We at AutomatedGamer recently had the good fortune to sit down with Rolf Jansson, CEO of the independent studio Onetoofree and lead developer of the free online MMORPG Wurm. If you don’t know what Wurm is, I recommend you go check it out at http://wurmonline.com. He was kind enough to answer some questions for us, so we could share them with you, our beloved AutomatedGamer audience. Hopefully this will be the first of many forays into the wonderful world of independent gaming, so keep watching!
Now, onto the interview! (I’m the one in italics! All the interesting stuff is the regular text)
For those that aren’t familiar with Wurm Online, could we get an explanation about the game in your words? What is it about? What draws players to Wurm?
Wurm is a land of mountains, lakes, forests and valleys where anything can happen, where the “story line” is player driven, where you can choose your
life style, whether that is as part of a growing village working on massive projects or raiding enemy towns on the wild server or living quietly on your own on top of a mountain somewhere.
I think what often gets players immediately interested in Wurm Online is that what you do impacts on the very land itself. You can dig and level the ground, chop down trees (and plant them), mine beneath the land into the rock to create vast caverns, dredge out lake shores to create harbours for the ships and boats you build and raise the land to create impenetrable fortresses, or so you hope!
But then you can take it that little bit further. There are two types of servers – home servers and wild servers. On home, PvP is not allowed with people from your own kingdom, and other players from other kingdoms can not spawn there. These are meant to be peaceful nations where you and your friends can find your mountain or lake or deep, dark forest and hew away at the land to create your perfect community.
On wild, however, the Peoples of Wurm clash. Nation meets nation and anything goes. Here, defending what you build is as important as how you decide to attack. Getting your fight skill up is vital, but getting an amazing blacksmith and a priest to bless your weapons is equally important. This is also where true heroes and adventure loving groups will emerge as the storyline is implemented and they try to forward the goals of their deities and kingdoms.
How do you keep Wurm Online running? How do you keep it interesting?
Wurm Online is constantly under development. I lead that development, and am responsible for all the server code. This allows me to control how new features are worked into the game, how old features change and evolve and how they affect the game. Wurm is not static, and it never will be “finished,” just like life is never finished.
But this is not a completely one man operation. I am supported by a team of developers, moderators, modellers and sound designers who volunteer their skills and expertise to help move the game, and often change the direction it may be going!
And there are the players too. We have a very vocal community, often overflowing with ideas and mostly going a thousand different directions. But often too we find really clever ideas and suggestions that we had not considered and that can be a real benefit to the game; whether that is a change to the religious system, the way you fight, or an idea for a new type of wall.
Some of the more recent developments such as Boats and upcoming features currently being tested like Horse Riding have been heavily influenced by the players themselves. And remember, all of the development team are also players.
In our first email, you mentioned a “big difference” between you guys and the big game studios. In your mind, what is that big difference?
Small independent games cannot develop in the same way that the big boys do; they do not have the cash resources or the staff numbers.
It’s not that we’re better than the big companies but what we have created without those resources is fantastic and hopefully inspiring to gamers with similar dreams. Most if not all people in the industry started with these dreams I am sure.
Without copious resources team work is vital, but it is also important that the various people working on Wurm can run with an idea and do a lot of stand alone work. What comes out of that process really has the personality of the developer stamped all over it. With client development I often find the most surprising and unexpected features appearing, often quite simple things like how a list is organised, that I would never have thought of. In modelling, I may have some wild idea for a Portal, but what it looks like is as much of a surprise to me as it is to the rest of the community. And with the new music, again, the composer has looked at the game and gone his own direction, rather than just do what everyone else does in games.
This means the game can develop in some very powerful ways, and the people who would not normally get to be involved in a game at all get the chance to shine. We still have to streamline and coordinate what happens, but luckily our team members share the vision.
How important is your community of players to dictating the company’s agenda?
Oh I wouldn’t say they dictate the company’s agenda as such. However, they have a large influence in tweaking variables and debugging new features, but that doesn’t drive us off the track we have laid out for the game. When a feature has settled in it usually stays that way for a long time. But sometimes bringing forward a new feature or implementing something that is off the road map may have to gain top priority for a few weeks because the players have been able to show how much they need it.
