GameIndustry.com are starting up their MMO week with a piece on Codemasters.

"It's one of the toughest areas of the videogames business. It's the hardest space in which to make games, you see some really big, high-profile games that don't end up coming out, there's huge risks involved.

"The model that we took initially was licensing games – we will get into development eventually – but we did licensing so we could manage the risk and learn more about the business," he revealed.

"Recently we've seen a couple of really nasty failures in the MMO space, whether the message wasn't right or the quality of the game wasn't there, because it's an extremely competitive market."

RPG Vault has interviewed staff from the MMO division of Codemasters about their upcoming Codemasters Connect 2008 fan event in Birmingham, England.

Jonric: When and how did the idea to hold a community event first arise? What was the process leading to the decision to go ahead?

Ed Relf: We've always wanted to give something back to the community, and in fact, had the original idea over a year ago, just after our COG LIVE global press-only event, which was a huge success. As we were in the full throes of launching LOTRO at the time, we didn't have the bandwidth to plough resources into organizing an event of this scale, so we put it on hold.

Their four current MMORPGs and Jumpgate Evolution, which is in development, will be covered at the event.