Ten Ton Hammer posted their CES 2008 interview with Curt Schilling who discussed his philosophies on running a company, game design, and his passion for gaming and 38 Studios.
As I’ve said before, I’m extremely interested in whatever 38 Studios comes up with. I wish I had the skill set to work there, in fact — talk about a Dream Job! I’ve always been a huge fan of R. A. Salvatore’s writing, as well as Todd McFarlane’s art and dark sense of humor.
Schilling gives Blizzard plenty of props for getting so many design factors right, so I’m just waiting for all the forum trolls to jump on the “38 Studios is making a WoW clone” bandwagon. 
Schilling truly stands out as a role model for his feelings on treatment of employees. In this age of mistreatment by the likes of EA, Perpetual, Sigil and others it’s great to see someone with 21st Century management principles, that positive reinforcement works better than beating them like dogs, that a synergistic marriage of humanism and work ethic is a recipe for success on many levels.
I know I’ll be keeping track of 38 Studios over the next few years as their mystery project, Codename: Copernicus, develops and is slowly unveiled to the ravenous public.
On the other hand, Jaye is also looking hard at 38 Studios and we know her track record for choosing successful games *cough* Vanguard *cough* 
Just kidding, Karen! Don’t smack me! Actually, smack me all ya want, just don’t /guildremove me from RnH!
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Well, maybe you could be Curt’s chauffeur/pilot for his private/company plane?
I’m curious, but not too curious just yet. Right now they’re not hyping their gaming, they’re hyping their company which has done nothing as of yet aside from set up a nifty site and open up an online store for 38 Studios apparel - I admit, the hat does look cool.
Curt Schilling? Cool.
R.A. Salvatore? Cool.
Todd McFarlane? Cool.
History of awesome games released? None. Um… ok.
About the only thing that is keeping them on the radar for me is the fact that Schilling is a gamer (but then isn’t that the common cry of any front man for a gaming company and the developers themselves?), I do enjoy Salvatore’s books much like I enjoy candy and McFarlane draws nice pictures. I’m curious to see what comes out of it all.
Actually I would love to be the official pilot for 38 Studios! How cool would that be? Though I’d still like to eventually get my foot in the door creatively as well. As a former artist and writer (I keep telling myself I’ll practice my fiction skills someday and write those novels I have in the closet) that’s one horribly disastrous effect of aviation: after all the training where it seems like you have to be a physicist to even be a commercial pilot, when it’s all said and done it’s intellectually vacuous and sterile.
Like Curt said, the past year has been actually setting up the company, they don’t have a playable product yet but he’s obviously excited about the IP that Salvatore is creating for him.
I see Schilling as the idea guy; he’s the one who had the vision for creating this company and putting together this team who are each successfully doing their own individual thing, and make a game out of it all. He’s the glue holding them together. My impression of Schilling and Salvatore are very down-to-earth people too, so I’m not too concerned about having a clash of Rock Star egos in 38 Studios, which is also something he addressed in the interview.
Bob Salvatore…. ’nuff said. I love his stories and characters, and I like the worlds he’s created as much as, if not more than, his Forgotten Realms tales.
Todd McFarlane I see bringing a very unique art direction to the game. We know 38 is doing a fantasy game, so a huge part of setting themselves apart from the pack will be the overall look and feel of the world and its peoples. Whether you like the cartoony look of WoW (which is directly descended from Warcraft III before it, and directly copied from the Warhammer games before that) it is highly stylized. Guild Wars is also very highly stylized. Vanguard and EQ2 try to be somewhat more normal or at least realistic and, in my opinion, fail in many regards to stand out due to that. I do so love my orc Dread Knight, though over any Horde character I ever made in WoW so take that with a grain of salt!
One primary area I can envision 38 Studios emulating WoW is combat. Salvatore writes very fluid, fast, graceful and visceral combat scenes in his novels. To date, only WoW has ever pulled off fast, visceral combat in an MMO. Guild Wars and DDO are the only other games I’ve played that also have very fluid, fast and visceral combat but they’re firmly in the “not an MMO” category so we’re still left with WoW as the only shining example of how to have fast, zippy, responsive game play and combat in an MMO.