Game developers chat about Seed in an IRC forum
By Michael Lafferty

“… you will definitely be able to get involved in a story, even if you just log in for five minutes.”

A graphics-novel style presentation and a game that is story driven, where each action will likely affect what happens around you. No violence, no monsters to hunt or kill, but rather a world to run. Now throw into the mix, human colonists on a distant planet co-existing in a colony tower.

Put all this together and you are talking about Seed, a massively multiplayer online game that will be going into beta starting in February.

But there are many questions about this game, which is an obvious departure from the MMO world in many regards. On Thursday the Runestone core group of Lars Kroll Kristensen, CEO of Runestone/Seed Producer, Lead writer Alex Uth, 3D character artist Anders Nydam, 3D artist Nick B. Jensen, Programmer Rene ‘Relic’ Kragh Pedersen, and PR and community manager Morten Juul hooked up with a select group of journalists to chat, via mIRC, about this title.

The screenshots used in this article are exclusive to GameZone.com.

The first question out of the gate was: “What was the inspiration behind the game?”

Kroll: “Well, a lot of different sources, I’d say. For me personally, pen and paper role-playing and AI technology were great inspirations.”

Alex: “Right, yes. Live role-playing for my part, I think. So a very social game. A game where people could play around with stories.”

Society of Gamers’ Don Cook asked “What is it about your game that should appeal to players? Why will they want to play Seed?”

Kroll laughed. “Always a good question. Well, in Seed’s case, the answer is more like ‘who will want to play it?’ because Seed certainly won’t appeal to ‘all’ players. We are striving to make a game where role-playing is front and center and all our game plays are in some ways connected to role-playing.

“We ask ourselves with new game play systems we design: ‘what does this do for the stories and for the role-play?’ So, to give an example: The admin game play – players can get elected to run and customize in-game machines for a term of one week. Customizing is a matter of tradeoffs, and the implications of the tradeoffs spill into the rest of the game world. If you build a polluting machine, this harms the other admits’ machines. If you build a non-polluting machine, it will be less efficient for the producers (crafters). So you must try to keep both of them happy or you will not get re-elected.

“This we expect to be a subject of a lot of debate between players. Also Naps will vote so you need to keep them happy as well. The Naps will have their own goals and the way you relate to them will have meaning on how they vote. So the point is that the admin game play encourages people to talk with each other, debate, and exchange opinions. It provides something to role-play about. We hope this will attract a higher proportion of role players than most other MMOs, which should lead to a better role play environment for all.”

Relic: “On the subject of the player types (who do we appeal to) - people who are used to PvP-oriented or quest-oriented MMOGs are not our first and foremost audience. We’re hoping to hook types like the storytellers, the crafters and the explorers. We hope to offer dialogue with some meaning to it, and a sense that the world is going on even if you are not there, that not everything is scripted towards you specifically but rather towards a story. The way we build the world – both mechanics and feel – is the way we would like to be ourselves and we have a good feeling we’re not alone.”

Morten: “Overall, it’s a game where acting your role actually matters. Which project you support will be a factor in which way the society moves and what other players and NPCs think about you.”

Alex: “I also think Seed offers some nice ways of ‘seeing’ your role play. We’ve got a lot of animated emotes, which makes for a very ‘alive’ character experience.”

Tovin at Stratics asked “with such a heavy emphasis put on social interaction, will there be any available storyline play for solo players who have a limited amount of time per session that they can put in? Will they need to join a ring to really have an impact?”

Relic: “It really depends on what you mean by ‘impact.’ Will he be able to tell a story? Definitely. Will he be affecting the bigger story arcs? Hard to say but probably not. Holding an admin or other political position, or for that matter just keeping a good network of contacts means you have to be there. Being social in nature, not being there means – well, you’re not socializing. That said, you definitely will not be totally out of the loop if you are gone for two weeks.”

Alex: “But you will definitely be able to get involved in a story, even if you just log in for five minutes. Just you being in a location, in a certain mood, with certain connections and so on can trigger a story. NPCs are interested in players. So a chance meeting can trigger a story. Asking the NPC to do you, the player, a favor, can trigger a story. Looking sad in a corner can trigger a story.”

SoG’s Don Cook: “In a story rich game like Seed, sound and music is perhaps more important than it is for other games. To what extent will Seed utilize 3D sound and voice-overs?”

Kroll: “Sound and music is most definitely important. We are using in-game ‘foley’ sound effects of course, but we have decided against actual voice overs and voice acting. So NPCs will not be saying pre-canned small speeches. They will make non-language sounds like sighs, laughter, et cetera.”

Alex:  “… which players can make as well.”

Kroll: “This is mostly a consequence of the massive amount of voice acting that would be needed. It’s expensive to download and we don’t feel it adds sufficiently to the game. We looked into some ‘garble speech’ to sort of simulate people speaking in a foreign language but it didn’t work out to our full satisfaction. The game world and also the player customizable machinery will, of course, have sound effects. That’s where we are concentrating our audio efforts right now.”

