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It's always a privilege to meet and talk with someone who spends their days developing the games we love and enjoy.   I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Owlchick during the last summit in San Diego and I have to tell you, I was impressed.   She was by far the nicest person I met and showed a genuine interest in the work she does.   She has also earned my respect with her diligence to keep up with the Quest forums and answer questions on a regular basis instead of hiding (which is what I would do).

RadarX:   Thanks again for taking the time to do this.  First of all, can you give us an idea of what you are responsible for in EQ2?

Owlchick:  While I do have an "overall" responsibility for part of a future expansion (and no, I cannot tell you what it is!), my daily tasks are more varied. For example, I've been on a mission to take the 10x tome quests and convert them into books. Since I like responding to player concerns on the board, one of my quasi-official tasks is to skim through the Quest boards to check for quests that are being ornery. If I can't fix it myself, I'll ask the quest's designer to take a look. Of course, they are often checking the boards themselves but not all of them are as chatty as I am.

RadarX:  Can't tell us about the expansion?  Bah you guys really are tight lipped..  I'll have to hope that truth serum works on Glendral then.  Well speaking of Quests, how is the revamp for the Quest books going and how did the decision come about? 

Owlchick:  It's going. The players have been mentioning on the boards that there are quite a number of tome quests that were difficult to complete due to the "kill 10x" format. I wanted to ensure that folks wouldn't be put off reading by being unable to complete the quests and the other designers agreed that we should do something to make them more palatable. After a bit of investigating, we hit upon using the collection system which would remove the tomes from the quest journal (freeing up some space there).

RadarX:  From someone with a consistently full quest journal (I'm only Level 51 and I'm going to finish that Orcish Language Quest one day!!!)  you have my thanks.  It's nice not to have to lug around the traditional "Book Bag" for those anymore.  I've seen you mention that the work you are doing is not just "flipping a switch", so how long is the process at the end?

Owlchick:  I've gotten that down from over a week to revise the first zone (Enchanted Lands) to being able to convert a zone in three days. That's three full days, which I'm not always able to give to the project with continuity, so it's taking some time. I'm hoping to rope Moorgard into helping me. Muahahahaha! He is resisting but he can be assimilated!

RadarX:  Resistance is futile!  I'm excited about the new system and finding pages around the zones is a lot more "fun" in my mind.  Moving on to the industry in general, how exactly did you get involved?  Where was your first break?

Owlchick:  I have only my sister to blame. Once upon a time, she chided me for never calling her, so she set up an email account for me on Genie. Then she suggested that, since I wasn't emailing her either, I meet up with her in one of the games she'd found: GemStone III. Because I was a cheapskate I ended up mainly playing on their Unix test, which was a lot of fun (and I found a wonderful bard-related bug involving singing to a gem and thereby increasing its value into the stratosphere). I applied to be a GameMaster, and was initially hired as one of their board monitors. Before they launched on AOL, they hired me as a GM. (See how long this is…I'm chatty). In 1997, our Product Manager, Suz Dodd, invited me to join her as a designer for Hercules and Xena: Alliance of Heroes. When she left the company, she hired me as her replacement Product Manager for that game. I was the PM there until I realized how much I really missed getting involved directly with building a world. Fortunately, EverQuest II was looking for a designer with a writing background – you can't get much more writerish than a text-based game – and they hired me.

RadarX:  Wow, so it seems you've had quite a bit of experience.   I'm feeling intimidated... ummmm I bet I could beat you in Street Fighter! Ok probably not.  So, what kind of education and experience make up your background?

Owlchick:  My background is pretty varied. I'm not a programmer; I think that's pretty obvious to the folks who tease me about my lack of math skillz and my habit of referring to everything technical as a 'thinger'. Through the ages I've been a paralegal, executive assistant, health care insurance investigator and an Intelligence Analyst in both the Army Reserve and Army National Guard. And for the last 9 years, I worked on games in my spare time with things I had lying around the house.

RadarX: An intelligence analyst?  I don't know what they told you but I found that tank like that....really.    No math skillz?   I heard you hate math (not that I don't loathe it myself) but why?

Owlchick:  Sister Regina Mary would be so ashamed. She did her best to get me over my math aversion, but I got completely lost in algebra. At first I thought it was because I missed a math class that totally explained the WHOLE THING. Turns out I'm just missing a math gene. I love genetics! Have you read "The Seven Daughters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes? Please see page 91; I draw great comfort from that page.