Do you feel that being smaller than mainstream studios makes you more responsive to your community’s input, or does a smaller budget make you less responsive?
I think that that is totally up to the company. I see a lot of companies that seem to ignore feedback from the player base, but you can never be sure what really happens. Sometimes players are listened to far more than they realise. I know that we have quite a lot of presence and communication on the forums and IRC; sometimes we will fix bugs within an hour of being reported, and I don’t think that is common in games at any level.
Wurm Online is heavily focused on cooperation and building a community of players. In fact, there are aspects that feel more like a life simulator like Second Life than a typical action-based MMORPG. Was this focus on community and realism a result of recognizing a need in the market, or is this just the kind of game you like?
Oh it’s both. This game has been needed for so long. When I started playing MUDS in the 90’s I expected a totally different experience – much more interactive and much less level oriented. After a while I stopped caring about other players because there was no natural reason to get to know them. In Wurm villages make this natural, which I like.
When MMO’s appeared I was again hoping for the same thing but they just copied the MUD genre and for ten years they’ve stayed the same. So I hope with Wurm we have come up with some fresh ideas that show what this genre is truly capable of.
How do you keep content fresh in such a free user-based game universe? How do you keep it balanced?
Thinking up new ideas is actually the easy bit. Most of what should be in the game can be seen in other games or in books and movies. Coding and creating the content takes time and effort though. Wurm often requires solutions to allow players to do something that they just thought of. For instance as players projects get bigger, as forts get higher, players need bigger carts to shift more dirt, rock and wood. These would be too big for a player to drag, so they need to be able to hitch a horse or ox to it. That means they need to be able to ride and train animals too – so that is what we are starting to develop at the moment.
Balance is more difficult. When I code a feature I calculate quite a bit and figure out some reasonable result. Often it is pretty much right, but you get feedback from the players very quickly if it is poorly balanced. New features can change quite a lot in the beginning but eventually they become stable.
When the company grows we will be able to test more professionally in advance of releasing a feature, so eventually the community won’t have to do this job.
Because we try and make the game reactive to the community as well as follow a path that I have in the back of my mind all the time, we constantly run into the problem of not being able to please all of the players all of the time. It means occasionally we may have to disappoint a group of players, which is not a nice thing to do. On the other hand, it means we can also make their day – and that is a great feeling!
I’ve noticed that a lot of material about this game has to do with economy; it’s obvious it’s an important aspect of the game. Tell me how the market works. Does Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” keep things moving, or does it take some management by your staff?
The in-game currency is linked to the Euro just to keep things simple. However, you can’t withdraw money from the game and even though that would be nice, I suspect that it would put us in a legal situation that we currently can’t handle, or would not want to handle.
We don’t have to monitor the in game economy much, so you’re pretty much spot on with Adam Smith. The traders have a standard purchase price for items which will have some impact when setting a minimum price. But the players set the real price, either in terms of coinage or in other ways they may barter. Sometimes we’ve had to lower the official trader purchase price for some items that were too easy to manufacture and therefore created a run on the traders cash resources, but that’s basically all we have to do.
Tell me about the future of gaming as you see it. Will the market of the future be harder on small companies, or will there be new opportunities for Wurm and other independent games to flourish?
I am very happy to have gotten into this business. To me gaming and virtual worlds is part of the culture of future generations within the mix of music, movies and literature. Computer games are making more and more impact upon the cultural arena with game music concerts played by philharmonic orchestras and similar events. Look at the recent BAFTA video game awards to show how games are now being recognised as main stream culture.
Games like Wurm will become much more easily accessible with minimum download and loading times, and you will be able to pop in and out much easier as than now.
I think that unless someone releases an easily scriptable MMO engine there will still be a heavy barrier to get into this particular part of the industry. It takes many years to learn to write serious MMO server software.
And SCENE!
There you have it. A glimpse into the world of Wurm Online, and an idea of what it’s like to be in charge of an independent game company like Onetoofree. Thanks a lot to Rolf for giving us this interview, and Joss Sanglier for setting it up. I hope all of you guys go check out Wurm Online, and check back for more interviews and glimpses into the world of independent gaming.