Stratics’ Tovin: “With such an extensive list of skills planned for launch, do you expect to have to limit what each player can learn? Or will all available skills in the foreseeable future be available to all players?” 

Kroll: “Well, the skills are all available to all players but some skills have other skills as prerequisites, so the skill system encourages a specialization and we plan to balance the system such that even if it is theoretically possible to get all skills, given a few years of playtime it will not be practically possible because we will add further skill branches. So we launch the beta with the primary repair, production, admin and some research skills.”

Don Cook, SoG: “A futuristic setting creates lots of possibilities for travel. How will you handle transportation between areas of Seed? Will players be able to control vehicles? In the same vein, will Seed utilize zones or will area transitions be seamless? How much of the game is instanced and how much content is shared with the entire population of the world?”

Kroll: “Ok – vehicles first: No. No vehicles are planned at this stage. So players will be walking and taking various forms of elevators, tubes and so on. Our graphics engine is pretty good at making smooth zone transitions so transitioning from zone to zone will be pretty much seamless. However, transitioning from space to space will be .. uhm … sort of load times but well hidden. Basically the tower is split into several compartmentalized spaces such that a calamity in one space doesn’t affect the neighboring space. The spaces are connected with ‘radlocks’ that prevent gasses, et cetera, from moving from space to space. This decontamination process takes a little while.”

Relic: “Quick addendum. We don’t have instancing as such. If you go somewhere, others can come too. There are no sealed-off dungeon-type places.”

Anders: “A quick note on traveling – players will be able to save their current location as a waypoint, which enables them to later return to that very same location without having to click their way through miles of space station, but rather watch as their character finds their own way.”

Question: A game setting such as this could lead to a very mechanized visual experience. What are you doing to make it visually appealing?

Nick: “Obviously large parts of the locations will be very mechanical looking and even appearing cold. But there’s more to the tower than just machinery. The Recreational space which is less … functional, in the sense of production and research, is much warmer and more appealing – and will hopefully be a great source for R’n’R and not-work-related social activities.

“The Lab Space is more functional, and designed for production. We’ve made some rather interesting machinery, which can be combined in numerous ways to make it more diverse and exciting. We’ve decided on a more different visual approach than usual – the graphics novel style. Instead of trying to achieve realism (which will never happen anyways) we’ve gone for a more … ‘fantastic’ look instead. The graphics novel style gives us more creative freedom in matters of design and appearance.

“With the graphics novel style, we’re not forced to make it look real because people have references to how stuff is supposed to look – we can do more, and still keep it believable.”

Anders: “Also there is an obvious and exciting contrast between the warm human characters and the cold unfriendly appearance of the tower that helps support the idea of the colonists needing to stick together.”

Stratics’ Tovin asked, “It’s rather odd for a developer to offer a non NDA’d beta. Can you tell us the reason behind this decision?”

Morten: “There are many reasons as to why we have chosen not to have an NDA for beta testers. First, we have always wanted to be as open about Seed as possible. We do not feel the urge to keep more secrets than necessary about the game, because basically it is not hard to get the idea of a role-play-intensive, non-combat MMOG; the hard thing is actually making the game.  In addition, it gives us the unique opportunity to involve our community actively in the game-design work. We get lots of ideas from you guys, and we get your opinion on our own ideas, both very valuable to us.

“Second, as a new game developer we do not have enormous amounts of money to spend on marketing. We have to rely on more ‘grass root’ efforts as i.e. word of mouth. An NDA would seriously limit this, meaning less talk about Seed resulting in less awareness and presumably less players.

“Third, even if we had an NDA, we realistically do not have the resources to pursue people talking about the beta test. And then it would be just empty threats.”

SoG’s Don Cook asked the final question: “Many MMORPGs use items and levels as a measure of accomplishment between and among players. Other than skill levels, what types of things will Seed have to let players see how they measure up to one another?

Kroll: “Well, friends for starters. Build a network of NPC friends, allies and contacts will be a major thing in Seed. So it won’t be ‘your’ stuff, but it will show something about your general standing in society. It will also be important in political game play, in getting elected. It will make it easier for you to obtain stuff you need. Calling in a big batch of favors will be something that matters, and makes it possible for you to sort of unleash a lot of stuff at once – like, launching a political campaign, or significantly helping a project.”

Relic: In a ‘regular’ level-oriented or ranking-based game, when you look at someone you can usually see some kind of rank or level from his gear and his stats. In Seed – just like in regular social interaction – it’s not so easy. You have to interact with people to find out where a given person fits in. A weak point is that ‘level’ is not readily available. We don’t consider this a problem at all.

“A strong point is that since you rely on your peers, there will always be incentive to work together on things. You will want people to know that you’re a good guy, a cool person, a helper.”

Kroll: “Yeah, reputation matters.”

Relic: “Your peers, in turn, will support you and let others know that you’re a good person to know. This is really the measure of your ‘level.’

“So where looking at someone and gauging his gear is a fast way to see how cool he is (in other games), in Seed you’ll want to ask around and actually get involved in the environment. It’s a strong way to influence the story of you and the people around you. And that guy over there.”

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