In an era where game studios are either backpedaling on calling their MMOs “MMOs,” it’s refreshing to see one studio come outright and take ownership of the label. And if there’s someone who knows whether or not a game is an MMO, it’s Funcom’s Joel Bylos, formerly of The Secret World and now of Dune Awakening.
Bylos penned a dev blog arguing why the MMO label rightly applies to Funcom’s upcoming survival game while differentiating it from MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. “Dune Awakening has a server structure more in common with MMOs than with most survival games. There are also large-scale multiplayer systems in place to support social gameplay – both competitive and collaborative – in areas shared with hundreds of other players,” Bylos wrote.
He notes that while Dune Awakening has forms of quests, the meat of the gameplay is in its crafting, building, economy, and political systems. Bylos also outlined the four main areas of the game world, from a home area to the lawless Deep Desert, and how players have to scavenge and plan while traveling between them.
“We believe Dune Awakening’s complex server structure, where hundreds of players flow seamlessly between servers as they move to different areas of the game world, is doing something that other survival games are not,” Bylos said. “On the spectrum of sandbox to theme park MMOs, Dune Awakening is firmly on the sandbox side.”
MOP’s own Andrew Ross spoke with Bylos at Summer Game Fest on the same topic; you can read our detailed interview and preview right here.
