Our team SGG asked several questions to developers of Will To Live Online game and got very interesting answers.
Tell us about AlphaSoft LLC. How many people are involved? Is game development your hobby, or main occupation?
Our team is from miners’ capital of Kazakhstan, Karaganda city. Game development is not our hobby: we act according to plans and schedules, and people come to office and leave it according to job pattern. At the moment 14 people are involved into the project: one administers community, one is dealing with locations design, one works on new monsters and characters, and one executes the most complicated task – writes a code.
Do you follow survival genre? How does the development process of Will To Live Online looks like? At what stage are you now? Can you tell us something about Will To Live that nobody knows yet?
Of course. We follow the Survival games, but it wouldn’t be correct to tell that we are interested in this genre only. To a greater extent it is related to the fact that our game is classic MMORPG more than Survival. In whole, we attentively observe all the game industry, because, at least, it is interesting. We, the same as you, like playing games as well as making them :-)
Our project Will To Live Online is in alpha stage now. But it doesn’t mean that the game is “raw”. As we know it, status of alpha-version states that we haven’t implemented the major part of game mechanics and planned content.
At the moment we work on the next update, which, together with new locations and other content, will contain one of new game mechanics — faction checkpoints capture.
According to our idea, faction’s possession of definite points in the map shall influence the economic status of all faction members. And dominance of definite faction in definite territory shall be in global evidence. To attack such point – checkpoint – players shall be trained tactically: you cannot just “come and kill everybody”. Players shall disable the safety system of the checkpoint first; and for successful capture you shall reprogram the turrets. The task is challenging, but this will be interesting.
What unique experience can your project give to modern sophisticated player? In 2018 games with survival elements are presented in wide range, and it becomes more and more difficult to astonish the pampered audience.
Exactly. It is pretty difficult to astonish the pampered player today. Even “Tripple A” project makes it not in every instance
Our project is kind of symbiosis of classic MMORPG-mechanics and mechanics of survival games. In classic survival you are left to your own devices – nobody accompanies you along the game world. You just appear in hostile space, and your task is to provide yourself with resources for survival. This might be food, clothes, weapons, bullets, rounds – whatever. If your character survived for a long time – you did it well. If your character died suddenly — “that’s fiasco, bro”. In classic survivals, such as DayZ, for example, players shall motivate themselves to play.
Our game goes a completely different way. Your character appears, may be said, in “an ivory tower”. Due to quests, you get familiar with different world aspects and game mechanics. While your character’s level is growing, it gets the access to new weapons, armor and new opportunities. The deeper you move along the story quests to Will To Live Online world, the more complicated is the life in it. You may die of radiation, anomaly, suddenly appeared monster, and even of other players, but you’ll not have to start from the very beginning. However, you shall always watch the condition of your armor and weapons, your character shall eat and drink timely to be alert and alive. If in classic survivals players, at best, herd together in small groups, and conflict between players is of “every man for himself” nature, in our game players have the opportunity to join one of two contending factions. Factions allow uniting people with the help of common goals and objectives, despite the fact that players may belong to different clans within the framework of the same faction.
What is your relation to early access? As we know, program of early access ruined more than one project, and, vice versa, became a silver bullet for somebody.
This is not a secret that small and independent studios, no matter how talented they are, often suffer from lack of financing. Frequently there is no financing at all. We all are human beings; everybody needs to earn money to support the family, and enthusiasm is not the best thing to be supported with. If your situation is exactly like this, and you don’t have any limitations and liabilities towards the publisher, “Early access” is the great opportunity to accomplish your game having the financial support in the stage of game development.
At the same time, “Early access” is not a plaster for all sores. You were right when told that “Early access” ruined lots of projects. This is the fact. First of all, this is related to the fact that relation of audience to games in “Early access” became a bit narrow-minded due to the great amount of short-lived games that passed the Greenlight (when it existed). That is why now the preparation of game to “Early access” is a very complicated task. It is even more serious than preparation of game to final release — because the start influences the future of your game, and you put almost everything on the line. Everything you were worked on, everything you put your heart, time and money into – everything can disappear in a moment due to bad release of the game in “Early access”. To be noted that many people do not understand that game in “Early access” doesn’t mean the final product. And game community, in major part, lays down the demands and expectations similar to those to the final product. You shall be ready for this.
Do you have a development plan for the next couple of years, and how markedly the wishes of involved players may affect it?
We are always on “friendly footing” with our community. Both with Russian speaking, and foreign one. Certainly, influence of game community on game development exists. But normally it is reasonable, because it often happens that players play their own game, different from the one you created (in a manner of speaking :)). And put that way, our opinion might be different from the opinions of players.
But that is not bad. Community forms itself, its own traditions and unspoken rules — it is interesting to watch it. And this has favorable effect on the game atmosphere in whole. Anyway, game community is like a blood in veins of our organism. It moves all the time and keeps the body warm.
Saying about our plans for the next couple of years, our main goal is to complete our game. We’ll have to introduce lots of game mechanics, to develop and complete the main story line, which will disclose some secrets of the Will To Live world and the Catastrophe. One thing is known for sure — we have lots of work to do, and this will be enough for many years.
Whichof similar projects seems to be more attractive for you as for developers? Do you have the favorites? What game do you play in your free time? What is the source of inspiration for your brainchild?
You know, it’s difficult to remember similar MMORPG at once, which is at the same moment first person shooter in post-apocalypse. Normally, when we talk about MMO, we imagine elves, dwarfs, orcs and other fantasy creatures. However, our game is MMORPG, but close to post-apocalyptic reality.
Probably, this is a surprise for many people, but one of majority of inspirers for our project is the old browser game — “Time Zero”, but not “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” (as people often think). On the other hand, “Time Zero” is not the only inspirer. You shouldn’t dismiss the classic of the genre — Fallout series.
You shouldn’t refrain from pointing out the classics of MMORPG genre — World Of Warсraft. The latest update, Battle For Azeroth — holy cripes! Blizzard can twist the plot so wildly, that it looks impossible sometimes. You start involuntarily worry for the future of Horde under the leadership of Banshee Queen. Different adventures, U-turn of events, different betrayals and story tangles — here Blizzard is the quality benchmark you want to reach.
Postapocalyptic games with elements of survival, as a rule, survive from one update to another. Every large patch is an event. You may put the wind in the game in this manner for ever! What do you think, if the limit shall be, where you shall say "Stop! Now everything is perfect! We have said everything we wanted to say, and future development may inflict the harm and be against the common sense”?
First of all it depends on the game itself. If the game has a storyline — you may develop it for ever, as it happens with abovementioned World Of Warcraft. In this case game will live long, and the imagination is the limit. If the game doesn’t have the exact storyline, it is enough to add the content, which allows entertaining playing day by day. And updates are necessary for optimization improvement and errors correction.
What would you like to say to our project as a conclusion of this small text interview?
First of all, we would like to thank you for such interesting questions. It was very interesting to answer them. We would like to wish you more exclusive content and sustainable growth and development of your community!