Gazillion CEO: WoW too hard

There’s been a lot of press lately about Gazillion Entertainment. I wrote about them before when I talked about the upcoming Marvel MMO. Yup, those are the same guys, who pretty much came out of nowhere, to ink a contract with Marvel Entertainment to take a second (or is it third) attempt to make a massively multiplayer game out of their storied comic book world.

In this mix, you add Rob Hutter. Hutter, according to Forbes, is a former venture capitalist that is now tasked to run Gazillion Games as it’s CEO. He’s the industry hotshot that will finally end the US dominance of all things PC gaming related of a company called Activision Blizzard. Hopefully, he’s had an off day when he was interviewed by Forbes, because he’s quoted with saying this little gem:

Hutter sees a huge opportunity for MMOs appealing to people outside the “hardcore gamer” demographic. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimates online gaming revenues will grow from $8 billion in 2008 to $14 billion in 2012.

While most people unaccustomed to MMOs might be intimidated by complex games like “Warcraft,” Hutter says trends in technology suggest the audience for simple, well-designed games will grow quickly. The runaway success of Nintendo’s (other-otc: NTDOY.PK - news - people ) Wii proved virgin gamers will try new titles if they are easy to play, while the boom in social networks like Facebook suggests people of all ages are looking for new ways to interact online, he says.

So World of Warcraft is for hardcore gamers eh? I’m going to cut Mr. Hutter some slack and just assume that the Forbes interviewer, who probably didn’t know that much about gaming, just quoted him out of context. If not, then Gazillion Entertainment has a CEO who’s a serious noob when it comes to gaming. No one would mistake WoW as being a tough game, let alone one that is for hardcore players. With a subscriber base that’s 12 million strong, the majority of the player base is overwhelming not hardcore; there are legions more of casual players who play about 10 hours or less a week.

I’m looking forward to a Marvel MMO since I like the superhero genre quite a bit (like 2+ years as a City of Heroes player isn’t a dead giveaway). However, Hutter’s comments has left me hoping that he just forget to drink his coffee that morning or that he’s just running the business side and stays away from the game development process.

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