Thirteen1

The guys over at Perfect World Entertainment appear to be getting very good at creating top-notch free to play MMO’s, and with a new wave of MMO’s due, we figured it’s about time we learn their secrets. In our series of upcoming Q&A’s we’ve tasked the DrunkenGamer with getting to the bottom of their success.

In the first in a series of three Q&A’s, I got to fire some questions at Product Manager, Andrew Brown about the upcoming fantasy MMO Forsaken World, we talk about some of the games features, classes & monster AI. Oh and I try to get a promise that their vampires will never sparkle!

Whilst most people judge WoW as the biggest MMO around, many seem to forget that it’s actually quite tiny in comparison with some of it’s browser-based bretheren. We caught up with Adam Bohn, Founder and CEO, Artix Entertainment, the guys behind the 100million-player strong AdventureQuest Worlds, to find out just what it takes to create such a universally loved game.

Remember being a kid and thinking that your teddy bears are secretly plotting against you whilst you sleep? Just us? Well, it’s now a reality! Naughty Bear is A2M’s latest creation featuring brutal bear-on-bear action, all wrapped up in a cutesy cartoon-esque setting. We caught up with the Naughty Bear developers for more info on the psychotic bear and his homicidal tendencies…

1/ Did somebody have a bad experience with a teddy bear in their childhood to come up with the concept for Naughty Bear? If not what was the inspiration behind Naughty Bear?

Much of the inspiration for Naughty Bear came from Saturday morning cartoons, and the idea of juxtaposing that innocence with dark humor and over-the-top violence. We think the blend of syrupy cuteness and cartoon violence works because of the foundation of an innovative AI in the game, making Naughty Bear a unique, fun experience every time you pick up the controller.

Last month, we gave you the opportunity to send in your questions for Icarus Studios, developers of post-apocalyptic MMO, Fallen Earth.

Being busy people, developers usually only manage to answer a selection of the questions sent to them. But not the Icarus team – they managed the whole collection!

Senior Game Designer, Marie Croall, was the legend that took the time to accomplish this feat. Here is what she had to say:

Chad: Where do you see the world of Fallen Earth at in a year’s time? Will we still be scrounging around in the Grand Canyon, or do we get to visit neighbouring states with different environments and weather?

MARIE: There is a lot of territory left to explore in the Grand Canyon and several major storylines we could focus on, but if we have the opportunity to do something better in a different location, then that’s definitely something we will look into.

Back in the early days of Thirteen1, we tried to start a feature known as ‘Ask the Game’. The concept was simple: we arranged a Q&A for a game, but the developers had to agree to allow the readers to set the questions.

We successfully organised several of these, but after a while they started to become less frequent (We’re not sure whether the users started to scare the developers, or that the developers had simply become too busy to allow time for them.)
You’ll notice that we have revived the feature, with varying levels of success, in recent issues of the magazine.

However, its true home is here, in public, on the site. So it gives me great pleasure to announce it’s homecoming with our first ‘Ask the Game’ of our new site.

Our first victims/volunteers are the ever helpful guys at Icarus Studios, creators of the post-apocalyptic MMO, Fallen Earth.

Fallen Earth is set in the year 2156, when a series of global disasters has befallen the earth. The only remaining habitable area of the planet is the Grand Canyon Province. Here, the human race struggles on, trying to rebuild society in one way or another. You enter the game as a clone, to find your place in the wasteland amongst the various factions that fight for control of the area.

Are we ready for a new kind of football game to take pride of place in our collection? With Pure Football, a game that looks like Fifa Street on steroids from first impressions, Ubisoft are betting we are.

The football genre’s crown has long traded hands between one of two titles, each with “fan-boys” who love their game and fiercely defend it. For some people, buying PES or FIFA is a life choice (much like supporting a football team), and these people will not budge as little deters them from investing their hard earned cash in their chosen title year-in, year-out.

That said, the majority would argue that PES has fallen behind in terms of its gameplay as of late, feeling dated and lacking fully licensed backing by football’s governing body, FIFA.

You know what – we thoroughly enjoyed our *world exclusive* preview of Darkness Within 2: The Dark Lineage, Zeotrope’s horror/adventure game inspired by the chilling works of horror-author legend, H.P. Lovecraft

As usual, the play-through left us full of questions (we’re inquisitive little so-and-so’s), so we sent our barrage of thoughts to the developers for some swift answering. Here’s what they had to say.

