Improbable is an amazing new software that is changing the way we interact with people in games. They are helping a series of games come to market with their technology and approach to broadening out the number of players you can find in a zone at any given time. Years ago, old school MMOs created the scenes of many players at the same time. We all remember those feelings of lag when other players hit the area. Now, Mavericks looks to turn Proving Grounds into a game where hundreds of players can interact. We spoke to Bill Roper, game and MMO veteran, about how the game works and what Improbable will do for the future.
Bill began by saying that online games always had a design challenge for developers. You wanted the idea of ten thousand people in the world but could never achieve that. With Improbable’s SpatialOS you will be able to extend out game servers allowing for cloud technology to run the online game. Bill explained that it removes the limits of what you can do. It creates an exciting challenge. No one has been able to set this up yet. Bill was clear that with more people involved we would have much deeper virtual worlds to explore.
With Spatial OS developers can tack on and stitch together servers as well as game engines. This will allow devs to make larger scale games faster. Bill explained how this service will lead to more a more expanded player economy. This way real trade can happen between a lot of users. With more people involved the value of trades will go up.
Mavericks is a third person shooter which hosts player progression and development as well as open world areas to fight. The environment is fully destructible and we tested it by blowing up an oil can. Mavericks is a shooter at heart but the game changes depending on what players decide. You also have a major social hub, you are not just thrown into various lobbies. This way players can interact and tell their stories of success.
)
Mavericks had a clean look and some great elements to exploration and combat. The game moved fast paced from what we saw and scales up into a larger battle royale game than some of the others on the market. With Improbable integrated into the system the team expects games to go as high as several hundred players. Their demo of a four hundred player battle royale is set to come in by the year end.
The big question is, can Mavericks: Proving Grounds pull it off? In Bill’s mind they can. Several other games are using Improbable’s software to enhance their worlds. Scavengers, Seed, and World Adrift are all operating with the Spatial OS software. These game are set in the new MMO environments and are creating the stage for how MMOs will play in the future. While some games are going with smaller instances to join players behind the scenes, Improbable is looking to expand on that.
Mavericks was a fun but short demo. The game has a very European feel to the environments and design. It scales older as we mentioned and takes a more realistic approach to its art style. It was fun to run around the social area and then join a game. Overall, we can see Mavericks becoming important because it will expand on how many people can join into a royale type situation.
Bill finished up our chat talking about how they continue to seek clients and work with developers to build larger virtual worlds. Eliminating the single server environments and porting things into the cloud will expand games in the future. We are excited about the future that is possible with Improbable, we hope to see Mavericks in open beta soon too.
