You remember Huxley, right? It's that Webzen-developed MMOFPS we first heard about way back in 2005. We even played it ... in 2006. Not ringing any bells?
Huxley was billed as the first MMOFPS to hit the Xbox 360 and PC, and it was to offer cross-platform multiplayer and promised 100-vs-100 online battles. Sounds to good to be true, right? Apparently. The game suddenly disappeared from public eye -- for years! And then, just as sudden, Huxley re-emerged from hiding through a handful of new screens and is now under the (hopefully!) steady hand of ijji.com (owned by NHN America).
We caught up with Andy Hong, project manager for Huxley: The Dystopia, to see where the game has been and where it's going:
How different is Huxley now, as compared to the original coverage (back in 2006)?
There's been a real focus on polish and that really shows in the current version. There haven't been any major changes to the game, but the gameplay has changed a lot, it's a lot faster ...
What would you compare the gameplay to? Do you mean more twitch?
I don't want to sound too cliché or anything but yeah, it is more like Unreal or Quake or something like that. Much faster. Everything about it is a lot faster.
"If you look at our other games and our business models with those, I think you'll see what we're trying to set up with Huxley."
Can you explain what happened with Webzen as far as publishing goes and what has changed structurally over the past two years?
I'm not absolutely sure but I can say that Webzen and NHN have partnered in Korea. We've got a publishing deal with them here [the US] and we're putting out the PC version of Huxley.
It's been quite some time since we've heard anything about Huxley (before the recent bout of screens and video) -- what happened? Why the media blackout?
Again, I'm not absolutely sure what happened there but in the year or so since we've been working on Huxley, there was some acclimation time needed. We needed to acclimate to the game and be really knowledgeable about it before talking to the press.
Is the title still coming to Xbox 360 and if so, does it still involve cross-platform play?
I can't really say anything about that at this time. That's really up to Webzen.
So, more appropriately, do you folks have a publishing deal with Webzen for the Xbox 360 version?
We don't. We're only publishing the PC version.
What is your business model for Huxley? Subscription? Microtransactions? Something else?
If you look at our other games and our business models with those, I think you'll see what we're trying to set up with Huxley. We want the player to really control how much they spend on any individual game, so the microtransaction route is likely the one we'll be taking. We're open to other models and we will finalize the details soon.
Is there a release date set or at least a target window for release?
Later this year. Q4 2009 (before the end of 2009).
Compliments of Joystiq
