To give a sense of where SOE Austin is heading with DC Universe Online, the company assembled an impressive panel at Austin Game Developers’ Conference. The panel featured famed comic book artist Jim Lee, head of Wildstorm Productions and executive creative director; Jared Carr, art director; Jason Smith, lead character artist; and Jens Andersen, creative director.

Things started off with a trailer for the game and then the floor was opened for discussion. The majority of the questions, not surprisingly, were for Jim Lee, the comic book artist who revolutionized the industry nearly 20 years ago.

SOE is very aware of the expectations riding on the game, as Andersen noted, because of the nature of the DC Universe intellectual property. “Our first step was to really talk to Jim a lot about what this IP is and to really get an understanding about not only the superhero genre but more specifically how DC interprets that. We knew we were making an MMO but we also had to make an action game at the same time to payoff with the superhero fantasy.”