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Age of Titans: Brian Sullivan's Latest Adventures
As for the decision to switch from an RTS to an action RPG, Sullivan said he “felt the time was right,” since so few quality action RPGs exist on the market today. Another decision to produce Titan Quest in its particular style was Sullivan’s analysis of the world market, not just the US. "We designed Titan Quest for a global audience, because that is where we are selling the game,” he said. “Europeans tend to like PC games, RPGs, and historical games, and Titan Quest delivers in all three of these areas. Part of why we did a historical and mythological game in the first place was for the European market, because they tend to like this topic. It is also one of the reasons we put Age of Empires in the same setting. When we make any design decision, we think about all markets, but especially America and Europe because they are two biggest markets for this kind of game.” As for making a name for themselves in the market, Sullivan feels that some of the biggest competition comes from MMOs, not because they are competitors in the genre, but because people simply enjoy playing them so much. “For retail PC games, I think the biggest problem is World of Warcraft,” Sullivan said. “It is such a compelling MMO game that it sucks up a lot of money and time that would normally be spent on other retail PC games.”
Self-Reflection On the subject of the PC game industry as a whole, Sullivan feels the biggest problem, as on the console, is rapidly rising development costs. Games, he said, have to sell a lot more copies now to cover their development costs, and he knows getting all those extra sales can be difficult. One of the other problems facing any PC developer is how to get the game into the players’ hands. While digital marketplaces are becoming increasingly popular as a means of distribution, Sullivan said those decisions are usually left in the hands of the publisher. What does have him excited, he said, is the concept of additional, downloadable content, whether that is an Xpack, an episode, or some additional quests or weapons. The Man Behind the Quest With all this talk of gaming development and distribution, it’s a wonder Sullivan has any time to actually play games. Somehow, he finds a way. He even has time to name names. “I hugely admire the work Blizzard has been doing,” he said. “Since Warcraft 2, they have had a fantastic string of games including Diablo, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft. I have lost many hours to these fantastic games and always look forward to their next release.” “I have been playing Titan Quest non-stop for the last 6 months, and not all of that has been for work,” Sullivan went on to say.” Before that, I was playing a lot of World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero. Both are extra fun because I can play them with my wife.”
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Shifting Gears 
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