In the beginning half of the year, we started covering Haven, a developing MMORPG from Unleashed Games that promised gameplay beats familiar to those who grew up with games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft and were looking for something to play with friends and family. As it turns out, Haven is just the beginning of the studio’s wider multi-game development plans that will use the MMO as a base and apply generative AI tools to build out the rest.
Word of this AI tool adoption comes from a VentureBeat interview with studio founder Irena Pereira, who talks up the Unleashed Realms platform plan that she claims will let the small indie team create multiple MMO-scale games of various sizes in less time and at a fraction of the cost – and Haven is what will make future projects possible.
“Haven just has been our proving ground so that we know that we have recreated a replicable process that is not bound to our specific IP and the way that we’ve architected so it makes it a really highly engaging user experience. […] We built a game, but that game is actually a realm, and that realm allows us to create multiple realms. And then players can hop in and out of realms, but have the same consistent gameplay, the same consistent UX and the same consistent experience.”
The use of generative AI tools will mostly be used to do things like more easily create item and armor sets while “not taking away a job that [artists] want to be doing” according to Pereira, while other games within Unleashed Realms will have similar UI features, controls, gameplay elements, and monetization. It’s not immediately obvious how these tools were used in the creation of Haven itself, if at all.
Pereira claims AI’s use is intended as a “force multiplier” and that the Realms platform will allow Unleashed Games to “bring multiple worlds to this experience so that [players are] not just stuck in Haven,” though she also is “reticent to use the loaded term ‘metaverse,’” instead likening the different games on the platform to hopping through alternate dimensions.
The report further confirms Haven’s planned monetization model: It will be a freemium game with optional subscriptions, with sub prices that change depending on how many players it covers. Prices will start at $10 a month for individual players and go as high as $150 a month to cover 150 players in the so-called Village Plan. Launch timing is still unspecified, but Pereira expects closed beta for sometime in late 2025.
