GamesSurvival & CraftingDune Awakening’A lot of us are old school MMO players': Dune: Awakening’s creative director on how Star Wars Galaxies was a ‘huge inspiration’ for the new survival gameWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesSurvival & CraftingDune Awakening’A lot of us are old school MMO players': Dune: Awakening’s creative director on how Star Wars Galaxies was a ‘huge inspiration’ for the new survival gameWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Funcom)
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a bolder conceit for a game—or a more doomed one—than Star Wars Galaxies' original pitch that almost no one would get to be a Jedi. In the Star Wars films and expanded universe, only a tiny portion of the trillions of people across the galaxy were Force-sensitive, so the developers locked Jedi abilities behind an opaque set of conditions that made becoming a Jedi difficult and mysterious. Eventually the developers were pushed to make becoming a Jedi easier, andin what one of the developers called"the most infamous patch in videogame history," they turned Jedi into a basic class option. The game was never the same after.
Before that, though, Star Wars Galaxies was a true sandbox MMO, an online space that players created their own identities and goals within. Impossibly ambitious, sure, doomed to turn off a lot of players, sure, but bold in a way that made the players who loved itreallylove it. I was thinking about that commitment to Jedi scarcity when I talked to the creative director of upcoming survival MMO Dune: Awakening after watching the new film, which is all about Paul Atreides becoming Dune’s equivalent of Luke Skywalker, to grossly oversimplify things.
“The crafting part of MMOs became survival games, with smaller private servers. MOBAs were like the MMO PvP minigames back in the day. The [survival elements] are a different kind of funnel into the game, at least that’s the way I think about it. But I don’t think they’re miles apart… We like that concept, that this is where survival games are, they are that sandbox break-off from MMOs, and we can bring that back.”
Dune: Awakening isn’t explicitly following the path of Star Wars' Galaxies opaque Jedi system, but it is trying to stay true to Dune lore. Players won’t be becoming Bene Gesserit sisters, though they’ll learn how to use some of their powers from rogue trainers. More broadly, Funcom is aiming for it to be an MMO in which you can make your own way and enjoy crafting or building, selling your creations and architectural blueprints to other players, rather than following questlines if you prefer.
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(Image credit: Funcom)
“If the game director was here, he’d be saying ‘if the game feels really good to play moment-to-moment, the way you move in the world, the way you shoot in the world, driving, if those things feel great and then you have this amazing universe around it, it’s going to be fine.'”
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More about survival craftingSorry everyone, Minecraft 2 is cancelled, and it might be our faultAfter 15 years, Minecraft has finally added two new pig variations: The warm pig and the cold pig, meaning I can delete one mod off my list
More about survival crafting
Sorry everyone, Minecraft 2 is cancelled, and it might be our faultAfter 15 years, Minecraft has finally added two new pig variations: The warm pig and the cold pig, meaning I can delete one mod off my list
Sorry everyone, Minecraft 2 is cancelled, and it might be our fault
Sorry everyone, Minecraft 2 is cancelled, and it might be our fault
After 15 years, Minecraft has finally added two new pig variations: The warm pig and the cold pig, meaning I can delete one mod off my list
After 15 years, Minecraft has finally added two new pig variations: The warm pig and the cold pig, meaning I can delete one mod off my list
LatestMarvel Rivals' latest update quietly killed the game’s burgeoning mod sceneSee more latest►
Latest
Marvel Rivals' latest update quietly killed the game’s burgeoning mod scene
Marvel Rivals' latest update quietly killed the game’s burgeoning mod scene
Marvel Rivals' latest update quietly killed the game’s burgeoning mod scene
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