Big World, Copernicus, and OEE (?)
There was a little news tidbit about the Copernicus Project from 38 Studios. According to the press release (via Ten Ton Hammer), they have signed on Big World Technology and will use their engine and toolset to create their upcoming game..
What can we infer from this?
- They want to spend time on content and creative design, rather than building up an engine from scratch. Makes sense, if Big World is quality stuff. It’s also a nice little money saver, which is great if they can put the money into all the cool game stuff that we players always pine for and have yet to see in games. This also makes it sound like they are ready to roll up their sleeves and start making the “wouldn’t it be cool if….” into a real game, which is exciting.
- According to a recent Ten Ton Hammer interview, Big World touts itself as providing a very customizable engine, yet one that runs smoothly on lower end systems. It goes without saying that this is important. The only thing is that I hope the game will look fresher and better than current games. The game won’t be released for a few more years, and by then, I think people will be expecting games to look better than the colorful, yet flat, world of a game like WoW (or, heck, even LOTRO). But I guess part of how the game will look falls on those who are creating it.
- They aren’t geared towards Vista or Mac. It does sound like they will be vista compatible eventually though. I am interested to see if it’s console-friendly.
- They have brought in several products as part of their service, including Vivox, which is soon to make its way into SoE games. So it’s probably safe to assume that “Copernicus” will have voice chat upon launch. (I don’t care how fun it is, you will never hear me using the “elven voice” modifier. Orc, maybe, but not elf)
- They claim to be able to do small shards, or large worlds. They also claim to be able to make seamless worlds. Sounds interesting. Eve X 10, in a fantasy setting?
The big question is, how good is Big World? Sure, they were used by a few Asian games, Dark and Light, some unnamed upcoming Sierra game, and Stargate: Worlds (although it sounds like they are actually using the Unreal engine), but they can’t really tie their name to any big hits. It will be interesting to see what 38 Studios can do with it.
One other curious tidbit in there. They trademarked OEE (Online Entertainment Experience). What’s OEE? Sounds like they are trying to make something different from an MMO(G). But then again, the last time I saw that little “tm” was next to The Vision, and we know where that ended up!
Now I have this image of an orc marching around yelling, “You down with O.E.E? (Yeah you know me!)”
Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (1)
“You down with O.E.E? (Yeah you know me!)”
Hahahahaha! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that first. I commented about the OEE acronym a bit in reply to your comment on Nerfbat btw.
It’s great to see people start getting excited about Copernicus, but it’s also really scary because I want to make sure we avoid the overhype. I think players these days are getting better at not painting too ideal a picture of their version of the game (often very different from the real game), but some may be getting pessimistic because of the repeated letdowns.
I’m only commenting here on something you noted about world size. It’s worth noting that this isn’t actually about our game at 38 Studios, it’s just one of my personal theories about game design and world sizes.
Whether it (BigWorld) can do Eve x10 in a fantasy setting or not, I think it would be a massive mistake to do it. Dark and Light, from what I can recall, used an early version of BigWorld, so it’s clear that the server portion of the engine can handle big worlds.
That said, a world of that size is completely uninteresting as far as I am concerned. If I can’t carefully craft every piece of every part of the world, and artists can’t either, the game isn’t good enough. Even if most of the world is left to players to shape, I still think the artists need to carefully control what the landscape looks like, and the bigger it gets, the worse the overall quality is.
I guess what I’m saying is that huge fantasy worlds (a world that can house 10,000 or 20,000+ players comfortably) are quantity, not quality, and that is the opposite of one of my main mantras. It works much better in space because, well, it’s “space” with the occasional object.
Comment by Ryan Shwayder — March 1, 2008 @ 12:07 pm