Champions Online Meet the Team Introduces Bill Roper

Cryptic Studios has put up a new Meet the Team, a regular feature for Champions Online. This article exposes design director Bill Roper.He’s played Champions long before Cryptic took on the challenge of transforming the pen and paper RPG to MMORPG.

Roper comes to Cryptic with 14 years of experience working with Blizzard on Diablo and running his own company Flagship Studios. He says he’s contributing the experience of his successes and failures to make Champions Online great.

Roper’s secret super power is finding the longest line.

“I can always choose the line that will take the longest to complete. Never stand behind me at a store, airport or bathroom queue at the ballpark.”

Part of Meet the Team is seasoned developers giving gamers considering the games industry as career some sage advice. Here’s what Bill Roper recommends for interested parties.

“If you want to be a designer, you have to intrinsically love games and constantly be thinking in terms of mechanics. When you’re playing a game – any game – you’re thinking about why they made the choices they did and why the game is or isn’t fun. The best advice I can give someone that wants to get into game design is to just do it. Design your own games with pieces and parts from other games, make up your own cards, or use an editor from another project to get your ideas represented. There is no substitute for trying out your ideas in any way you can and then iterating on that design. And play. Play a lot.”

Often gamers overlook developers as gamers themselves. Many of them are and I would hope so. I imagine that someone who loves their job and understands what’s fun will develop better videogames. Get the full picture of Bill Roper on Champions Online.