PAT11 Planet Escarion

The original plan for this update had been to add farming, but since that did not get ready in time, the “only” thing we got was a new planet: Escarion. And a whole slew of quality of life improvements along with it (hooray for adjustable field-of-view settings!). But without the farming updates, not really a whole lot of new stuff to write a report about. Nothing I haven’t covered yet in previous reports.

Seems like a nice spot for a house

In general, testing right now is quite a bit different, than it used to be previously. Up until recently, testing has been first and foremost about the game. New features got added, new things were being tried out, and feedback from testers was gathered. There was always a constant inflow of new testers getting invited - but the purpose behind that was, to increase player numbers and make up for the churn, as it’s quite normal for volunteer testers to disappear again, or take longer breaks between their active testing phases.

Spending a lot of time flattening the ground

But right now, it’s all about the players. That’s why they call this current a “preview” rather than a “test”. Things have been tweaked and the procedure adapted to be able to open the fire hose and pump in as many new players as possible. And that’s why we saw the changes to teams (now greek letters instead of colors, so there can be more of them), and to tests (a lot more tests happening, but shorter and with fewer teams invited to each, and with full wipes every time).

Whoa, that meteor almost flattened me!

The idea is of course, to allow as many people as possible to get their hands on the game and try it for themselves, before the Kickstarter goes live on Tuesday, February 25. That’s also why the start of the Kickstarter got delayed from it initially planned start in “early February”.

Paving the ground

In contrast to many other Kickstarters, this game has already been in development for five years, and overcome some of it’s biggest technical hurdles. And if you know what to look for, you can definitely see that when playing the preview/tests.

But don’t get me wrong - there’s a LOT of game mechanics and systems still missing. We haven’t seen any trade or economy yet, for example. Lots of professions are still missing. There’s no guild systems yet.

Building a floor

The development is now entering it’s final spurt towards release, and that’s the phase when typically all the “content” gets added. And for a sandbox game like this, that “content” isn’t thousands of busywork quests, and tens of thousands of lines of NPC dialogue… but rather all those mechanics and systems that are still missing. And for adding all that stuff, development studios typically like to ramp up their head-count. Get more people working at it in parallel. Lot’s of earlier work was probably just about preparing for and enabling all that parallel work.

Starting to build a house

And for people wondering how so much can still be missing, and how it can be “content”: they built a really light game client, currently less than 3 gigabytes in install size, that can download everything on the fly. Not just the planet you are on - the entire game world and simulation and the voxels and everything. This also includes game rules and game mechanics - those are also game data, and will be interpreted by the client accordingly. Sure, some work on the client will still have to be done, and some assets might get added as well, increasing it’s size - but there is a very strong foundation that has already been built, which enables them to do the rest much faster.

Spying on the neighbours

But to grow the team, and ramp up development - money is needed. But right now, the gaming industry is going through a phase of contraction. Layoffs, cancellations, studio closures… and during a down-turn like that, funding money is really hard to come buy. And I think publishers very well should take any money they have to try stop some layoffs and save some of their existing studios - rather than invest it into new deals.

Many are further along than me

And that’s where Kickstarter comes in. We all know that a successful crowd-funding campaign can bring in hundreds of thousands, maybe a few million dollars. Not anywhere near enough to build an MMO. And while such a sum surely helps, it’s not quite enough to finance just that final spurt and ramp-up to release either. That’s why the developers at Playable Worlds are still relying mostly on investor funding. And those investors want to see a signal. They want to see some proof that the gamers who are asking for this game to be made, are also willing to put their wallet where their mouth is.

Probably too big to get finished

After a server rollback I gave up on building

Now, if a Kickstarter campaign is able to actually serve as that proof is surely debateable. But it definitely can and does send a signal. And that’s what they are trying right now - they are trying to send that signal, to be able to get more investment money to finance that ramp-up for the spurt to release. Or at least enough money, to finance a spurt to alpha, where they can release the game into Early Access and earn more money that way.

I don’t know why I took so many night pictures this test

Follow the link to read my thoughts on crowdfunding and on when you should or should not back a project, elsewhere on this blog - or read the previous entry in this series, the test report on the refining update.

Someone trying to cut off a chunk of the mountain