RadarX:   A missing gene?  I didn't get this memo!  Where is my college Trig teacher?  Well, back to the industry for another minute.  From what I've read recently, women only make up about 7-8% of gaming development employees.   That would make you stand out like I would at a beauty paegant.   Would you say it's been challenging for you?

Owlchick:  Since I worked from home for my first gaming gig, I didn't realize how few women worked in the industry. Of the four main games Simutronics had running, three of them were run by women and their general manager is also female. That said, it didn't hit me until I attended a Game Developer Conference and realized there were so few women in the industry in general. I joined the International Game Developers Association around that time and they have a very active Women in Game Development SIG. I lurk on their forum and it surprises me sometimes what some of them have had to put up with that I've never experienced.

I think also, having spent a chunk of time in the Reserves, I'm used to being a female in male dominated arenas. So, in a lot of ways, this is nothing compared to the horrors of the military. At least at SOE, I've never had to print out signs to declare the female latrine off limits to men!

RadarX: Well then it sounds like you've got things good where you are. Is there any advice you would give a female wanting to "break in?"

Owlchick:  My advice is really the same for anyone, regardless of gender. You have to love games, play them and get out there to meet the influential folks who might be able to hire you. It's advice that carries over to any other profession (well, except for the playing games part).

RadarX:   You mentioned you were a big Gemstone fan from what I hear.  How did you get into MUD's (Multi-User Dungeon for you heathens) and whats so cool about this particular one?

Owlchick:  I loved GemStone III because it was my first introduction to online games; I haven't yet played the new version, GSIV (mostly because I'm afraid my characters might have some un-godly items on them that will alert everyone to my sordid past as a GM). I love Alliance of Heroes, though it's more difficult for me to play since now I can't just open up a file to see how the heck I'm supposed to do something!

The attraction is the community. They're vibrant, dedicated and roleplaying often spills out of the games onto the boards. As someone who adores reading, I love "walking" into a room and having my senses aroused by the descriptions. I'm one of the few players who didn't turn off room descriptions as I played. In fact, I still have my graph paper map in which each box contains the key sentences of a room so I could remember where I was and which way to go.

And yes, I played a ranger…before I knew they had a reputation for getting lost.

RadarX:   Heh, Rangers don't get lost.  The batteries just die in their GPS.  What is your favorite quest and why?

Owlchick:  My favorite tome quest is The Commander's Wife; after I wrote it I cried, so tragic! So to take my mind off the sadness of that one I wrote the Leatherfoot Tales. My favorite active quest is Lousy Fairies in the Enchanted Lands. I like a quest that makes me laugh! Of course, I read all the NPC's dialog. I can't help myself. I'll read a ketchup bottle if it's the only thing with text on it at the breakfast table.

RadarX:   So you're the type of person that's trying to read my placemat at a restaurant.  What was the first quest you ever worked on for EQ2?

Owlchick:  My first quest was helping on A Key to the Past; I wrote the dialog from notes by Jhek, one of the other designers. Then we worked together on Forgotten Potion and Little Lost Minotaur. The first quest that I got to devise on my own was Vegalys Keldrane's Betrayal, in which I tried to develop a story around an EQ live NPC. I like character-driven stuff.

RadarX:   Forgotten Potion!  That's another one I still have to do!  What race and class are your favorite and why?

Owlchick:   Wood elves are so gorgeous. I've always been a wood elf; my first EQ live character was a wood elf bard. And while I usually do bardly or rangerly types, in EQII I've been drawn to the mage line. At CES in January, I demoed Everfrost (if memory serves, no one had gotten access to the zone yet) as a conjurer and we kicked behind! I was so impressed I decided I didn't want to be a priest any longer, so I started a mage.

RadarX:   Awww I'm a Templar and that hurts.   *whisper* I've got a Conjurer too and they are awesome.  What else do you play besides EQ2?

Owlchick:   As I mentioned, I don't really play GS any longer. I've played a lot of SWG, City of Heroes, A Tale in the Desert and some assorted other odds and ends. I'm not a big raid person; I'm your "typical" (if there is such a thing) casual gamer, so I prefer games where I can get in to do a bit of damage to the world, then leave. My non-MMO time is spent with Sims2. I am sending my third generation to University. My son will sit with me sometimes and it boggles his mind how I know the quirks of every one of my Sims and their families. I think it freaks him out to wonder how many details about his life I know.

Thanks again to Owlchick for giving us a little insight into who she is and what she does.