Why did you decide to craft the Darkness Within series around Lovecraftian horror?

We always thought that it would be great to make a game strongly based on Lovecraft’s ideas and imagination, and thus the Darkness Within series shaped up.

What kind of specific improvements and advancements does ‘Dark Lineage’ boast over ‘In Pursuit of Loath Nolder’?

The most important improvement is the real-time lighting support, which will enable players to use different light sources to light their way in the game. And all these light sources cast real-time shadows. We think that this feature adds much to the gaming experience. Another new feature we’re excited about is the physics support. With this feature, players will be able to interact more closely with the game world. But it has its own limitations of course; we didn’t want the gamer to lose too much time and energy with annoying objects bumping into them. In addition to this, The Dark Lineage features a lot more character interaction than its predecessor.

With all that has gone on with Cryptic’s Star Trek Online since its launch, we felt it was time to head back into deep space and track one of the team down to ask them a few questions.

Somewhere in the Bajoran sector I eventually found Craig Zinkievich, STO’s Executive Producer, taking a few pot shots at passing asteroids. Here is what he had to say about the launch and game so far…

Star Trek Onine has been live for a while now. How do you feel the launch went overall?

I feel the launch went pretty smooth for an MMO.  We had a few moments where our servers went down or there were some lag issues, but we resolved them pretty quickly.  So overall I was pretty pleased with our launch.

As good as beta-tests are, they will never show you everything. What do you feel is the most interesting thing you have learnt from the players since launch?

It’s really a situation of mass. We have more people playing now than we did during the beta, so we’ve got so many more eyes on what we’re doing. Just due to scale, we’re getting more feedback on what we do.There’s a lot of interesting things you learn from players.

When you design something it’s easy for you to see what to do and how to do it because you’ve been working on the game.  So you try to watch players closely and whether they’re doing the mission how you designed it.  Is it too easy or too hard?  Are they not going to a location they are supposed to go to? Etc.

We take a look at The Game Creators, and how their elasticated suit of user-friendly game creation tools are feeding the insatiable appetite of independent games developers.

With the growing number of independent-friendly digital platforms: XBLA Indie, Steam, iPhone, and more recently, the iPad – there has never been a more attractive opportunity for solo, or small teams of passionate independent games developers to get their own games out to the masses. The recent State of Independence conference in York was dedicated to self-publishing, featuring inspiring talks from a gaggle of games companies that have carved our reputations in the digital space – all licked up like catnip by a success hungry audience. Don’t worry if you missed out though, because we captured the day’s epic activities (from start-to-finish) in the May issue of Thirteen1

Strip back what is involved in the development of a game and you’ll find it’s a Russian Doll-like structure of design, coding, art, animation and sound. And that’s before you even plan how to get the message out and capture sales. Still daunted (queue heinous cackling)? You shouldn’t be. Enter The Game Creators, a UK-based patriarch of the bedroom coders. The Game Creators have been providing a suit of user-friendly game creation software for the past 25 years. Their dedicated team bring affordable and easy to use software tools that enable first-timers, or seasoned hobbyists, to create games and reach millions.

Excited about “Chapter III – The Elder Kingdoms”, the upcoming expansion to top free-to-play MMORPG, Runes of Magic? So are we!
That’s why, in Issue 24 of Thirteen1, we offered you the opportunity to send your own questions to the guys at Frogster.

We planned on putting the answers in Issue 25, but Frogster were so busy working on the game that they couldn’t get them back to us in time. Lucky we have this fancy new website, eh.

Thomas Elz, Senior Product Manager at Frogster, eventually managed to find time in his busy schedule to tend to your questions, so here they are – the answers to the questions that you wanted to ask. Enjoy!

Chapter 3 will add new zones, but will any changes be made to the Chapter 1 & 2 zones to help progress the overall world story?

After the fall of the Demon Lord at the end of Chapter II, “Runes of Magic – The Elder Kingdoms” opens a completely new chapter. The expansion will take you to the whole new continent of “Zandorya”, where the old kingdom Dalanis lies in chaos. Conspirators are scheming behind the throne of the young king Callaway, and it is up to the you to help the king restore order to his kingdom.

You can expect vast new regions, new guild features – such as guild drill grounds and new guild quests, an updated skill system, an expanded monster card system, several new dungeons and an increase in the level cap (to 60). With the main release of Chapter III in May, we will implement 9 different types of siege weapons for the guild wars between guild castles.