“It’s not an MMO is my strong feeling” – Dune Awakening lead explains how genre labels have been “one of the biggest challenges” for the survival game
Funcom is largely often known as an MMO firm, however its fashionable video games have at all times fought towards strict genre labels. Dune Awakeningfor instance, is massively multiplayer, on-line, and an RPG, however it’s additionally a survival game. So, is it actually an MMO? Game director Joel Bylos thinks not.
Alongside discussing the game’s long-term 10-year plan and the game’s player countDune Awakening game director Joel Bylos defined that expressing the genre of Funcom’s newest survival game has been a problem.
“I mean, I think that’s one of the biggest challenges we had during development. How to describe it. Because we had this online server setup,” Bylos informed us. “It’s quite complicated compared to most survival games and we wanted to have multiple maps… so we weren’t really sure, and then, at some point, we were describing it as an MMO because we figured it was easy.”
While early reveals and discussions clearly labeled Dune Awakening as an MMO, the builders eliminated the MMO label previous to launch. “We launched in June, I think, we dropped it November before,” Bylos stated. The motive for dropping the MMO label was as a consequence of the general confusion round the game’s genre. They added, “I don’t think that helped either” as eradicating the label launched further confusion.
Bylos, and lots of engaged on Dune Awakening, have a background in MMO growth. Bylos was one of the lead designers on Funcom’s prior MMO Age of Conan and a lead content material designer on The Secret World. There are inherent MMO quirks that exist inside each Conan Exiles and Dune Awakening, and so they’re half of why the video games are distinctive and have satisfying loops. However, Bylos does not assume both game is an MMO, not less than not anymore.
“I don’t think it’s an MMO,” he continued. “I’ve worked on multiple MMOs for sure, but I think there was a weird space where we were trying to do slightly more. We have this big, connected world, we have this big deep desert with lots of players being able to go in there. So it was a hard game to describe, and I always find that people kind of have a very set notion of what a genre is. So it’s hard to describe something that does something slightly new.”
“It’s not an MMO is my strong feeling right now,” Bylos continued, “it’s definitely not.” The game director explains that the clearest instance of the place the genre splits is how it focuses on development. While each World of Warcraft and Dune Awakening have level-based development, WoW focuses on Quests whereas D:A focuses on crafting to drag you thru the game.
However, Bylos admits that discovering a manner correctly describes Dune: Awakening has been a “tough challenge,” and the studio nonetheless struggles with it. To at the present time, many players nonetheless see Dune: Awakening as an MMORPG when it is actually not. Yes, there are MMO parts nonetheless, however so far as the game’s director is involved, it is not an MMO.
As Funcom continues engaged on the game’s upcoming console port, there are a variety of secretive enhancements coming to the game alongside new content material. Additionally, the survival game lately break up PvE and PvP gamers into segregated teams, which Bylos explains will allow the team to improve both aspects of the game simpler with extra targeted information from gamers.
