Bryan Ekman's mech is bigger than your mech (interview)

Bryan Ekman, the creative director of MechWarrior Online at Piranha Games, is hoping for a big revival in Mech’s, the walking robot exoskeletons of the future.

He was on hand at an event where professional players competed to be the best in North America in the online free-to-play game. The title has garnered more than a million registered players, and it has been live for a few weeks now. Will it live up to the expectations for big mech games? That all depends on how well Ekman and his team crafted the game and how they modify it in the weeks ahead.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.