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Seed News - Interview & Screenshots
Posted by Dana Massey on Jan 18, 2006 | 4 comments in our forums
Today we feature an in-depth interview with the CEO of Runestone Lars Kroll Kristensen. He and his company are hard at work on the upcoming non-violent MMORPG Seed. Our Garrett Fuller asked him a slew of questions in this three page interview. We are also carrying five exclusive screenshots from the title.
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Lars Kroll Kristensen: The afore mentioned administrators can set up sharepoints on their hardpoints. A share point is a sort of shop, where you can access and make available items and components. The game world uses a pseudo currency called “Access points” which is similar to money, but with the key difference that at least one party in a transaction involving access points must be democratically elected. Players cannot directly trade access points, although they can barter items freely. The idea is to have a capitalist economy but tightly controlled by democratically elected representatives. |
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You can view the screenshots alone here, or simply follow this link to read the interview and see the images.
As I read the interview, I kept seeing point for point flashes of A Tale in the Desert which I played for a long time. The Seed folks are either great fans of ATID or have parallel thought process with Andrew Tepper! hehehheh.
I hope they are as successful as Andrew has been. The third telling of the Tale (version 3, each version starts from scratch) is about to begin.
Hawkwinde
I have been following this game since back before they had a website. It does have many similarities to "A Tale in the Desert". Rather than find similarities between the two, I think the more telling comparison is how both games depart completely from established MMO titles. I hope this is the start of a new generation of games which are not afraid to be different - or smaller. In fact, I think there isnt much room at the moment for competition by trying to outdo the big games. The best option isnt to kill yourself trying to outdo WoW and EQ2, feature by feature. The best option is to ignore them and do something completely different.
MMOs are like movies. There are really, really big ones that appeal to a mass audience. These benefit from huge budgets, marketing and hopefully a large profit. They also can suffer for it by being generalized in order to accomodate the largest possible target audience. I submit EQ2, WoW.
Then there are smaller "art house" flicks that can cater directly to their niche market's ideas of depth, quality, etc. Think of MMOs who do things differently: ATITD, Eve, Seed...
Both kinds of movies and MMOs die like flies, but some stay around. I venture that more small art house movies do catch on, stay around forever, and have more impact on our culture than the big titles. Fargo anyone? For a small movie that made it big, will its viewers ever think of Brainerd, Minnesota the same again? The big titles are only as good (or bad) as the next sequel, then everyone is on to the next big bang.
As for Seed's lack of combat - thats what hooked me at the start. Dont get me wrong, I am all for gratuitous violence! But, just like reading a good book after 6 months of cr*p movies, a bit of intellectual activity goes a long way.
Seed doesnt need to attract 1 million players and they arent even trying. A small budget, tight shop and solid, loyal player base gets them a long-term presence in the market and a very nice entry in their portfolio.
Well I have been following it since the first letter they wrote on the "blueprint".
Game looks cool. Im deffently going to give it a try. I just hope they with have a free trail...