Teotihuacan.

We figured Quetzalcoatl would be too hard for most people to spell, so we went with the abbreviated form. You could also say it stands for “Quality Control,” but that would be boring.

At QC Games, you "respect leadership in every team member." Do you foresee this leading to any problems? Is this philosophy part of the reason that you have assembled so many team members that—I'm assuming—you've worked with in the past?

That phrase is really meant to speak to the fact that we want to foster a development culture of mutual respect and responsibility at QC Games. We’ve all worked in places and with people where there has been a “top-down” culture, and feedback and opinions from the front line weren’t taken seriously. As a result, people didn’t care about the game they were making.

That said, we’re not implying we intend to be a wholly leaderless autonomous collective, which doesn’t work either. You still need the people in leadership positions to make hard calls and own the results. We simply want respect for all developers—and for the players—to be one of the building blocks of our company culture.

In regards to the entire "work with gamers" section of the about page, do you intend to disclose disagreements that occur in design and allow players to discuss them with the team directly?

Absolutely. While we aren’t going to talk too much about the game itself at this point. Once we have something worth getting players’ hands on, we want to engage with our community to see what they think. Part of that will be sharing some of the internal disagreements and decisions we have to fight through. We already have a mix of types of gamer on the team, but we know that we aren’t the end-all of game design and experience. We need real players to talk with us and tell us what they like, not only about our game but about all of the other games out there. We learn the most by playing everything and by talking with other players.

As you are partnering with Nexon it would be fairly safe to assume that your first title is a free-to-play title. What do you think the ideal business model in a free-to-play online action title consists of?

The term “free-to-play” is a pretty broad one, even though it tends to bring to mind negative connotations for a lot of people. There are many games across PC, console, and mobile that apply it as a catch-all to describe their game and the business aspect of it—some of those models are great and some of them are terrible. That said, I don’t know that our game is going to follow any of those models.

Without getting into the details of our game or its model (at least in part because we’re still figuring the details out), I prefer—both as a player and as a developer—games where the option to spend money always feels like a value-add for the player and not a punishment or requirement. Whether the game sells cosmetic items or convenience items or efficiency, the best games don’t hide their fun behind a pay wall or give a paying player a competitive advantage over a player enjoying the game for free. They give you a great experience (for whatever price) and then allow you to choose whether you want.

What sorts of "proprietary technology" will you be working with?

That’s a tough one to answer as we’re in the middle of building it and don’t really want to disclose our “competitive edge/edges” at this point. We’ll reveal more in the future.

As the company's founding was just announced, has development on your "multiplayer online action title" actually begun yet?

A core team has been working on the game for a while in stealth mode, both on the design and art front (determining the game vision and IP/setting), as well as the technology front. We have been working closely with Nexon behind-the-scenes and we’re really excited to be a part of their strategy to build great online games in the West.

How many team members are you aiming to have by the end of the hiring process?

I can’t give you the full planned size of the team at this time, other than to say that we intend to build a team that is the right size to make a great online game.

As it wasn't in the press release, do you have CFO appointed yet?

Currently, my COO is doing double-duty as CFO. As we’re a new company, many of us are pulling double- or even triple-duty while we continue to staff up. We’re still hiring for a variety of positions, so if anyone is looking for a job in the online games industry, they should check out our careers page: http://qcgamedev.com/wp/careers/

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For more information about the company, head to their website. Also be sure to keep an eye out for their "multiplayer online action title," coming soon!