34: WGE MAG


HeroEngine is the technology that lets you develop an online game. HeroCloud is the service that includes HeroEngine and everything else you need to launch your game online.


You offer Hero’s Journey® as a reference game, what is that and do you also have a complete A-Z tutorial?


Hero’s Journey was a fantasy role-playing game being developed by our team. We stopped work on it because demand was so strong for our engine that we did not have time to work on the game any more. We are using the incomplete game as a reference now, complete with animations, scripts, and many game systems. Teams using HeroEngine can access Hero’s Journey to use as examples of how things are built in the real world.


We have an online Wiki that contains a huge amount of reference material on all aspects of HeroEngine game development as well as a large and growing library of tutorials that focus on specific aspects of game development. Right now we are building on the many MMO development lessons by adding material on how to use HeroEngine to create social games, shooters, and other styles of games.


The recently released Star Wars MMO was created using HeroEngine. Please tell us about that?


In 2005 or so we went to E3 to demonstrate Hero’s Journey to publishers. We also showed some of our friends how the engine we built worked. The reception to our engine was incredible! Our old friend Gordon Walton told us that he was about to start a new studio to work on a top-secret project and that he wanted to license our engine right away. He would not take no for an answer! We licensed our engine to that project, which became the Star Wars: the Old Republic project at BioWare, which then became part of EA.


Any other popular titles we may know of?


Zenimax Online is working on a project. As you probably know, Zenimax is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the world’s best independent game development companies. We are incredibly excited about their project but we’re not allowed to disclose what they are working on.


A new studio based near Phoenix, Arizona is working on a science fiction RPG called Prime: the Battle for Dominus that looks amazing. They have started to release trailers and other videos for the game. We think it will be shipping soon but it’s hard to say right now. They have been working on the project for less than two years with a relatively small team and we think the quality of their work is remarkable – and we’re proud that they could only have gotten this much great work done thanks to HeroEngine.


There are many more great projects in the works. You can read about some of them on our website, heroengine.com, and you will be hearing from a lot more in 2012.


As well as HeroEngine, we’ve been hearing about HeroCloud, what is that?


Aside from the core HeroEngine technology, HeroCloud includes hosting, operations and customer management, and global billing solutions. HeroCloud is designed primarily for independent developers as well as educators, corporate and government simulation builders, and other projects. By licensing HeroCloud, your team accesses a full implementation of HeroEngine running somewhere in the Internet “cloud” so your team can access it anywhere and so you don’t need to worry about hosting, configuration management, or other annoying distractions from developing your game.


HeroCloud is available for any development team, just go to the heroengine.com site and click DOWNLOAD NOW.


We’ve decided to give HeroCloud away for free. We believe in the tremendous creative talents of independent game developers. By covering all the up-front operating costs of building an online game, as well as offering this technology that AAA games studios pay a lot of money for free, we believe we are doing our part to level the playing field a bit. Once any game developed on HeroCloud is published and begins making money, we take a 30% revenue share to help us cover our operational expenses.


How much does a HeroEngine license cost?


HeroEngine can be licensed with full source code and running in your own data center. Pricing is variable depending on royalty rates – our lowest priced plan currently is $75,000 for the license plus a 10% royalty. This is a lot less than the industrial-strength engines in the industry, especially when you consider that it includes the integrated server system and so much more that you don’t get with other systems. Large studios generally pay a lot more but then end up with a much lower royalty rate. We have sold a number of licenses for around $1 million per game.


What are your plans for the future?


The most important plan is the imminent delivery of new clients to join the original Windows client. We are replacing the DirectX code with Open GL, which was essential to bringing out clients for the Mac OS X, iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch), Linux and Android. Beyond that, we are aiming for full plug-in-free browser integration in about a year.


We are opening up sales channels worldwide. Our development and marketing office is in the USA and we need to increase our presence in Europe and Asia. Our parent company is raising more capital so we can continue to grow our market and develop additional capabilities.


We have essentially grown from a pure technology licensor to become a distribution platform. As we move ahead we’re looking for ways to offer additional resources to developers on the business side. Today, the main resource we can’t provide is cash for development and cash for marketing. We hope to have good answers in those areas in the near term.


WGE would like to thank the people at HeroEngine for taking their time in answering our questions. May the code be with you!


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