The vast majority of games, MMO or otherwise, are often about conflict and resolving problems through violence. It’s something that co-founder and CEO of Darewise Entertainment Benjamin Charbit is familiar with, having worked on AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and The Division. With the release of Life Beyond, however, Charbit is following his gut and working to make a more positive and combat-free game work.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, Charbit elaborates on this design direction, which readers will recall started in an update in May that temporarily turned off PvP.
“We started to feel some social responsibility to provide experiences that would be different. The Division, Assassin’s Creed — they’re all amazing games, but it comes down to what you want to do for a living. Today, we all want to create super positive and super inclusive experiences.”
The interview further talks with Charbit about how to extract the fun of a game via cooperation as well as breaking the industry standard of following genre trends. The interview also lauds how games are like meeting friends at a bar and how Life Beyond wants to become a social space for players to collaborate and enjoy. And as for PvP, Charbit does appear to lean towards making it opt-in via entering specific spaces for it.
As for the game itself, the latest testing update has introduced a number of additions, improvements, and fixes for construction features as well as new tutorials among other adjustments
